German billionaire family to donate $11M over Nazi past

One of Germany's richest families, whose company, JAB Holding Co., owns controlling interest in Krispy Kreme, Dr. Pepper, Panera Bread and other well-known businesses, plans to donate millions to charity after learning about their ancestors' avowed support of Adolf Hitler and use of forced labor in their factories under the Nazis, according to Bild am Sonntag report.

"We were ashamed and white as sheets. There is nothing to gloss over. These crimes are disgusting." Peter Harf, the family's spokesman said.

In the four-page report, the Bild newspaper which focused on Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr., the ancestors of the Reimann family, reported that Russian civilians and French prisoners of war were exploited as forced laborers in the family's factories and private villas; The two men were anti-Semites and avowed supporters of Adolf Hitler; Reimann Sr. donated to Hitler's paramilitary SS force as early as 1931; Reimann Jr. once complained in a letter to the Ludwigshafen mayor that the French POWs weren't working hard enough.

"Reimann Sr. and Reimann Jr. were guilty. The two businessmen have passed away, but they actually belonged in prison," Harf told Bild.

The father and son, who died in 1954 and 1984, did not talk about the Nazi era and the family had thought that all of the company's connection to the Nazis had been revealed in a 1978 report, Harf said.

But after reading documents kept by the family, the younger generation began to ask questions and commissioned a University of Munich historian in 2014 to examine the Reimann history more thoroughly, Harf said.

The expert presented his preliminary results to the Reimann children and grandchildren, as well as Hanf several weeks ago, he and the family "were speechless," he said.

Harf said the family would donate 10 million euros (11.3 million U.S. dollars) to a not-yet-determined charity as a gesture, and once the historian's report is complete, it would be released to the public.

"The whole truth must be put on the table," he said.