The Hour Before Dawn 

A Program for Inheritors of Wealth with Family Ties to the Nazi Regime 

Fascism is rising globally, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, and violence against marginalized groups is growing. From Elon Musk’s recent Hitlergruß at Trump’s inauguration to the increasing popularity of the AfD in Germany; from the escalation of hate crimes against Jews and immigrants to the tightening of European borders, today’s conditions feel hauntingly similar to 1930s Germany and the seeds of what became the Nazi regime. Despite decades of Holocaust remembrance efforts in Western Europe, the root causes of fascism remain unaddressed, and repairs for the harms of the Nazi regime incomplete.

Those who have inherited wealth or power tied to the Nazi regime hold a unique and necessary role in today’s fight against fascism. Yet few have had the space and support to research, grieve, and understand their legacy in a meaningful way and align their money with their values. 

Whether your ancestors were active Nazis, reluctant participants, or business owners who profited from the regime, the reverberations of one’s family’s history may continue to shape the present. Reckoning with one’s history—its intersections with wealth, privilege, and cultural narratives—is an essential step toward uprooting fascism and working toward a more just future for all. Inheritors of wealth have a particular opportunity to explore how moving money in response to this history can support a kind of healing and repair not addressed by state-level reparations. 

Introducing The Hour Before Dawn: A Cohort for Inheritors of Wealth with Family Ties to the Nazi Regime

“The darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.”

― Paulo Coelho

The Hour Before Dawn is a program for inheritors of wealth or family businesses with ties to the Nazi Regime who want to take ancestral responsibility and create a more just world. Through family history research, embodied storytelling, philanthropic planning, and community building, participants will be supported to more deeply learn about their past and explore how their wealth can become a tool for repair in the present. This confidential and unique learning environment will equip participants to navigate the emotions, questions, and challenges that emerge when confronting difficult truths, while also discovering their power to embody their story and move from shame into action. 

Taking place July - November, 2025, The Hour Before Dawn includes in-person retreats in Berlin, video calls, and personalized site visits. It will be facilitated in English and tailored to a European audience. Registration is now open. 

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Are You Wrestling with the History Behind Your Inheritance?

Do you wonder what to do if the wealth you’ve inherited is connected to the Holocaust? 

Do you feel like there is nobody to honestly talk about your inheritance and the history of your family?

Are you scared to be outcasted by your community if you confront - or even share - the truth of your family’s history?

Are you longing to move through the guilt, shame, and loneliness connected to your family history or inherited wealth? 

Are you searching for a supportive learning environment to think this through with people who share your questions? 

If these are your questions, you are in the right place.

This Program is for You if You:

• Have an anticipated inheritance of at least €500.000 and/or present-day access to at least €100.000.

• Are vehemently against fascism and right-wing authoritarian governments and care deeply about democracy and social responsibility.

• You feel called to confront your family’s past. This can include unease, hesitation, or fear about what you might uncover—but you still want to do the work.

• Have at least one ancestor who lived and grew your family wealth, in whole or in part, during the Third Reich (1933-1945) or in its aftermath.

• You have the emotional bandwidth to engage in this work alongside others. This program involves group-based reflection, family research, and peer support.

• You are concerned about the rise of fascism in Europe and want to take action to resist it.

We recognize that family legacies are complex and that involvement in the Nazi economy varied widely. This program welcomes participants whose family histories include a spectrum of involvement, ranging from passive economic benefit to active participation in Nazi policies. 

FOR MORE DETAILS ON WAYS YOUR FAMILY HISTORY MIGHT APPLY, JUMP TO THIS SECTION.

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Program Overview

July - November 2025
In-person retreats in Berlin + monthly virtual sessions 

Two in-person retreats in Berlin. To participate, you must be able to attend both retreats in person.

• Retreat One: Friday, July 18 - Sunday, July 20

• Retreat Two: Friday, November 21 - Sunday, November 23

• Monthly virtual group sessions (2.5 hours) Sundays at 4:30-7pm CET  on the following dates: August 3, August 24, September 28, October 26

• Stolpersteine polishing ritual on November 9 (Reich Kristallnacht); optional but preferred to do this in Berlin together.

