A German family has been evicted from their home after a court ruled that the property must be returned to a Jewish organisation because the current owner’s ancestors had purchased it from an estate agent after the Jewish owners were forced to sell it to the Nazi regime in the 1930s.
Both of the women owners died in a concentration camp and as a result had no descendants or anything as that could be found.
After the war, many restitution claims in West Germany were settled but the current claim involves a property that was owned by two Jewish sisters who planned to build a children’s home on the property in Wandlitz, a municipality in the state of Brandenburg.
It was originally in East Germany before reunification and as a result, was located in a place where such claims were rarely dealt with.
The delayed decision about the property was made because the two sisters had no descendants after their deaths but a Jewish organisation bought a claim in 2015 in place of the fact that there were no living relatives of the original owners.
The Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), an association of 23 Jewish organisations, has now been ruled as the legal successor of Alice Donat and Helene Lindenbaum who were murdered in Auschwitz.
The Nazi state had expropriated the area from the two women who had purchased the property in 1932 to build a holiday home for Jewish children.
The grandfather of the current owner had bought it from a real estate agent in 1939.
Now according to the German court ruling, the property must go to the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) and 85-year-old Gabriele Lieske and her son Thomas, 61, have been told to leave.
Speaking to local media, the woman said: “I have spent my whole life in the house and cared for my parents.”
And her son said: “We don’t have anywhere else to go, with lost everything.”
The Jewish Claims Conference representative in Germany, Rudiger Mahlo, said that the granddaughter of the house buyer had already been offered a lifelong right of residence.
This offer “remains in place even after the retransfer”.
The Jewish Claims Conference was founded in New York in 1951 and represents compensation claims of Jewish victims of the Nazis and Holocaust survivors. In 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany recognised the JCC as a negotiating partner for compensation payments and restitution claims.
The JCC says it will use the funds to provide financial support to Holocaust survivors.
In 2024, around USD 535 million went to around 115,000 survivors in over 80 countries, the JCC writes on its website.
To find out more about the author, editor or agency that supplied this story – please click below. Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub-Editor: Simona Kitanovska, Agency: Newsflash
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