The Nazi secret of the second richest family in Germany

BERLIN-. The second richest family of

Germany

He built his multi-million dollar fortune with Krispy Kreme donuts, Jimmy Choo shoes and Calvin Klein perfumes. And with forced labor during the Nazi period.

The Reimann family, which controls the consumer goods group JAB Holding Company, has asked a historian to review the activities of the company during the 12 years of the Third Reich.

The first revelations of this investigation, which occur 74 years after the Second World War, are condemnatory.

Albert Reimann Sr. and his son, Albert Reimann Jr., who led the company in the thirties and forties, were anti-Semites and enthusiastic supporters of Hitler; they allowed the forced labor of people in the plant of industrial chemicals of southern Germany and at home.

Workers in Eastern Europe were forced to line up naked in front of the factory barracks. Those who refused were badually abused. Employees were beaten and kicked, including the Russian woman who cleaned the house of the Reimann family.

The news of the dark history of the family was first published by the tabloid Bild on March 24th. Peter Harf, spokesman for the family and one of the two managing directors of JAB Holding, said the findings of the committed historian "fit in perfectly" with what the family suspected.

"Reimman's father and son were guilty," said Harf. "They should be in jail."

The exploitation of people by forced labor was common in Germany during the war, while there was a shortage of manpower. About 12 million more people from over a dozen European countries were kidnapped by the Nazis and forced to work to support Germany 's war efforts. At its peak, forced labor accounted for 20% of all workers in Germany.

Farms and industrial complexes relevant to the war campaign were priorities for the government office that was distributing the workers: men and women abducted from their homes in Nazi-controlled territories or prisoners of war.

The case of the Reimann is distinguished above all by the brutality so detailed in the documents and by the fact that father and son were directly involved in the violence, according to Andreas Wirsching, director of the Leibniz Institute of History contemporary, based in Munich.

"It was very common for companies to use forced labor, but it's not so common for a company executive to be in direct physical contact with these people," Wirsching said.

Albert Reimann Sr., who died in 1954, and Reimann Jr., who died in 1984, reportedly never spoke of the Nazi era after the war. It was only in the mid-2000s that the youngest generation of the family began to examine the company's old documents and find documents suggesting that the father and grandfather had been committed Nazis.

In 2014, the family asked Paul Erker, historian of economics at the University of Munich, to document this possible story. Erker continues his research and what we know until now is a first cut of what he has presented.

"We are stunned," said Harf. "It bothers us and makes us pale."

Harf said the Erker report will be completed the following year and that they will make it public. The family plans to donate 10 million euros ($ 11.3 million) to a charity. They still do not identify which one.

In 2000, the German government had already created a fund of 10 billion DM, now 5 billion euros, to compensate those who were forced to work. Half of the money comes from companies such as Siemens, Deutsche Bank, Daimler and Volkswagen.

The list of recognized German companies that have made profits with forced labor and other crimes of the Nazi era is long and each company took several decades to disclose known cases.

Daimler was one of the first, in the eighties. The Mercedes maker used nearly 40,000 workers as forced labor towards the end of the war. Volkswagen used about 12,000 people, including concentration camp prisoners who were on a site dedicated to supplying the company. Hugo Boss realized the black uniforms of the police and the SS security agency. Deutsche Bank and several other companies made profits by seizing the badets of the Jewish people.

The Reimanns made a fortune with a chemical company that became Reckitt Benckiser, the $ 58 billion consumer products giant, whose brands include Lysol. They then used some of this wealth to create JAB, a conglomerate that has become one of the biggest consumer companies with the purchase of other companies.

JAB has spent billions of dollars competing with Starbucks or Nestle when acquiring channels such as Peet's Coffee & Tea, Krispy Kreme or Ready To Eat.

He also controls the Coty cosmetics company, owns the Calvin Klein fragrances and previously had luxury fashion brands such as Jimmy Choo.

Last year, it was estimated that Reimann's fortune would be about 33,000 million euros, according to the director of the financial publication Magazin. Appears in second place in several lists of the richest families in Germany.

On the basis of what has been discovered so far, the historian Wirsching suggested that the Reimann were not only opportunists of the Third Reich, but also true followers of the National Socialist Party. The father and son joined the ranks of the party and donated to the SS before Hitler took the country. In July 1937, Albert Reimann Jr. wrote a letter to SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who oversaw and promoted the Holocaust.

"We are a fully Aryan family business for over a hundred years," says Riemann's son. "The owners are unconditional supporters of racial theory."

In 1943, a total of 175 company employees – a third of the total payroll – were subjected to forced labor, according to the report published on March 24 by Bild. In addition to the Russians and East Europeans, the Reimanns use French prisoners of war.

At the end of the Second World War, the Allies investigated the Reimann. Bild's report states that France has banned them from continuing their commercial activities, but that the Americans have overruled that decision.

The New York Times