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DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20220
February 19, 1997
MEMORANDUM FOR:
:
FROM:
'
See D~stribution
William McFadden
~m
SUBJECT:
..'
,..
Treasury's Role in Nazi Gold Retrieval Effort
.
.
HistoryAssociates Inc. has submitted the final report on Treasury's role in the identification,
. seizure, and disposition of gold and other assets looted by the Nazis in the WWII era. A coPY.
of the report is attached for your files. Our report will be merged with the one being worked
on by State's Historian's Office to form the basis of the inter-agency report requested by the
President. History Associates will work with us to proof and clear the final document, .which
is expected to be released to the public around March 20.
i'
Inter-agency Report Likely to be ReJeased in Mid-March
Given the time constraints and volume of Treasury documents in the Archives, History
Associates says "We have done our best ... to verify the accuracy of the material in the report
and in the (118 page) chronology. We have not, however, had the time to review again all the·
documents collected to asSure that nothing had been overlooked, or to chase down all possible
'
leads to filling in gaps. "
Summary of Treasury Report
The following are excerpts from the report summary:
r
"When Germany began its policy of conquest and occupation in the late 1930s, the
(Treasury's) Division of Foreign Funds Control (FFC) took steps to prevent the Nazis and .
their sympathizers from utilizing ~ollars and other assets seized in areas that they had overrun.
.
They were increasingly denied access to financial resources that allowed them to purchase
commodities, materials, ,and goods necessary for their successful prosecution of ~e war
against the Allies." .
.
.
.. The Division of Monetary Research and the Office of General Counsel of the
.
Treasury, also played key roles in drawing up and enforcing Allied wartime measures to thwart
the financial' and economic maneuvers of the Axis ...
"From 1941 to 1944, the Treasury Dep~ment articulated the main components of
America's financial ~d economic responSes to the Axis I handling of looted assets in' the
neutral countries. Aware of the role that this stolen wealth played in ... the Nazi war
machine, Treasury devised and pushed for a series of policy initiatives aimed at waging an
economic and financial war against the Axis. The Department also helped establish the
1
�2
framework for stabilizing the economic and financial life of liberated nations and enacting an
equitable system of reparations and. restitution to individuals and nations that the Nazis and .
their copaborators had plundered and occupied."
.
"The Safehaven program provided the diplomatic and political framework within
which Treasury, State, and the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) crafted initiatives
aimed at securing the support ofneutral countries in eliminating the Axis' extensive
commercial, political, and financial networks in their territories. Throughout the oft
complicated implementation of the Safehaven program,. Treasury maintained a tough stance
whereby no concessions should be granted that would compromise America's commitment to
, ferret out and eradicate Nazi assets.·
.
'
. "Treasury's role lessened in the months following the end of the Second World War in
May 1945. The death of President Roosevelt, intense lobbying from American manufacturers
on the War, State, and CommerCe Departments to renew trade with the neutral countries, and
British insistence that economic warfare measures be abandoned 'to stimulate European
economic recovery made the Treasury agenda more difficult to (follow)... Eventually,
Treasury reluctantly agreed to the resolution of outstanding Safehaven-related issues with
lump-sum settlements proposed by neutral countries. •
"Treasury field representatives worked on the most important and cOmplex cases of
wartime economic collaboration between German companies and the Nazi regime. In the
neutral countries, Treasury officials advised State negotiators in their torturous and protracted
talks with neutral governments over the final disposition of Axis assets, looted gold, and the
.
neutrals' contributions to the inter-allied reparations fund. But State refused to include
Treasury in the "German picture" even after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany·
in 1949 because of Treasury's perceived vindictiveness against the Germans and its apparent
refusal to recognize Germany's role in the post-war reconstruction of Europe."
,
,
Some Key Issues. of the PeriOd
(a) Did the Swiss get ~ff easily:·' Treasury records indicate the U.S. negotiators believed the
Swiss had at least $200 million in gold that had been looted by the Nazis. Treasury initially
objected, but eventually accepted, the agreement worked out whereby Switzerland gave up $62'
million in gold.
