A MOTHER and her son have had their home taken away from them after it was found to have been stolen by the Nazis.
Gabriele Lieske grew up at the home in in Wandlitz in Brandenberg, cared for her parents there, and raised her son Thomas there.
At 85 years old, she received the devastating news that the ownership of her house no longer lies with her or any of her family members. This news has left her feeling distraught to the point where she expressed that she would prefer death over having to move.
The property has been determined to now belong to the Jewish Claims Conference. This organization was established in 1951 to assist Holocaust and Nazi victims in obtaining compensation.
It was discovered that Lieske’s grandfather had bought the house from a real estate agent in 1939.
But, it had belonged to two Jewish women Helene Lindenbaum and Alice Donat who were forced to sell their property by the Nazis.
The original intention for the house was to operate as a holiday home for Jewish children. However, these plans were cut short during the years 1943-1944, when the children were forcibly taken by Adolf Hitler’s regime and later perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
There are no known descendants of either woman and in place of them, the JCC brought forward a claim to the property in 2015.
The group made up of 23 Jewish organisations is now the legal successor of Donat and Lindenbaum, leaving Gabriele and her 61-year-old son distraught.
Gabriele told local media outlet Bild: “I have lived here for 82 years, cared for my father and my sick mother. The house is my life.
“It’s like a nightmare. I would rather die than move out of here.”
“We don’t have anywhere else to go, we’ve lost everything,” her son added.
Prior to 2015, the JCC had filed other claims for the property to be returned – once in 1992 and again in 1998.
Thomas Lieske believes that had they been aware of these attempts, he and his mother would not be stuck in the situation they find themselves in now.
“We didn’t know anything about that. The Barnim office should have informed us that there were claims on the house,” he said.
“Then we could have at least bought it back for the market value at the time. That would have been about 400,000 D-Marks (£166,000)
“Now it’s 1.5 million Euros (£1.2 million) We can’t do that.”
The family also noted that in 1994, the property was transferred from Luise Moegeling to her daughter Gabriele, two years after the first JCC claim was filed.
“The office should have informed us of the possible claims there too. They didn’t do that,” Thomas said.
The Barnim district had the transfer deed certified by a notary and nothing was said about any other claims to the home.
But, they will not be forced to leave the property despite no longer having a right to it.
A spokesperson for the JCC told the outlet that Gabriele has a “lifelong right of residence in the single-family home” as offered by the organization during the dispute.
This “will continue to exist even after the property has been returned,” the spokesperson explained.
“The Claims Conference has committed to selling returned assets in order to use the proceeds to support impoverished and sick survivors of the Shoah around the world.”
Despite this, Gabriele’s lawyer is threatening to take the case to the Federal Constitutional Court, according to Bild.