• Personalized site visits to locations of family historical significance, supported by both facilitators and your peers

• Readings, guided practices, and peer support

• Monthly peer-led meetings

• One group trip to a Holocaust commemorative ceremony

• Optional 1:1 mentorship or coaching from German-speaking therapists and coaches (at an additional cost)

• The group will be no larger than 15 participants, as we want this to be an intimate experience where each participant is meaningfully supported.

• Estimated monthly time commitment: 10 hours

Participants in The Hour Before Dawn will also have the opportunity to join a second level of this learning journey in 2026 (dates not yet finalized) focused on exploring the ways the legacy of the Third Reich is manifesting in today’s political landscape and navigating the complexities of historical responsibility in the present. 

What you will gain from this program:

• A supportive and confidential learning container to honestly confront your family’s connection to the Third Reich 

• A library of diverse resources and a strong political framework for understanding the context of history and this present moment 

• A community of peers with shared values and experiences 

• Tools for researching the history of your family and your money 

• Tools, practice and support for (potentially difficult) family conversations about your family history, and tools for organizing your family into your action steps

• Tools for researching the history of your family’s wealth and creating a philanthropic plan that centers repair for past harms and its current consequences

• Action steps you can take to offer healing to your lineage and those your family caused harm to 

• Practices and skills to navigate emotions from guilt, shame and hiding, towards grief, truth-telling, empowerment and action

• Strengthened relationship with a sense of home and connection to your lineage that extend beyond this recent history of harm

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Ways Your Family History May Fit This Program's Criteria

• Business Profits from the Nazi Economy
  Your ancestors owned a business that cooperated with the Nazi regime or profited from war production (e.g., manufacturing weapons, chemicals, uniforms, vehicles, steel, pharmaceuticals, or other materials for the war effort).

• Aryanization and Stolen Jewish Property
  Your family gained wealth through Aryanization—acquiring Jewish-owned businesses, real estate, art, or financial assets through forced sales, confiscation, or state-sponsored expropriation.

• Beneficiaries of Jewish-Owned Assets
  Some families unknowingly (or knowingly) acquired homes, businesses, or valuables that were stolen or forcefully sold by Jewish families who fled or were deported.

• Example: A German family purchases a Jewish neighbor's home at a forced-sale discount in 1939 and continues to own it today.

• High-Ranking or Influential Positions
  Your ancestors held high-ranking positions in Nazi economic, industrial, or political structures (e.g., executives of companies that used forced or slave labor, financiers of Nazi expansion, or government officials involved in economic policies).

• Post-War Beneficiaries of Nazi-Era Wealth
  Your family survived the Nazi regime and continued profiting after the war—this includes businesses that adapted post-1945 but were originally established or expanded during the Third Reich.

• Example: A textile factory that supplied Nazi uniforms may have seamlessly transitioned post-war to producing civilian clothing, continuing to generate wealth from infrastructure built during the regime.

• Pharmaceutical and Medical Experimentation Profits
  Many pharmaceutical companies and hospitals experimented on forced laborers or produced medicines tested in concentration camps.

• Example: A family-run pharmaceutical company that pioneered drug research using data from inhumane Nazi medical experiments.

• Corporate Families and Industrial Expansion
  Some families may not have been ideologically aligned with the Nazi Party but secured lucrative contracts that enabled them to expand their industries.

• Financial Institutions and Nazi Money Laundering
  Swiss and German banks were instrumental in hiding Nazi assets—including stolen Jewish wealth—before, during, and after the war.

• Example: A family's fortune was safeguarded in Swiss accounts during the war, later passed down through generations.

• Media and Propaganda Influence
  Families involved in publishing, film, or radio broadcasting may have helped spread Nazi propaganda and benefited from state-sponsored media funding.

• Example: A newspaper or publishing house that supported Nazi messaging and received lucrative government contracts.

Not Sure if Your Family History Matches?

