A German man, whose grandfather took away the store of a Jewish person, apologised to the victim’s granddaughter years later after the incident. The man wrote a letter to the granddaughter of the Jewish man and said that he believes that his family supported the injustices experienced by her grandparents. He said that he wanted to take the responsibility for getting in touch with her and listen to her.
As per a CNN report, while he was growing up, Thomas Edelmann suspected that his family business was previously owned by someone in the Jewish community. Thomas was born 25 years after the Second World War got over. The war ended soon after the defeat and suicide of German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Thomas did not know much about the store but recently discovered that Benjamin Heidelberger — a Jewish man — was forced to sell his store in 1938 after the introduction of Nuremberg laws which were anti-Semitic in nature. Under the discriminatory and oppressive laws, it was legal to confiscate the properties of Jewish Germans.
The store is located in Southern Germany’s Bad Mergentheim. The 49-year-old businessperson received a call from an online genealogy platform MyHeritage. While discussing his subscription,
Thomas mentioned this to the salesperson who then shared this story with the research team of his company.
MyHeritage then called back Thomas and informed him that Benjamin’s 1942 naturalization records were found from British Mandatory Palestine. Graves of him and his wife were also found in Israel. They also informed him that Benjamin has an 83-year-old granddaughter named Hanna Ehrenreich.
Hanna, who is a retired teacher living in Israel, has a black-and-white picture of this store in her home. After Thomas’ wrote a letter to Hanna, they spoke over the call for 90 minutes. Speaking to CNN, Hanna said, “Thomas wanted to hear how we had been. I said we were happy, and we have had a good life.”
Hanna had told Thomas that the money from selling the shop was used by her grandparents to flee to Palestine.
When his parents divorced, Thomas lost touch with his father and does not have any stake in the building that was previously owned by Benjamin. The Jewish man had written in his diary that Thomas’ grandfather Wilhelm Edelmann (a member of the Nazi party) asked Benjamin to leave Germany as soon as possible because there were plans against Jewish people.
As per Thomas, it was important to come to terms with the past as it is an important lesson for his children.