A court in Berlin recently awarded the heirs of a Jewish family in compensation for the seizure of Schocken AG, a German department-store chain, by the Nazis. In an emailed statement by court spokesman Stephan Groscurth sent today, he confirmed that the German government has been given the order of putting up additional amount of $68 million for the assets seized by the Nazis. The Schocken family, who has earlier received 15 million euros for a building in Chemnitz, are currently living in Israel and the US, Groscurth added.
Bloomberg said that Salman Schocken along with his brother Simon, established the department-store chain. The brothers also established a publishing house in Germany in 1931, which started selling in the US in 1945 under the trade name Schocken Books. The Nazis had seized the stores in 1938.
Salman also purchased the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 1939, which was later on run by his son, Gershom, until 1990. Haaretz's current publisher, Amos Schocken, is among the heirs.
Lawyer Bernd-Wilhelm Schmitz for the Schocken family said, "You find us very happy to finally have the Jewish victims compensated after almost a quarter of a century of legal battles. This hasn't been a case like any other, moving us very much on a personal level as well."
Bloomberg said Schmitz has started to work for the Jewish family back in 1990 when he had individual pieces of real estate belonging to the Schockens returned. Under a 1994 law regulating compensation for victims of the Nazis, Schmitz had started to pursue the claim for the lost value of the Schocken department store chain. The news agency said that the efforts had taken two decades to reach the concluding decision that was disclosed today.
Spokeswoman Ingeburg Gruening for the German Finance Ministry said that the government will be reviewing the written judgement once it is available and will be exploring the option on whether to pursue an appeal.
