BERLIN: More than 70 years after the end of World World II, one of Germany’s richest families has admitted to its dark links with Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Spokesman of the Reimann family, Peter Harf, told Bild am Sonntag of plans to give $11.3 million to charity after learning of their elders’ support for the Nazis and their company’s use of forced labour during the war.

“Reimann senior and Reimann junior were guilty. The two entrepreneurs have both passed away, they belonged actually in prison,” said Harf. Albert Reimann senior died in 1954 and his son in 1984.

The company they left behind, JAB Holding, is today a behemoth that owns household brands ranging from Clearasil to Calgon. With wealth estimated at 33 billion euros, the Reimann family is believed to be Germany’s second richest.

Harf said the family began digging into their dark past in the 2000s, and in 2014 decided to commission a historian to produce a thorough study into their ancestors’ ties to Nazism.

Many of Germany’s biggest companies have over the decades confronted their Third Reich history.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2019