BERLIN — One of Germany’s richest families, whose company owns a controlling interest in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Panera Bread, Pret a Manger and other well-known businesses, plans to donate millions to charity after learning about their ancestors’ enthusiastic support of Adolf Hitler and use of forced laborers under the Nazis, according to a report Sunday.
In a four-page report, the Bild newspaper reported that documents uncovered in Germany, France and the U.S. reveal that Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr. used Russian civilians and French POWs as forced laborers.
Family spokesman Peter Harf, who is one of two managing partners of the Reimann’s JAB Holding Company, said recent internal research confirmed Bild’s findings.
Peter Harf
“It is all correct,” he told the newspaper. “Reimann senior and Reimann junior were guilty … they belonged in jail.”
The father and son, who died in 1954 and 1984, did not talk about the Nazi era and the family had thought that all of the company’s connection to the Nazis had been revealed in a 1978 report, Harf said.
But after reading documents kept by the family, the younger generation began to ask questions and commissioned a University of Munich historian in 2014 to examine the Reimann history more thoroughly, Harf said.
The expert presented his preliminary findings to the Reimann children and grandchildren, as well as Hanf, several weeks ago, he said.
“We were all ashamed and turned as white as the wall,” he said. “There is nothing to gloss over. These crimes are disgusting.”
In addition al Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Pret a Manger, the Luxembourg-based JAB Holding Co. has controlling stakes in Keurig Green Mountain, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee Co., and other companies.
Many German companies have acknowledged using slave laborers during the Nazi era and have conducted their own independent investigations.
In 2000, the German government approved a 10 billion mark fund to provide compensation, with half the money coming from companies like Bayer, Siemens, Deutsche Bank, Daimler-Benz, Volkswagen and AEG.
Bild reported that even before the Nazis came to power, the Reimanns donated to the paramilitary SS.
During World War II, the company used forced laborers in its industrial chemicals company.
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