'I'm being forced to give up £1.2m family home as it was stolen by Nazis - I'd rather die'
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A mum and son have been forced to give up their stunning home that three generations of their family have lived in after it was discovered that it had been stolen by Nazis. 85-year-old Gabriele Lieske grew up in the £1.2 million home in Wandlitz, Brandenberg, and cared for her parents there as well as raising her son Thomas there. But now, the pensioner has been told that the house no longer belongs to her or any of her family members.
Gabriele is distarught at the turn of events, saying she would "rather die than move" from her family home. It comes after a ruling was made saying the property belongs to the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), an organisation formed in 1951 to give compensation to victims of the Holocaust and Nazis.
It was uncovered that Gabriele's grandfather had bought the house in 1939 from a real estate agent, but prior to that it had belonged to two Jewish women. Helene Lindenbaum and Alice Donat were forced to sell their property by the Nazis. They had planned to run a holiday home for Jewish children until they were deported by Hitler's regime between 1943 to 1944 before they were brutally executed at Auschwitz concentration camp. Neither woman has any known descendants, and so in the place of a living relative, the claim was brought forward by the JCC in 2015.
The group, made up of 23 Jewish organisations, is now the women's legal successor, leaving Gabriele and her 61-year-old son devastated. Speaking to German outlet Bild, she said: "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.".
