“Reimann Senior and Reimann Junior were guilty,” said Peter Harf, spokesman for one of the richest families in Germany, the Reimanns. “The two men have passed away, but they actually belonged in prison.”
The men were in charge of the family’s investments company JAB Holdings during the 1930s and 40s. The family hired a historian to look into their past and has discovered that the Reimanns were committed Nazis who relied heavily on forced labour during the Second World War. The details were first reported in the German newspaper Bild on Sunday.
Today, JAB Holdings owns stakes in well-known brands like Pret a Manger, Dr Pepper and Krispy Kreme.
Back then, it owned an industrial chemicals company in Germany. In 1941 it was deemed a “crucial” firm for the war, as it produced items for Germany’s weapons industry. By 1943 it was using 175 forced labourers, including Russian civilians and French prisoners of war.
Meanwhile, Albert Reimann Sr and his son Albert Reimann Jr were both anti-Semites and Hitler supporters.
Reimann Sr donated to the SS as early as 1931. In 1937, Reimann Jr wrote a letter to Heinrich Himmler describing them as a “purely Aryan family business”. Reimann Jr also wrote a letter to a local mayor complaining that the company’s forced labourers were not working hard enough.