Pre-WWII items on Carousell lead man to original owners' family 6,000km away

After eight months, Singaporean tracks down man in Australia whose relatives lived in Nazi-era Germany

- Wallace Woon

In November 2022, Brisbane resident Michael Scheck received an e-mail from Singapore informing him that documents belonging to his father and uncle had been found. His first thought was that it was a scam.

The 63-year-old told The Straits Times: I have never before heard of someone) offering to give me something so I initially ignored the e-mail, although the sender wasn’t actually asking for anything.”

It was only after the sender contacted his daughter and son through LinkedIn, and after Mr Scheck had verified the credentials of the sender, that he replied.

The sender film-maker, author and film lecturer Wesley Aroozoo was 6,100km away in Singapore and the documents he had were a chance find while browsing on emarketplace Carousell in April 2022.

The set of documents which he bought for around 80 included work booklets dating back to Nazi-era Germany, postage stamps and family photographs.

He searched for leads on the original owner of the documents for eight months.

The documents belonged to two German brothers Mr Woldemar Scheck and Mr Wolfgang Scheck, who were born in 1922 and 1924 respectively and detailed their employment before and during World War II.