Law Library

Ankerwycke releases updated ‘Stolen Legacy’ expanded paperback edition


In 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dina Gold marched into Krausenstrasse 17/18 and declared, “I’ve come to claim my family’s building.” And so began Gold’s quest for justice as she recounts in “Stolen Legacy: Theft and the Quest for Justice at Krausenstrasse 17/18, Berlin.”

In this book, considered the first detailing the successful claim of a building seized by the Nazis, author Gold delves deeper into archives across the world and makes shocking new discoveries. She includes, for instance, new details related to the Victoria Insurance Company, which had withdrawn the mortgage on her family’s stately six-story building in 1937 and was later part of a consortium insuring SS-owned slave labor workshops at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

The building, once the head office of one of Germany’s most successful Jewish fashion firms, was used during World War II by Hitler’s Reichsbahn, the railways which transported millions of Jews to their deaths. Today, it is a federal ministry. In a major victory, Gold persuaded the German government to put up a plaque in July 2016, acknowledging in both German and English the history of “The Wolff Building” as it was known.

A former BBC investigative reporter and television producer, Gold now lives in Washington, D.C., and is a senior editor at Moment magazine, co-chair of the Washington Jewish Film Festival and on the board of the Jewish Community Center.