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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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News

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Events

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Media

Author Archive

“Wir Wollen Raus!” (“We Want Out!”)

Written by Dina Gold on June 30, 2017. Posted in Media

The summer edition of B’nai B’rith magazine contains a lengthy article by me on the story of “Stolen Legacy.”

Some interesting points at the end in the Comments section. I have met so many people who say, as one readers does, that their parents wanted nothing to do with their past after the war. That sentiment echoes with me – my mother felt the same way.

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Relatively Speaking

Written by Dina Gold on May 2, 2017. Posted in News

Marla Allard, host of Maryland Public TV program “Relatively Speaking,” interviewed me about “Stolen Legacy.”

Here we are on set during the recording.

Sun Sentinel

Written by Dina Gold on April 17, 2017. Posted in Media

“Event had major effect on people.”

That’s how Sergio Carmona, reporting in the Sun Sentinel, described the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s recent presentations in South Florida.

The program, entitled: “Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice,” examined “… the ongoing challenges of restitution and the museum’s resources, including the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database and the International Tracing Service archive, that individuals have used to research the fate of family members and to build legal cases.”

Many in the audience described what they learnt as both “fascinating and meaningful.”

And I am still hoping that someone will eventually contact me to say they once knew Joseph Rosner or his wife Sarah.

Stolen Legacy in Florida

Written by Dina Gold on March 18, 2017. Posted in News

It was a wonderful trip with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to three different cities in southern Florida – Sarasota, North Miami Beach and Boca Raton.

Two USHMM experts – Suzanne Brown-Fleming and Diane Afoumado – were with me speaking about the archives held at both the Museum in Washington DC and the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolson.

There was intense interest in the subject, with audiences keen to learn how to research their own family histories and seek information which might help them register claims on their own families’ Nazi stolen property across eastern Europe.

NPR recorded an interview with Diane Afoumado, Chief of Research and Reference at the Museum about resources available to help. There is still so much work to be done – about 80% of Jewish assets stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators during WWII have not been recovered.

Arizona Jewish Post

Written by Dina Gold on March 18, 2017. Posted in Media

The organizers of the Shaol & Louis Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series, offered by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona, were kind enough to invite me. The event, held at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on March 6, was covered by the Arizona Jewish Post with a lovely article.