‘We treated them well’: Tone-deaf comments about Nazi-era forced labour by German heiress to Bahlsen biscuit fortune sparks calls for boycott

Verena Bahlsen, a fourth generation heiress of the famous Bahlsen company, sparked fury after appearing to dismiss the suffering of forced labourers who worked for the family business under Nazi rule

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Verena Bahlsen pictured on the cover of a magazine in January 2018. Photo: Facebook

Published: 11:22pm, 14 May 2019Updated: 11:44pm, 14 May 2019

The heiress of a German biscuits empire has stirred outrage after she appeared to dismiss the suffering of forced labourers who worked at the family business under Nazi rule.

Verena Bahlsen – a fourth generation heiress of the Bahlsen company, which makes some of Germany’s most famous biscuits – told a local newspaper that the firm, which employed some 200 forced labourers during the second world war, “did nothing wrong” then.

Most of the forced labourers at Hanover-based Bahlsen were women, many from Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

“This was before my time, and we paid the forced labourers exactly as much as German workers and we treated them well,” the 25-year-old told Bild newspaper

Part of a memorial to the victims of forced labour under Nazi rule in Germany at the former Buchenwald concentration camp site in Schwerte, Germany. Photo: Reuters

German politicians criticised her remarks and some social media users called for a boycott of Bahlsen biscuits.