Multinational corporations have come to light in unsettling detail, their global concerns revealed with spooky accuracy; a familiar history can enter in, sneakily discovered but leaving a haunting trace behind.
A disturbing past is nestled within the vast conglomerate run by JAB Holdings, which encompasses the time tested brands of Krispy Kreme, among many others, and is closely related to the Reimann family and its involvement with Nazi activity.
Revealing Krispy Kreme’s Disturbing Past
Johann Adam Benckiser set up a chemical manufacturing company in the 19th century and the Reimann family, now Germany’s second wealthiest, is descended from him. But a closer look at the family’s behavior during World War II makes for troubling reading. But the figures leading the family business in the 1930s and 1940s — Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr. — were not passive observers: They were active supporters of Hitler’s regime.
Benckiser company was a power hub of Nazi ideology and Nazi cause council. Unearthed in 2019, the reality was that Benckiser employed forced labor from Russian civilians and French prisoners of war, making him party to corporate complicity in wartime atrocities—Reimanns themselves complicit in the brutality meted out to these people.
JAB Holdings’ Distorted Path to Redemption
Albert Reimann Jr. was arrested for his abhorrent actions in the post war investigations. But the road to redemption twisted into a denial laden, evasion of accountability. Contrary to evidence gathered about the family’s role in wartime horrors, Reimann Jr. portrayed himself as a victim, not an instigator, of Nazi ideology.
Despite the appalling revelations, some shame in the Reimanns led to vows to use their tainted legacy to donate millions to the Alfred Landecker Foundation to help Holocaust survivors and former forced labourers. The push was to recognize the victims, fight anti-Semitism, and preserve its lessons, from a grim past.
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The fact that Krispy Kreme is owned by JAB Holdings raises questions about what goes on behind all that corporate glamour, the complexities of multinational corporations. Philanthropic gestures to atone for the sins of the past have not wiped the stain of the Reimanns’ Nazi past.
It is a chilling cautionary tale, a reminder of how deeply the giants of industry can sink, so deeply that it pops into the shadow of the moral conscience of the conglomerate, and indeed of the ethical considerations that we may apply to its actions in a world today.