Summons to Berlin: Nazi Theft and a Daughter’s Quest for Justice

Psychiatrist Intrator, the daughter of two German Jewish refugees, details her efforts to gain financial restitution for a large Berlin building, located at 16 Wallstrasse, that had once produced textiles. The Nazis stole it from her family in the 1930s. Her father had sought restitution for the building, but he had not been well enough to carry out his plan. On his deathbed, he posed two unsettling questions to the author: “Are you tough enough yet?” “Do they know who you are?” The author soon realized that his questions related to the building in Berlin and sought to learn more. The author outlines her personal reckoning with postwar German bureaucracy through the 1990s. Layered with pain and mystery, this book describes how Intrator, who grew up in the United States, worked with multiple lawyers and eventually an international investigative firm, to uncover the shocking history of the building at 16 Wallstrasse and what it became during the Nazi era.