German Family That Owns Krispy Kreme Admits It Profited From Nazi Ties

 Brigit Katz - Smithsonian

In light of the revelations about their family’s Nazi past, the Reimanns plan to donate $11 million to an as-yet-unspecified charity, according to Deutsche Welle.

"One of the wealthiest families in Germany, which owns controlling stakes in such companies as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Panera Bread and Peet’s Coffee, has admitted that it profited from forced labor during the Second World War. What’s more, reports Katrin Bennhold of the New York Times, recent revelations indicate that the two men who ran the family business in the 1930s and '40s—Albert Reimann Sr. and his son Albert Reimann Jr.—actively participated in the abuse of their workers.

"The German tabloid Bild broke the news of the Reimann family’s troubling past over the weekend, when it published a story based on an interim report delivered earlier this year by Paul Erker, an economic historian at the University of Munich, who was hired by the Reimanns to investigate the family’s Nazi ties. That investigation has been ongoing for more than four years, and is still not complete. But Peter Harf, the family’s spokesman and a managing partner of JAB Holding Company, which the Reimanns control, did not deny Bild’s account.

" 'Reimann Sr. and Reimann Jr. were guilty,” he told the publication, according to Deutsche Welle. “The two businessmen have passed away, but they actually belonged in prison.”

"The report found that Reimann Sr. and Reimann Jr. were fervent anti-Semites and enthusiastic Nazi supporters, with the elder Reimann donating to the SS as early as 1931, two years before Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. During WWII, their industrial chemicals factory in southern Germany was powered by forced laborers:" . . .

“We were ashamed and white as sheets,” Harf told Bild, as Deutsche Welle reports. “There is nothing to gloss over. These crimes are disgusting.”

Will those of Hamas ever feel similar grief over what they did to Jews over the years, particularly on Oct 7th and in the tunnels below Gaza? TD

German Firms that Used Slave Labor During Nazi Era;  (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)    "The following list, compiled by the American Jewish Committee (except for Hugo Boss, Volkswagen, and Bahlsen), is composed of companies that requisitioned forced and slave labor during the Holocaust as well as modern companies with a combination of highly similar names, locations or products. There is not necessarily any legal connection between the historical and actual lists of companies, but research shows that all of these companies have a high probability of historical and/or financial links.

"This list is meant as a public service. The intention is neither to stigmatize nor to judge companies or individuals but to demonstrate the wide scope of the usage of forced laborers and slave laborers by all branches of German industry during the Nazi era. At least 47 of the companies on the original list have voluntarily joined the slave labor compensation fund."