“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.”
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.”
To coincide with the paperback edition’s U.S. launch this week, The Observer published an article offering a taste of some of the new material. Here’s the headline and opening sentence:
Family’s quest for truth reveals top insurer’s link to SS death camps
Dina Gold researched her family’s Berlin past – and uncovered a dark secret dating from the Nazi era.
A lovely review by Christine Langteau in the August edition of the Reporter, the newspaper of the LAPA.
Ms. Langteau is clearly well aware that there is much unfinished business where Nazi stolen property is concerned. She writes:
Gold’s journalist background enables her to provide a rich review of a prominent family before World War 2, the building it owned, and the ordeal it took to get it back. Her detailed and extensive coverage of the trail leading to recovery comments on the suffering of the Jewish people under the hands of the Nazis. Stolen Legacy is another important story illuminating the extent of the theft of extraordinary property.
Ahead of the paperback edition of Stolen Legacy going on sale in the UK next week, the Jewish Telegraph has published this feature.
In a glowing review of Anthony Rudolf’s book “
To coincide with the paperback edition’s U.S. launch this week, The Observer published an 
A lovely review by Christine Langteau in the August edition of the Reporter, the newspaper of the LAPA.
Ms. Langteau is clearly well aware that there is much unfinished business where Nazi stolen property is concerned. She writes:
This morning I was interviewed by Ellen Fanning for “
