Posted on 11/13/2020 10:42:44 PM PST by nickcarraway
Thomas Edelmann was born in Germany more than 25 years after the Allies defeated Hitler.
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.
Growing up, Edelmann had heard rumors about the family business and suspected it had previously been owned by Jews who were forced to sell to his paternal grandfather, Wilhelm.
In recent years, the father of two had begun to dabble in genealogy. He came across Nazi tax records confirming that the Jewish owner -- Benjamin Heidelberger -- was forced to sell the hardware store in Bad Mergentheim, southern Germany, in 1938 following the introduction of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws. These laws restricted Jews from the German economy by making it legal to confiscate their property.
Edelmann mentioned this in passing to a salesperson from MyHeritage, the online family tree building site, who had called to discuss his subscription.
Fascinated, the salesman relayed the tale to the company's research team.
Two weeks later, Edelmann received a call from MyHeritage. They had unearthed two important records: Heidelberger's 1942 naturalization record from British Mandatory Palestine, and his gravestone alongside his wife, Emma, in northern Israel. What's more, they had discovered that Heidelberger had a living granddaughter.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Ping
Sweet story and was great that he got in touch with the man. But, one should never apologize for the actions of another.
Soros was probably the store errand boy.
We do not inherit the sins of our fathers.
should not...
Suppose (this is hypothetical) my father stole a fortune from another family (suppose such theft was “legal” at the time, like it was under the Nazi regime). Later, I inherit the fortune he stole. I can happily keep the fortune and I don’t owe anything to the family that was victimized? I have no responsibility in the matter?
This is different from the generalized guilt the left pushes on some people because of their race or ethnicity.
For around 15 years, I lived in a village in the Pfalz region of Germany. One day, I discovered that up until the 1920s/1930s...a remarkable bit of the village (outskirts of Kaiserslautern) was made up of Jewish farms. The village next to it....same way.
Along about 1934 to 1939, virtually every single Jewish farm disappeared, and was taken over by non-Jews. This era isn’t discussed locally. Other than the two Jewish cemeteries in the two villages...there’s nothing left to indicate the make-up of the two towns.
There’s not a lot ever discussed over wealth exchange and how many tens of thousands of Germans ended up in the wealth re-distribution game.
So did the crime continue to this day, by the family stolen from never being compensated?
Well, I actually read the entire article. They had to sell at a loss, but they lived, thanks to the Nazi buyer?
It was not taken from him, he was forced to sell. Maybe forced wasnt the issue he sold to get away, just saying. Forced could have been added to the story.
We can expect many more “feel good” stories like this about “righting past wrongs.”
Do you have real property or a business that has been in your family for generations? They are coming for it...and soon.
“You didn’t build this.”
Perfect story to support the meme that us mean-ass Crackers owe reparations to every single black/brown person for what our great-great-great grandparents MIGHT have done to their great-great-great grandparents.
“us mean-ass Crackers owe reparations to every single black/brown person for what our great-great-great grandparents MIGHT have done to their great-great-great grandparents.”
Not me....my peeps didn’t get here from Ireland until 1856, and were too dirt poor to own any slaves, at the very least. So i owe nothing.
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That’s an interesting phenomena, of which I more than passing familiarity. One of the people I was in flight school in the IDF was the grandson of a notorious Nazi.
His parents (who were kids in the War — his father in the Hitler youth) both underwent an Orthodox conversion. He was born a couple decades later in Israel.
Anyway, my friend went to work for the Mossad and became quite famous, in a small way. Wrote a book.
Handy to have a blue-eyed-blond-hair Goyishe Orthodox Jew who spoke flawless Berlin-accented German, in that line of work.
Not really. In this case, there were records, and it was up to the current owner as to how he would handle it which is how it should be. This was about actual, traceable property and without government involvement.
When you’re talking about reparations for the enslavement of people long dead, there is no possible way to restore any part of the “property” to their descendants.
Are you implying that Americans whose ancestors did own slaves now owe something?
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