BREAKING NEWS

Berlin department store removes Israeli settlement products

Berlin's high-end department store KaDeWe, which was boycotted in the 1930s because of its former Jewish owners, pulled Israeli products manufactured in settlements from its shelves on Friday because of new EU guidelines mandating labels on goods from the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. 
 
"We have taken the corresponding [Israeli settlement] products out from our line of goods," KaDeWe spokeswoman Petra Fladenhofer told Spiegel. "We will, after an appropriate labeling, put them back in our product line."
 
The department store's move adds fuel to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) debate targeting Israel's economy in Germany. KaDeWe attracts tens of thousands a visitors a day and the store's Jewish ownership was ended because of the Nazi's anti-Semitic laws.
KaDeWe opened in 1907 and was initially owned by by Adolf Jandorf, a Jewish real estate businessman. The department store was purchased in 1927 by the Warenhaus Hermann Tiez, a Jewish family business enterprise. Berlin's Nazi movement boycotted KaDaWe's Jewish owners starting in 1933 and eventually seized the business.