A hatch in the attic floor, which was hidden under the carpet, gives access to a space below. The hatch was discovered by a leak. “We cut away the carpet to see what it was,” owner Ronald Wetting tells Omrop Fryslân.
The hiding place is about one meter deep and two meters wide and has remained completely untouched. According to Wetting, there are even cans of soup from the war. “You can still read the label with some,” Wetting told the Frisian broadcaster. “You really step into a time machine.”
Wolf Salomon was the Jewish owner of the property during World War II. He sold fabrics in his shop. Because the Germans no longer allowed Jewish shop owners in 1941, Salomon handed over his trade to a non-Jewish woman. When things got too dangerous for Salomon after two years, he went into hiding in his own house. “It was probably in the attic”, according to Otto Kuipers of the Frisian historic center Tresoar. “If danger threatened, he could quickly go into hiding.”
Salomon went into hiding for two years and survived the war. In 1945 he moved to Amsterdam.
People have been able to visit the shelter in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands in recent days, but now the house is being further renovated and the space will disappear.