Nathan Israel Department Store

Nazi SA paramilitaries outside the store on April 1, 1933, holding signs: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" (Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!)[3]

At 10 a.m. on 1 April 1933, Nazi SA paramilitaries (Sturmabteilung) positioned themselves outside Jewish-owned businesses all over Germany to deter customers. Stormtroopers stood next to the main doors of the department store on Alexanderplatz, holding placards with the words: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews" (Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!).[3]

The building was ransacked and set on fire during the Kristallnacht on 10 November 1938, during which thousands of Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked or set alight, though firemen were able to put out the blaze in this department store.[4] Later that year the company was handed over by the Nazis to the non-Jewish Emil Köster AG, and in 1939 it reopened as Das Haus im Zentrum, its "Aryanization" complete, according to the Israel family's papers.[1] The family helped most of the store's Jewish employees, especially their children, leave Germany before the war began.[3]

The home of Richard Israel, son of Moritz Israel, a previous partner in the store, was also taken by the Nazis. Schloss Schulzendorf was in East Berlin after World War II but in 1993 it was repossessed by the German government and returned to descendants of the Israel family.[5]

Following the takeover of the store, Wilfrid Israel, who had run the business with his brother, emigrated to England, where he took up a research position at Balliol College, Oxford. From there, he tried to establish contact with the German underground through Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's foreign minister, and organized ship transports for Jewish children escaping from Europe. He died in 1943 along with the actor Leslie Howard, when their civilian plane BOAC Flight 777 was shot down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay.[1]

The store was very badly damaged during the bombing of Berlin in World War II, and its ruins were removed in the 1950s.[1]

The store was situated in what became East Berlin, East Germany, a country which did not provide reparations to Jews for Nazi-era forced take-overs of their businesses. Thus the Israel family, the previous owners, began to receive compensation for their financial losses only after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification.[1]

• Dessa, A Tribute to Kaufhaus N. Israel 1815-1939, Switzerland: Deborah Petroz-Abeles, 2003. ISBN 2-940223-03-3
• Angelina Palmén, "Berlin Jews, Business, and Bourgeois Feminism 1890-1914: Commerce and the Making of a Cultural Moment?". Taylor & Francis Online. 16 December 2022.
• Angelina Palmén, "Modern Confections: Jews, New Women, and the Business of Fashion in Imperial Berlin". Taylor & Francis Online. 8 December 2022.

52.517636°N 13.408731°E / 52.517636; 13.408731