If you're unsure about your family history but suspect a connection (for instance, if your wealth originates from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or involves offshore trusts established by prior generations), we encourage you to reach out.

Email us at thehourbeforedawn@googlegroups.com, the shared email address for Justine and Iris. All emails will be kept strictly confidential.

Facilitation Team 

We are Iris Brilliant and Justine Epstein, two US-born Jews whose ancestors were targeted and killed in the Holocaust. We are also inheritors of wealth who have spent years reckoning with the ways we have materially benefited from racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and wealth inequality. Each of us has moved resources and organized our families to engage in reparative action. We have dedicated our lives to the personal and collective work of discovering what healing is possible when we strive to live in alignment with values of truth, justice, and repair.

Iris Brilliant is a money coach for inheritors of wealth and has facilitated programs for wealth inheritors for over fourteen years. Iris is trained in Internal Family Systems and has a coaching certification from the Co-Active Training Institute. She learned how to develop transformational programs for people with wealth at Resource Generation, where she was the High Net Wealth Organizer and Family Philanthropy Organizer for five years. She deepened her understanding of finance at the Adasina Fund, where she worked as a social justice strategist and philanthropic advisor.

Iris is Jewish and is partnered to a German who has Nazi heritage, and thus this work is deeply personal to her. Her work has predominantly been focused on supporting Americans to grapple with the moral and logistical weight of inherited wealth built off of Black and Indigenous communities. She recently moved to Berlin and is now shifting her focus towards supporting wealth inheritors to resist the rise of fascism in Europe. She led a pilot workshop series for Resource Transformation, an organization for German-speaking wealth holders, on the topics of ancestral research, anti-Semitism, and reparations. The success of this workshop series inspired The Hour Before Dawn.

She is passionate about supporting perpetrators of harm to reclaim their dignity through rigorous research and courageous action. Iris anchors her career in the longstanding Jewish values of Tikkun Olam (healing the world) and Teshuvah (return to wholeness through acts of repair). Her work with descendants of Nazis supports her personal journey of healing her own lineage, as her maternal grandfather’s family was murdered in the Holocaust. She believes that while we cannot change the actions of our ancestors, we as descendants are the only ones who can help heal our ancestors—and ensure the world learns from their mistakes. 

Justine Epstein is a facilitator and mentor for people with inherited wealth who want to examine the histories of their ancestors and money, and take meaningful action to address these legacies. Currently working with clients one-on-one and co- facilitating the Ancestors & Money cohort – including as a course at Stanford University – Justine has over seven years of experience holding transformative spaces for people to engage deeply with questions of legacy, identity, money, power and belonging. Her holistic approach brings together training from Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, School of Lost Borders, and Ways of Council. 

Justine is a sixth-generation descendant of James Gamble who co-founded multinational corporation Procter & Gamble in 1837. For five years, Justine has been organizing her family to interrupt P&G’s harmful practices and take reparative action supporting communities directly impacted by the company’s supply chain. Justine is also a member of Resource Generation, the Solidaire Network, and Transition Resource Circle – networks of people reimagining wealth and taking courageous action in these times. 

Based in the US, Justine has spent significant time living, studying and working in Europe and built long-lasting cross-cultural relationships. Diving deep into family history has reconnected Justine with the many threads of her European lineage – including ancestors from Germany and Switzerland who immigrated in the 1800s, as well as Jewish heritage from Lithuania, where her great-grandmother’s family was targeted and killed by Einsatzkommando 3. She is honored to be following the stories of her ancestors back to their motherlands and engaging in the complex and necessary work of The Hour Before Dawn. 

Alice Gedamu is a coach and creative based in Berlin, with a deep commitment to understanding the intertwining of personal histories and collective futures. Since 2020, she has supported over 80 clients in aligning their work with what truly matters. 

She co-founded CRCLR GmbH and TRNSFRM eG, both dedicated to sustainability and circular economy initiatives. She also performs in MOTHER TONGUE at the Maxim Gorki Theater, a documentary play by Lola Arias.

