On 12 February 1941, Gerzon house of fashion was expropriated by the Nazis. Gerzon had branches in several Dutch cities. The company was headed by three Jewish men: Jules Eduard Gerzon, Arthur Marx, and George Hecht. The head office of the company was located in a large building on the Singel in Amsterdam.
On the very day that Gerzon and Marx received a letter stating that their company would be taken over by a 'manager' (Verwalter), they had to evacuate their offices. The new owners moved in straight away.
The forced takeover of Gerzon house of fashion was part of the ‘aryanisation’ of the economy by the Nazis. New legislation allowed them to force the Jews to hand over their businesses and assets or to sell them at far too low a price to 'Aryan' Germans and Dutch people. The German state and individuals benefited enormously from this robbery.
Two weeks later, all of Gerzon's Jewish employees were dismissed. Around 300 of them would not survive the war.
Director Julius Eduard Gerzon managed to emigrate to Portugal in 1942. Sick and destitute, he died in a hospital in Lisbon in December of that same year. His mother and his son were murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp.
