“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.”
A very nice article in today’s Chicago Tribune entitled “ABA’s new publishing line promises compelling legal tales.” The recently launched trade imprint, Ankerwycke, … hopes to rule the legal-niche corner of publishing. My editor, Jon Malysiak, director of Ankerwycke, explains that all the books …feature a legal tie, whether it’s fiction or whether it’s nonfiction.
Stolen Legacy fits well into this niche market. And here’s why:
The imprint also allows authors to dig into the complexity of the law, where other publishers might encourage writers to soft-pedal the legal details.
Without a doubt, I think if I’d gone anywhere else they would have said, ‘Oh, we want a lot of gushing and emotion, said Dina Gold, author of “Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice at Krausenstrasse 17/18, Berlin.”
And as the Chicago Tribune rightly reports: Instead, she was able to include family history while also delving into the German legal system in her book, which recounts efforts to reclaim her family’s building in Berlin, lost when they were forced to flee during World War II.
The Washington Jewish Week has a feature about “Stolen Legacy” this week entitled “Reclaiming Krausenstrasse 17/18.” It is an adaptation of sections of the book.
Last week “Moment” editor, Nadine Epstein, was in Berlin. She took the opportunity to pay a visit to the former Wolff family building – once the headquarters of a thriving international fur business.
And luckily she had a copy of the May/June edition of the magazine with her. Holding open the page where my article about “Stolen Legacy” begins, she could compare the glossy full page picture of the property with the building she was now in front of.
She goes on to say “… what makes this book unique is what else Gold uncovered. For the family was robbed of the building by one of Germany’s top insurance companies, the Victoria, which transferred its ownership to the Nazi railway system that transported millions of Jews – including Gold’s relatives – to death camps. And she unearthed other evidence to suggest that, even today, Germany has failed to expunge certain links to its terrible history.”
