A pensioner and her son have been told they must give up their house after a court ruled that a Holocaust restitution organisation are the rightful owners
January 31, 2024 10:05
ByRob Hyde, in Berlin
V A German pensioner and her son fear they will soon be evicted from their home because it belonged to Jewish owners before the Second World War.
Gabriele Lieske, 83, who lives in Wandlitz, near Berlin, says she has been informed that the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), a New York-based nonprofit organisation supporting Holocaust survivors, now owns the property her family has lived in for generations.
Before the war, it was owned by two Jewish women, Alice Donat and Helene Lindenbaum, who operated a children’s home in the building near Lake Wandlitz.
The Lieske family’s great-grandfather, textile manufacturer Felix Moegelin, bought the plot from them in 1939 for 21,500 Reichsmarks, a transaction considered a “forced sale” under Nazi policies that compelled Jews to liquidate their assets.
Alice Donat and Helene Lindenbaum were sent to Auschwitz and murdered in 1943 and 1944.
The property, in what became East Germany after the war, then changed hands from one generation to the next.
While restitution of Jewish-owned properties was addressed in West Germany shortly after the war, the process was delayed in East Germany until reunification in 1990. The Claims Conference, established in 1951, was designated as the legal successor to recover Jewish properties with no heirs.
Lieske says that as she and her son Thomas, 59, cannot afford to pay the JCC to be allowed to live in part of the house, they will soon be forced out.
Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, told the JC the Lieske family had rejected a proposal that would have allowed them to stay in the house until Gabriele’s death.
“The Lieske family is being asked to vacate the Donat/Lindenbaum home because the house belonged to Jews who were forced to sell their home during the Holocaust,” he said.
“The restitution process for homes that were confiscated or bought under a forced sale started in 1990; it is a legal principle from the immediate post-War period. It is what the German parliament enacted in 1990 and it is German law for how to address Holocaust-era forced sales . Where, as here, an Aryaniser took over Jewish property, it does not get passed to the heirs of the Aryaniser. The Lieske family was notified by the German Government nearly 10 years ago. In addition, there was a proposal by the judge that would have allowed the grandmother [Gabriele Lieske] to remain in the Donat/Lindenbaum home until she passed on, but the family rejected the proposal.
“Funds recovered from such properties are used primarily for services for poor Holocaust elderly survivors, particularly for critically needed food, medicine and home care.”
Thomas Lieske told the JC he was outraged that his family are receiving no financial or legal support from the German state.
“The situation is awful, and we had hoped in good faith that the German state would support us here, but no, you’re just abandoned in Germany,” he said.
“I’m a welfare recipient, and I have to pay the court costs myself because I have no legal insurance. So far it’s €30,000 [£25,610] and I earn very little money, and so I’ll be completely broke.”
The family were unaware of any problems until September 2015 when they received a letter from the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, a division of the Ministry of Finance. It informed them their property was to be “transferred back” to the “applicant”, identified as the JCC.
Thomas Lieske says it is not right that he and his mother are being blamed for something neither of them had a part in.
“I was born in 1964 and so we were raised as citizens of the German Democratic Republic.
“We just didn’t know anything about all of these things like Nazis seizing Jewish property — I mean, we had Jewish relatives.
“I’m not at all on the right or the left politically, I’m just a completely normal citizen. We always kept quiet and did our thing.
“So, I have no connection at all to what happened then. It’s all very sad, of course, without question, it’s a catastrophe what Germany did as a Nazi society, but I’m now being blamed for it and I have nothing to do with it at all.”
The JCC has processed thousands of claims and accumulated approximately €2.4 billion through its activities in East Germany.
But while this property restitution process has provided closure for many survivors and their families, it has created difficulties for families like the Lieskes who have lived on these properties for generations.
The tremendous increase in property values over the years has made it impossible for them to buy back the land, leaving them facing the prospect of losing their home.
The Lieskes have appealed to the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, in the hope that a compromise can be reached.
Gabriele Lieske said she is struggling to cope with the stress of knowing what is going to happen. “I don’t know what we are expected to do now. We got the news so late. I can’t pay what is being asked, and I’m a pensioner and old so how can I go and earn the money to pay it? I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t how you are expected to deal with all this.”