Alice is drawn to spaces of reckoning, exploration, and imagination—whether through her participation in Timo Galbenis Kiesel's group on critical whiteness or her work with Kübra Gümüşay's Imagination Agency developing formats and techniques for marginalized groups to imagine desirable futures. Alice's Jewish and Austrian heritage, informs her ongoing commitment to understanding history and reimagining new paths forward. Alice is part of the support team at The Hour Before Dawn.

Teresa Distelberger is a documentary filmmaker and an artist, working in the field of commemoration, dialogical art and social sculpture. She was born and is living today in Vienna, Austria. She studied Applied Linguistics, Film and Gender Studies in Vienna/Paris/Lancaster and did research about “Austrian Identies” in the memorial year 2005. She completed the Timeless Wisdom Training and Collective Trauma Facilitation Training with Thomas Hübl in Germany and Israel. For her master's degree in “Arts in Practice” at the Dutch Art Institute she wrote a thesis about “Dialogical Art and Commemoration”. After co-directing “The future is better than its reputation” and directing “Save the Village”, Teresa is currently working on a futuristic historical documentary film about “The End Of Inequality”.

In addition to short films and documentaries, she creates performances, installations and dialogical art spaces in which she deals with rural traditions, urban and global living environments and a multi-layered interpretation of the controversial concept of Heimat/home. Her artistic approach working in the field of commemoration of the Austrian Nazi-past includes site-specific projects, participatory processes, video, dialogue, handicraft work and art in public space.

In The Hour Before Dawn, she will be contributing a session with her dialogue game “about home”, help with documentation and support the main facilitation team with her experience of hosting encounters for descendants of victims and perpetrators of the Nazi regime.

Pricing

Your financial contribution towards The Hour Before Dawn supports the program's design, implementation, and facilitation; cultural consultation with experts for facilitators; continued programmatic development; media communications, outreach and networking; guest speakers, travel for facilitators, and the costs of both in-person retreats including food. The facilitation team will also redistribute at least 10% of the income we receive to organizations working towards collective liberation. We structure our rates based on true costs and your net wealth. Net wealth is the sum total of your assets (property, stocks, cash, valuables) minus any debt you have (excluding mortgages). Please note: costs of personal transportation and lodging for the in-person retreats in Berlin is not covered in the tuition. 

We recognize that financial situations vary, and we want to make this program accessible to those who are committed to this work but may not be able to afford it at these rates. If you're unsure where you fit, we encourage you to apply regardless—in our preliminary meeting with you, we will discuss a contribution that aligns with both your resources and the sustainability of this program. 

• True Cost: €11.500 (netto). This is the full per-person cost of running this program, covering facilitator fees, retreat costs, curriculum development, travel, outside speakers, and operations. Please pay this rate if you have between €125.000 and €1M in assets and / or an annual income of more than €80.000. 

• Discounted Rate: €1.800 - €10.000 (netto). If you currently have access to less than €125.000 in assets (but expect to inherit more in the future) and earn less than €80.000/year, we can explore a reduced rate in this range that works for you in our exploratory call after you apply. We can also accept monthly payments of up to six months. When in doubt, please apply and know that we will accept as many people at discounted rates as we can.

• High Net Wealth Rate: €15.500 (netto). If you have access to between €1M–€2M in wealth (including investments, real estate, and savings), we ask that you contribute at this rate. This helps fund discounted slots for others.

• Redistribution Rate: €20.500 (netto). If you have access to over €2M in wealth, we ask that you pay this rate. Your contribution helps fund discounted slots and program development.

We accept one-time payments or monthly payments for a six month period. 

Interested in Joining Us? 

To be considered for The Hour Before Dawn, you must submit an application. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early to secure your spot.

• Early Bird Deadline: April 1

• Early applicants receive a complimentary 60-minute coaching session with a program leader to explore their family history or philanthropic strategy.

• Final Application Deadline: May 1

All application information and email exchanges will remain strictly confidential. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at  thehourbeforedawn@googlegroups.com, the shared email address for Justine and Iris.