A new historical study reveals that Germans who were expelled after the war from homes stolen from Jews received state compensation for ‘loss of property.’ The government often believed the false claims of the Germans over the Jewish heirs
In the 1980s the West German court found itself dealing with a hot potato. On paper, it was only a dispute over property, of the type that is common in every city and doesn’t make headlines. But behind the scenes lay a dramatic story: On one side was the family of Sigmund Felix, a Jew who was murdered in Treblinka. On the other side, the family of Helmut Bönsch, a Sudeten German who lived in a house stolen from Felix. The court was asked to decide which of them was the legal owner of the house in the city of Teplice in Czechoslovakia.
