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“This is a meticulous and finely written account of Dina Gold’s struggle to seek belated justice for her mother, with all the twists and turns one would expect from a fictional detective story — but it is all true.”

—E. Randol Schoenberg
Attorney (“Woman in Gold”)

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About the Book

When Dina Gold was a little girl, her grandmother told her stories about the glamorous life she had led in pre-war Berlin and how she dreamed of one day reclaiming the grand building that had housed the family business.

Dina’s grandmother died in 1977, leaving behind no documents, not even an address, to help locate the property or prove its ownership. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Dina had not forgotten her grandmother’s tales and set out to find the truth.

In 1990, Dina marched into a German government ministry at Krausenstrasse 17/18, just two blocks from Checkpoint Charlie, and declared:

“I’ve come to claim my family’s building.”

And so began her legal struggle — to reclaim the building that had belonged to her family.

The six-story office block had been the headquarters of the H. Wolff fur company, one of the most successful Jewish fashion firms in Germany. Built by Dina’s great-grandfather in 1910, it was foreclosed on by the Victoria Insurance Company in 1937. Ownership was transferred to the Deutsche Reichsbahn, Hitler’s railways, that later transported millions of Jews to death camps.

Today the Victoria is part of ERGO, a leading German insurance company. Few are aware that the Victoria was once chaired by a lawyer with connections to the top of the Nazi party. The Victoria was also part of a consortium that insured SS-owned workshops using slave labor at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Dina has delved deep into archives across the world and made shocking discoveries. What she found has repercussions even in today’s Germany.

In a major victory, Dina persuaded the German government to put up a plaque in July 2016 acknowledging in both German and English the history of “The Wolff Building.”

But the story is STILL not over.

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An email from Detroit

Written by Dina Gold on December 22, 2015. Posted in News

It is six weeks since I spoke at the JCC in Detroit. Today I received this email from someone I met at the event:

I was thrilled to read your book, both from the perspective of a journalist and lawyer and as the child of German Jews (on both sides). Your ability to weave together the story of your claim for restitution as well as the investigation of what happened to your family members in a manner that is both delicate and personal as well as passionate and adversarial was thrilling. My grandfather was a restitution lawyer for victims of the Holocaust in Detroit after the war, having had to flee a very successful career in Berlin as a lawyer and working in a paper box factory until retirement. He wasn’t alive to see us secure restitution of his business buildings near the Brandenberg Gate after the Berlin Wall came down, but the process was similar, though not nearly as harrowing as yours was — the stakes were much higher in your case! Thanks again for the gift of this book. It is a treasure.

Joanna Stark Abramson

I am sure I am not alone as an author to delight in receiving such positive feedback from a reader.