“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.”
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.”
The discussion focused on how Jews had dominated German fashion before World War II. As historian Uwe Westphal told the audience: creative and innovative fashion by Jewish-German designers created the Roaring Twenties. The story of the Wolff family’s fur business and what happened was part of the event.
Between 1930 and 1939 the Nazis closed all Jewish fashion companies. Sadly, as Westphal explained, today’s German fashion students are ignorant of this sordid history.
Jill Swenson starts her blog post with the words: It’s no secret, I like history. It offers us lessons about the future. You won’t be surprised then to hear this past year I’ve read a lot of books about the years in Europe leading up to WWII.
“Stolen Legacy” is amongst the new nonfiction books Ms Swenson reviews and recommends.
She is shocked at what she reads of the role of German insurance companies during the Third Reich. Not only did they play a key role in the Aryanization of the German economy long before stormtroopers forced the removal of Jews from their homes and businesses, but they had insurance policies on the concentration camps and profited nicely from the Nazi policies.
She concludes: This book is a testament to dogged determination to find the facts and determine the truth.
Atlanta, GA. Speaking this evening on a panel at the launch of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust’s traveling exhibit “Fashioning a Nation: German Identity and Industry, 1914-1945.” This new exhibition explores the powerful history of German fashion from its international impact to its destruction by the Nazi regime. It honors the legacy of the Jewish Germans who contributed to its rise and commemorates the great cultural and economic loss resulting from its demise. The exhibition will be on display at the Goethe-Centrum, Plaza Level of Colony Square Mall, Atlanta from January 9 – 23, 2017 and then moves on to the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust’s permanent exhibit Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945in Sandy Springs.
Ahead of the paperback edition of Stolen Legacy going on sale in the UK next week, the Jewish Telegraph has published this feature.
“A lot of people have told me that the book is crying out to be made into a film, which I think would be wonderful.”
Last month, the British government reaffirmed its commitment to help Holocaust survivors whose property was taken.
“I have done book tours in America and been mobbed, with people telling me their grandmother or uncle or some other relative died and that they have found papers which prove the family owned a property somewhere,” Dina said.
“I can only wish them well and hope they are as fortunate as I was in proving their claim.”
In a glowing review of Anthony Rudolf’s book “Jerzyk” in the December/January edition of Standpoint Magazine, Michael Pinto-Duschinksy writes:
“Anthony Rudolf has produced a small jewel of a book. He tells a compelling, tragic story that brings the reader close not only to the realities of the Holocaust but also to its impact on the survivors and their children over many years.”
While praising Stolen Legacy, Pinto-Duschinsky concludes his review with some sobering remarks:
“Jerzyk is one of the finest books about the Holocaust this reviewer has read in recent years. It stands alongside books such as Samuel Kassow’s Who will write our history?, a study of the Ringelblum archive of the Warsaw ghetto, Barbara Barnett’s The Hide and Seek Children and Dina Gold’s Stolen Legacy (recently republished in an extended version). By contrast, several over-ambitious writings intended as Holocaust bestsellers have been deeply disappointing — opinionated, frequently politically biased, careless with the facts, and tendentious in their theses.
Nor is the tide of such works diminishing. The attack on Holocaust memory comes from varied sources: the attempt to “explain” rather than record, commercialisation, anti-Zionism, German greywashing, trivialisation by Hitler/Stalin equalisation, pro-Zionism. Serious, genuine writings such as Jerzyk are all too rare.”
Ahead of the paperback edition of Stolen Legacy going on sale in the UK next week, the Jewish Telegraph has published this 
In a glowing review of Anthony Rudolf’s book “
