Germany Ordered to Pay £40 Million in Compensation to Jewish Family

Anti-semitic graffiti on a shop in Vienna

DAILY EXPRESS: GERMANY has been ordered to pay a Jewish family whose chain of department stores was seized by the Nazis €50 million (£40 million) in compensation.

The Schocken family lost several shops in the east of the country after Hitler embarked upon his "Aryanization" of German businesses in 1938.

A Berlin tribunal awarded the family €30 million (£24 million) - the value of the businesses owned by brothers Simon and Salman Schocken - plus another €20 million (£16 million) in interest.

The German state can appeal the decision at Lepzig's federal administrative court in Leipzig, the tribunal said in a statement.

Michael Newman, chief executive of the Association of Jewish Refugees said: "It shows that as we come up to 70 years since the end of the war there remains a number of significant travesties that are only now being settled."

Salman also founded Schocken Books in pre–war Berlin before moving the company to the United States and palestine. » | Benjamin Russell | Friday, June 13, 2014

German Jewish Leader: 'Jews Don't Need Any Tutoring in Democracy'

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Ahead of her 80th birthday, Charlotte Knobloch, one of Germany's most prominent Jewish leaders, talks with SPIEGEL about her relationship with the country, her outrage over the recent circumcision debate and the former housemaid in Bavaria who saved her from the Nazis.

Anyone who visits Charlotte Knobloch at the Jewish Center in Munich must first pass through security and be checked by guards. Since 1985, Knobloch has been the head of the Jewish community in Munich, and from 2006 to 2010, she was the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Next Monday, she will turn 80 years old. Knobloch says she doesn't want to be the focus of attention, but allowed herself to be persuaded to publish her memoirs, released in German on Monday by the DVA publishing house under the title "In Deutschland angekommen," or "Arriving in Germany." In an interview with SPIEGEL, she discusses her relationship with the country and her outrage over the recent debate over the legality of circumcision. » |Interview conducted by Susanne Beyer. Translated from the German by Paul Cohen. | Monday, October 22, 2012

Jewish Leader Lays into Germany: 'Do You Still Want Us Jews?'

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Charlotte Knobloch, the former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote a stinging editorial on Wednesday attacking the circumcision debate, calling talk of a Jewish revival a sham and wondering whether she was right to spend her adult life defending Germany.

Germany has been debating the rights and wrongs of circumcising infant boys ever since a German court ruled in June that the ritual, a core part of the Jewish religion, was unlawful.

Now Charlotte Knobloch, 79, the former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has had enough. In a furious editorial published on Wednesday in one of the country's top newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung, she said the controversy was calling the existence of Germany's small Jewish community into question and asked: "Do you still want us Jews?"

"For 60 years I have defended Germany as a survivor of the Shoah. Now I ask myself if that was right," she wrote. Knobloch is president of the Munich Jewish community and vice president of the World Jewish Congress.

The verdict by a court in Cologne, though extremely limited in its scope, was denounced by Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant leaders as a serious intrusion on religious freedom. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany risked becoming a "laughing stock" if Jews were not allowed to practice their rituals.

In July, the lower house of parliament passed a resolution to protect religious circumcision and the government has promised a new law to make clear that doctors or families will not be prosecuted for carrying out the procedure. » | cro | Wednesday, September 05, 2012