Robbery of antique watches ISRAEL The Museum for Islamic Art 1983
A flight pierced the tranquility of Kibbutz Ein Horesh. A member of the kibbutz, Naaman Diller, who was in the air force’s flight course, deviated from the flight path and performed a victory flight over the kibbutz skies. Immediately after, as far as is known, he was expelled from the course and later became the most famous watch thief in history. What’s in the article? Robbery of antique watches ISRAEL – watch the video at the end of the page.
Who is the article dedicated to? To my late father, who showed me the paths of this country and the most interesting places in Israel. And why this article? More on that later.
Get to know the participants in the Robbery of antique watches plot
Naaman Diller, later the watch thief from the Museum of Islam in Jerusalem, was born into a privileged family. No detail of his youth hinted at the daring and sophisticated robber he would become. His mother was Erna Friedman Diller.
What was she doing? Her picture as an assistant in the central orphanage of the great educator Janusz Korczak in Warsaw is in the Korczak House in Warsaw.
garden shaft oak island 2023 treasure under the lamp
In Israel she was considered an accomplished educator. But her son, Naaman, who suffered from a skin disease, was a kind of unusual type in the kibbutz. There were many such in my settlements that were established on socialist ideological bases.
Nili Shomrat, the second heroine of the film, was 25 years old when she met Naaman, the watch thief. In the early seventies, about a decade before the watch robbery. At a party of friends in a Tel Aviv living room, the curious 25-year-old met a handsome and charismatic guy named Naaman Diller. When she asks a good friend about the guy, she tells her that this is a kibbutznik from Ein Horesh, who was released from prison a month ago after being convicted of a bank robbery. This is how he earned the nickname “the breaking kibbutznik”.
In the summer of 1982, my beloved father takes us to an interesting museum in Jerusalem with ancient clocks.
My father, may he rest in peace, had an obsession with antique clocks and museums. He expressed this love through our countless visits to all kinds of interesting Hamed corners throughout Israel. The days of the big holiday aroused great anticipation in us. Where will we visit this time? And so it turned out that a year before the great watch robbery at the Museum of Islam in Jerusalem, we got to see the rarest and most expensive watches that arrived in Israel. Our doomsday, it turns out, were intertwined in the history of the watch robbery.
A year later, 1983, the State of Israel will receive a shock. What happened?. The most expensive watches in Israel, treasures of art and heritage, were robbed from the L.A. Mayer Museum For Islamic Art In Jerusalem. Weeks later we were still talking about the visit that left a deep impression on us. We have touched history. In the years that followed, it seemed that no one would see these watches anymore. There were estimates that they were sold to collectors in Europe.
But then there was a twist in the plot, one reminiscent of the best Hollywood thrillers. But just before we continue to describe the plots of the watch robbery and the new movie.
see the display of ancient watches in the museum in the city of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. So in my memory, more or less, was the display of the lost watches of the Museum of Islam in the 1980s just before the robbery of the watches in the museum.
What happened in the biggest watch heist in the history of art?
During one Shabbat in April 1983, what was later considered the largest robbery in Israel took place on Palmach St. in Jerusalem. What exactly happened there? Not everything is known yet. It is important to remember that the so-called robber, or the robber of time, was never convicted in the case, even though his name He was linked to her during the investigation in the 1980s.
But a collection of 106 ancient and rare watches worth about 200 million dollars – including Queen Marie Antoinette’s personal watch – have disappeared. The loot was robbed in the dark of the night from the Israel Museum of Islamic Art. So a museum for connoisseurs in Jerusalem.
In the morning when the workers arrived at the modest Jerusalem Museum, they lost track of time. The expensive watches are gone.
It was a robbery that had never happened before in Israel. The robber, as it turned out later, carried out a professional break-in to the building without special protection, certainly in relation to the valuable items displayed in it.
How long did it take to solve the robbery?
For 25 years the police were at a loss as to the identity of the robber and the fate of the stolen collection. The affair was finally solved after the death of Naaman Diller. Later he will be called by the casual nickname – the bandit. Who solved the mystery? Israel Police?. No! But because of one woman – the lover of the watch thief from the Museum of Islam in Jerusalem.
How did the clocks return to the Museum of Islam?
The robber, Naaman Diller did not sell the watches.
In fact, he took good care of them, storing them in vaults across Europe. He would come once every few months, stretch springs, write reminders and instructions for the next maintenance. He had a treasure in hand and he certainly knew how to maintain it.
It is not clear to whom and for how much money and which watches he sold, or that the missing items have not yet been located. After Diller’s death, his wife tried to evaluate the watches and thus began a series of events that ended with the watches being located.
After several years of preservation and maintenance work, the display was returned to the modest museum in the heart of a quiet Jerusalem neighborhood where the customs of the State of Israel live.
In this way the mystery of the Robbery of antique watches came to an end, but unexpectedly the death of the robber became a myth, there are those who go to his grave to lay flowers and if you come to Jerusalem, do not miss the display of Bregav watches and the personal watch of Queen Marie Antoinette.
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