Benjamin Heidelberger was forced to sell his store in Bad Mergentheim, southern Germany. Yet last year, following an unexpected marketing call, the 49-year-old businessman contacted a retired teacher in Israel to apologize for the actions of the grandfather he never met.
Hanna Ehrenreich, an 83-year-old retired teacher, knew all about the store that came to be known as Willi Edelmann. So much so, that a black-and-white picture of it -- bearing the earlier name of her grandfather -- still adorns the walls of her home in Israel. He wrote: "I believe that if my family supported the injustice your grandparents experienced, it is our duty to take this into account and take over responsibility at least in getting in touch with you to listen and learn. As I am part of the Edelmann family I want to take the first step and listen to you.
Ehrenreich told Edelmann that Benjamin Heidelberger and his wife, Emma -- her paternal grandparents -- used the money from the forced sale of their shop to flee to Palestine in 1938, just weeks before the horrific events of Kristallnacht, the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that took place on November 9 and 10.
"Under different circumstances, I could have sold it for 40,000. But back then many Jewish businesses in Bad Mergentheim were sold under value," he explained.
What a heartwarming story! Horrors of the last Great War committed by Nazis are still haunting those who didn’t even suffer it in first person yet are somehow related to it!
The good man who feels shame for family past evils is a good man.
I've yet to see a descendant of Jews apologise to anyone for generations of theft, corruption of governments, the transatlantic slave trade, or anything else.
I’m not supporting what the Nazis did but a large amount of Nazi soldiers were forced to join the military or else there families would be executed along with them.