The multi-millionaire heiress of a German biscuit company has apologised after appearing to downplay the businesses’ use of slave labour during the Nazi era.

Verena Bahlsen, the 25 year old great-granddaughter of Hermann Bahlsen, the creator of Choco Leibniz biscuits, told Germany’s Bild newspaper that the company “did nothing wrong…We paid the forced labourers as much as the Germans and treated them well. We did nothing wrong.”

The company, which now sells its products in more than 80 countries around the world, benefitted from the slave labour of hundreds of women who were forcibly taken from their homes in Ukraine, separated from their families and sent by cattle car to the Bahlsen factory near Hanover.

German academics disputed Ms Bahlsen’s remarks.

Ulrich Herbert, professor of history at the University of Freiburg, told Zeit Online that the idea that the company paid slave labourers the same as German workers “was highly doubtful”, given Nazi laws regarding forced labour.

Similarly, Professor Manfred Grieger, an expert on Nazi forced labour, told Bild that "anyone who only uses wage issues for evaluation ignores the fact that forced labourers from Eastern Europe had to live in barracks behind barbed wire.”

Subsequently, Ms Bahlsen said she wanted to “expressly apologise to all those whose feelings I have hurt”, adding that “nothing could be further from me than to downplay National Socialism and its consequences.”

The company, which has annual sales in the region of £450 million, also released a statement in the wake of Ms Bahlsen’s comments, saying it was “aware of the great suffering and injustice that forced labourers as well as many other people had experienced” and that it recognised “its historical and moral responsibility."

Around 26 million people, including Jews, Roma and people of Slavic origin, were used by the Nazis as slave labourers.