(b) Monetary v non-monetary gold: 1)le Allied forces collected gold in Germany and in
countries the Nazis overran for eventual distribution to central banks that were looted and
individual Holocaust victims. Treasury .records reviewed by the contractor show that U.S.
forces and others involved in the collection of the gold had difficulties defining/differentiating
between monetary and non-monetary gold. The 1946 Paris Agreement, which was the legal
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basis for collecting the gold, mentions both categories but does not define either. While
further search of the Treasury records might bring greater clarity to the issue, History
Associates beHeves DOD and Tripartite Gold Commission files would be better targets.
(c) Was the monetary gold pool tainted with gold looted from indiv:iduals: ,We spedfically
asked our historians to look into this question and, while they believe the pool was tainted,
'
could not find convincing evidence in the records they reviewed.
Distribu tion:
Treasury
, Deputy Secretary Summers
Assistant Secretary Lipton
Timothy Geithner
Russ Munk'
Francine Barber
David Joy
Wanda Murphy
Dan O'Brien
Federal Reserve Board
Ted Truman
NYFRB
Jim Hennessy
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polite and had acknowler171"~ ';wiss neuu;~ v and
Decent Switzerland, bayed t:;(;l:horus, had';;.;ome the
gangsters hustled by Jews. Sensing his vulnerab)\' ',Srucki
the distortions by bemoaning his personal mhrtime. Unable
resist demands for an unjustified admission of g?!'t as the
removing the economic sanctions, he complain~;(Switzerland
to "relentless pressure" to sign an agreei'nt whose
had been dictated by the A l l i e s . : ,
Bureaucrats, appreciating that a smoke screen d:._:nger and
would obscure Switzerland's embarrassing exposurt;;:."or dishonestly
accepting looted gold, concocted a revised version d''Ustory.
Allies," scoffed Ernst Nobs, the director of the Minis\~r of
"are entitled to fight their own wars, but we're not f,~ruming
stolen Belgian gold. We're JUSt making a generaus ;,:or.ttibution for
the reconstruction of Europe." Newspapers and gu~Hble politicians
were briefed by Nobs and ministers that the Belgian {pvernmentwas
suing the French govel11f!',,:nt for compensation in ti.~ U.S. courts.
"A Swiss lie," fumed Marcel Vaidie, "just as they lie(khat they had
accepted Reichsmarks fW';i the Germans and not golil." The Swiss,
he said, wanted to "shunt (,.,' on to France the entire re~ponsibility for
the acquisition of gold looted by the Germans."
Although publicly the French collaborators were H;med for the
German acquisition of loot ~ gold, internally Ernst Wcl:'er, the pres
ident of the National Bank, lind Hirs were criticized for~,eing "com
pletely taken in by Puhl" :lnd for not being honest with ~rucki about
the Belgian gold. Their real sin was causing an embarr1ssment by
allowing the exposure to take place. Both were:forced to~etire. That
fate, Srucki determined, would not befall him, despite dll! unusually
high opposition vote when parliament ratified the accordvnJune 27,
1946-by 142 votes to 29.
Srucki's reward from Petitpierre for having negotiated the accord
was to be given the task ofsupervising its implementation, iarangued
from one side by irate bankers and industrialists, and from the other
by the United States and Jewish groups. The first draft d his poi
<oned chalice was being prepared in Paris.
10
TJlE Jl;IDDEN
JDILlIONS
after Walter Srucki hadagreed the essentials of the
'Washington Accord, on May 13, IS,p, Eli Ginzberg, a .hi.,·.u,.fi,,~_
New Y.\rker with a doctorate in eco
nomics from Columbia University, s:~\ed to England in comfort on
the Queen Mary, the world's most celdrated luxury liner, as the State
,Department representative for a conference destined to distribute the
S15 million and the heirless assets to the refugees. In 1944, as the
chief of the logistical office of the Silrgeon of the U.S. Army,
Ginzberg had read the reports about the extermination camps and,
influenced by Moses Abramovitz, had a~jumed "an obligation to care
, for the Holocaust victims." His voyage toLondon was the fulfillmen t
obligation.
