The Nazi hidden inside a chair

Like all good detective stories, it began with a disturbing discovery. In 2011, in Amsterdam, a woman called Jana took a much-loved armchair, a relic from her student days in Prague, to be reupholstered. When she returned to collect it a few days later, she was confronted by an angry man.

The Dutch restorer told her, in no uncertain terms, that he did not work for Nazis or their families. Then he handed her a bundle of documents he’d found sewn into the chair’s cushion. Dating from the 1930s and 1940s, they were covered in swastikas and in the name of a man Jana had never heard of: Robert Griesinger.

Who was he?