“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.”
Delivering this term’s lecture today as part of the Ging Wong Seminar Series at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University.
The purpose of this lecture series is to give graduate students an insight into the world of work – which they are soon to enter. I was asked to speak about my time at the college, what the experience had taught me, my career after leaving Oxford, any advice I might be able to offer about pursuing jobs in journalism and what had prompted me to write a book.
The University of Mannheim has posted on the Dr. Kurt-Hamann Foundation website its recognition of the role of “Stolen Legacy” in leading to the proposed change of name.
It was another great turnout at the Mandel JCC for the second talk on the Destruction of the Jewish German Fashion Industry.
This was our second lecture for the Speaker Series of The Gross Family Center for the Study of Antisemitism and the Holocaust.
Two local sheriffs joined me, Uwe Westphal and Lauren Gross.
The talk was introduced by Annette Klein, German Consul General for Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Based in Miami she had come especially in order to speak to the large audience of 376 people in the tightly packed hall.
The Times of Israel has published an article by me about the decision of Mannheim University to rename the Dr. Kurt-Hamann Foundation. The name change to “Foundation for the Promotion of Insurance Science at the University of Mannheim” will become final when approved by the regional government in nearby Karlsruhe, to which the paperwork has been sent.
This decision was prompted following my discovery of information relating to the activities of Dr. Hamann, the former head of the Victoria Insurance Company, during the Third Reich.
Past president of the university, Professor Dr. Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden has written to me saying:
I am most grateful to you for all the work you have done to shed light and make progress on the Kurt-Hamann Foundation. Without you, I do not think that the University would have known what it knows today and would have been able to act the way it has in the last few years. The whole university owes you a debt of gratitude.
Delivering this term’s lecture today as part of the Ging Wong Seminar Series at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University.