Ginzberg's progtess had not been srnnoth. In the weeks before
departure, the State Deparunent had :resisted his appointment.,
Tinged with anti-Semitism and ambivalent about
as "a los
ing card," State Deparunent officials knew that the British
Office opposed any conference, while the French were lukewarm.
But the department's opposition collapsed under the onslaught of the
crusaders in the Treasury and White Home. "We had to push the
State Department," Ginzberg told his friends just three days before
his departure. Despite those difficulties, the letter of appointment
157
�158 •
TOM BOWER
from John Hildring, an assistant secretary ofstate, included a
exhortation: "This government feels that it has a particular
obligation to these unfortunate victims of Hiderite aggression."
however, expected any results. Although Article 8 of the
Agreement had established an lnter-Governincntal Committee
Refugees, Ginzberg arrived in London knowing that Britain's
ing tactics . " by raising a host of extraneous issues" reflecte,
"deep antagonism" to the very idea of such a committee. Five
had elapsed since the original reparation agreement had been
and while the condition of the Jewish refugees deteriorated,
French government had failed to convene the five-nation confereno
in Paris. After his first
with the British, the Allies' lack
interest was confinned. Ginzberg sought the advice of Sam
the labor attache at the American embassy. The solution,
Burger, was to meet "my good friend Hector McNeil." McNeil;
was preparing fur a visit
junior minister at the Foreign
" Burger told Ginzbergas
Wnshington. "It's ,)11 about big
drove at night to McNeil's home in north London. "The Brits need
us." "I'll offer him a deal," laughed Ginzberg, who that day had
David Ben Gurion, the Zionist leader. "None of the AllieS,"
Gurion had moaned, "want to help us." Unlike conventional
mats, Ginzberg was motivated to help his people.
While smoking Ginzberg's Chesterfields, McNeil was
about the obstacles: "We don't want to complicate the Palestinian
problem." Giving money to Jewish refugees to emigrate to
'admitted the minister, would cause extra headaches. Even Ginzbem's
request that 600 children be allowed to emigrate to Palestine
excessive. "Look," offered Ginzberg in his affable, fast-talking NeW
Yorker manner,
government wants this setded. If you help me,
I'll help you in yqur mis~ion to Washington. I'll write to Hildringand
sort you out." The minister believed him. "That sounds vcry
able," he replied, speculating that perhaps z 50 children could
admitted every month. "You've been unnecessarily handsome in
understanding our position. We'll support the conference."
McNeil's onlv condition was that the original tenn in the Paris'
NAZI GOLD. 159
'reement-that the money would "be devoted to the rehabilitation
resetdement of non-repatriable victims of ('TCnnan action"
remain unaltered. Neither Palestine nor the Jewish distribu
agencies would be mentioned.
Ginzberg sought out the three other representatives del
by the eighteen-nation conference with responsibility for set
the issue; Czech, Yugoslav and French. During an expensive
IGlvana, the Czech, revealed to Ginzberg,,"I do everything the
tells me." Over another "fancy" meal, Bartos, the Yugoslav
explained, "So long as there's no money for Tito's enemies,
decided, would not be a
support you." The French,
"We'd just given them a big slice of money." Shutding
the diplomats in London, Ginzberg, invoking the "deep
of my government," had negotiated by June 7 the draft
''''''''''ment that would be formally considered by the conference in
on June I r. The money, it was agreed, would be used not for
i COffiiJCnsation but for "rehabilitation and resettlement~" Anticipating
he would be able to "guide" Philippe Perrier's chairmanship,
Ginzberg congratulated himself and traveled to France.
In London, Douglas Mackillop, a Treasury official nominated as
the British representative, was irritated by Jewish agitation and com
plaints. Jewish groups had protested to British officials about their
~'grievous disappointment" that no special mention had been made in
original Paris Agreement about their plight. Nor, they com
plained, was there an explicit promise to compensate Jews for the
N:iz.is' theft ofJewish property worth billions of dollars or an explicit
statement of the right of the Jews to administer their own funds. To
annoyance, Jewish petitions and
had urged
"politicians to recognize that "most of the 'heirless' property of Nazi
in neutral countries consists of property belonging to Jews"
and it should be secured for their benefit. Now, capping all that irri
: tation, came the arrival of American zeal in the person of Ginzberg.
!'The United States delegate," Mackillop noted to his colleagues,
"will be a very active-minded young Jew who is by all accounts anx
ious to secure the handling ofall the moneys allocated to Jewish ben
;:'
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�160 •
TOM BOWER
eficiaries by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Amencan
Distribution Committee." Allowing those agencies to administer
funds, he grumbled, was distinctly "unwelcome in view of the
of these organizations in connection with illegal immigration
Palestine." Worst of all, Ginz-berg was guilty of seeking money
Austrian and German Jews and hi~ proposed agreement would
tinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish victims.
Mackillop's proposal, to find a Jewish group who
Ginzberg and manipulate them in Britain's favor, aroused
concern. On the eve of Mackillop's departure to Paris, he was
Waley to hear in mind American passion for the idea
money should be used to resettle Jews, especially in
Unimpressed, Mackillop coldly ignored the ad'~ce.
In Paris, Ginzberg enthusiastically introduced himself
Mackillop. The Scotsman, he decided, was "unexciting" and
burdened by the eight children he had fathered. For his pan, the British
representative was deprcssed by Ginzberg's news. The three delegates
from France, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, chortled Ginz-berg;sup
ported his plan, and so did Hector McNeil, the British Foreign Office
minister. "McNeil did not tell me he supported you," intoned
Mackillop, proffering a piece ofpaper. "Here's my proposal. Somewhat
different from yours." Ginwerg's ire was palpable. "Let's settle our dif~
ferences in private this evening," suggested Mackillop in retreat.
That evening Ginzberg confronted the prejudice of the Foreign
Office. There could be no mention of the Jews as
ipsisted Mackillop, nor could the agreement support their resettle~ .
ment in Palestine, nor could the money be distributed by Jewish
organizations. "The money should be distributed by governments,"
said Mackillop.
At once excited and furious, Ginzberg bluffed: "My instructions
from Washington are to formally withdraw from the conference if
any attempt is made to delay distributing the money." Staggered by
the American's ultimatum, the British official sat quietly as Ginzberg
continued, "Involving governments as the distributors means delay,
and the Swiss have agreed to advance the money explicitly for those
NAZI GOLD. 161
neficiaries." Uneasy and acknowledging that he was isolated,
scrambled together a compromise: the American Joint
Committee and the Jewish Agency would not be men
in the formal agreement as administering 90 percent of the
but could be nominated in associated letters of instruction to the
--Governmental Committee on Refugees as the agencies to dis
the money. However, the funds would not be released until
was an approved resettlement program; and, although Palestine
not be mentioned, there could be a phrase indicating that the
was to help theJews "in finding new and permanent homes."
" Ginzberg said with a srnile.
In his report to London, Mackillop would boast that Ginzberg's
had been partially sabotaged, but that did not prevent his accep
of the American's generosity. Just before signing the agreement
June I4, Ginzberg visited the American embassy's commissary
brought a box of chocolate bars. "These are for your eight chil
" Ginzberg told Mackillop. "But you can have them only after
signed. Otherwise it'll be seen as a bribe." Without embar
.rassment, Mackillop accepted the gift. Later that day he successfully
postponement of a plan to help the Hungarian Jews on the
that it was "awkward." The Swiss, commented the Scotsman
his return to London, deserve sympathy for the problems that
;:beckoned. Untroubled, Ginz-berg returned to New York content that
he had contributed toward the survivors' relief. All that remained was
secure the money from the neutrals.
Under the Paris Agreement, Philippe Perrier, the French chair
man, had been nominated by the five governments to recover the $25
and the heirless assets. On the assumption that all of the assets
Jewish in origin, 95 percent, it had been agreed, would be used
Jewish rehabilitation and resettlement. Perrier's letter to Bern
was dispatched on August 20. Switzerland, like the other neuttal
countries, was asked to "take all necessary action to facilitate the iden
.' tification, collection and distribution of these assets which have arisen
out of a unique condition in international law and morality." The
Swiss were invited to act with "understanding and energy."
�162 • TOM BOWER
Choosing France as the representative was in the cirrllm."'';;
not asr:ute, Ever since the Washington Accord had been
politicians had denigrated the French, accusing them of
Belgium's gold, for whieh Switzerland had had to pay
Outraged by Swiss deceit, Henri Hoppenot, the French
in Switzerland, urged his government to release a dossier
Swiss dishonesty, "The present cowardice of the Finance
he exclaimed in a coded telegtam tG Paris, "is a disservice to
tige and ensures that no one will take our work seriously."
silence from Paris, Hoppenot knew, was related to the
negotiations for loans. By 1949, Switzerland would have
SF790 million to European countries and France would receive
far the largest share, SF340 million. Hoppenot's complaint about
"finance administration's desire to coddle the powers in the
National Bank" was ignored.
\Alrule the British had deliberately remained silent about
assets, convineed that "the atmosphere might not be
favorable," Irwin Mason, a U.S. diplomat, was dispatched to Bern
negotiate the speedy release of the heirless assets. "Moral
he was told, was the only weapon available.
Max Gottschalk, a foreign affairs consultant for the
Jewish Committee, had discovered during his visit to Switzerland
May 1946 the limitations of moral pressure as a means of
the heirless assets. Meeting Armand Braunschvig, the
. of the Swiss Federation ofJewish Associations, Gottschalk
by the timidity of the Jewish leaders, Cowed by native anti-~effiIl
and shamed by the association's wartime failure to protest more
orously about the expulsion of tOreignJews, Braunschvig had in
unquestioningly repeated gossip from fellowJews and Swiss
"There's not a'large' am~unt' of heirless assets." One year after
war, as reports accumulated about missing Jews, Braunschvig revised
his assessment. One Swiss shoe manufacr:urer reported that no word
had been heard from any of his Jewish representatives, who were
known to control seventy-five bank accounts in Switzerland. Another
Swiss reported that the owner of property worth SF2 million had di~
NAZI GOI,D •
163
and his possessions were being administered by a bank. The
assets were now estimated to be worth $38 million.
questioned whether Swiss law would allow their transfer
survivors. The Swiss courts, he was initially told, could declare
dead and authorize the transfer of their assets to survivors.
May 1946 he heard that under Swiss law the heirless assets
revert to the government of the depositor's nation.
unforeseen advice was also sent to Eli Ginzberg by Mason
State Department. Under Article 22 of a Swiss law of 189 1,
Mason, the Swiss government did not control the "ultimate
of assets in Switzerland of foreigners who died without
However, he said, Switzerland's secrecy laws would prevent
foreign government from claiming the heirless assets. The only
would be to secure the agteement of the other countries to
their claims and call the money "unclaimed nmds" rather than
assets. Ginzberg's recommendation was artless: if the other
ovemments refused to oblige, the Swiss government should change
laws.
Ginzberg's solution seemed unexceptionable to the lawyers in
lashington, Pressured by the Jewish lobby, Congtess had recently
the Trading with the Enemy Act to allow EuropeanJews to
possessions that had been seized as enemy property in the
States by the Alien Property Custodian. No one in the State
vepartment doubted that, with goodwill, the Swiss could find a sat
legal remedy, especially after Stucki's signed promise to
the question sympathetically." With that hope, the State
wrote to Stucki on July ro. By then, Stucki's department
received a succession ofletters from U.S. diplomats protesting
the pJight of fortner GernIan citizens who were unable to
their money from Swiss bank accounts,insurance policies and
blocked by the Compensation Office. The latest letter sought
explanation of why the Compensation Office was continuing to
that claimants produce documentary proof of theif loss of
nationality or that a relative had died in the gas chambers.
That proof, submitted the State Department, did not exist. Stressing
�r64 •
TOM BOWER
the "entirely unprecedented situation," Stucki was asked to
nize the urgent and immediate necessity" of devising procedure
transfer the heirless assets to the survivors.
Regardless of his own difficulties after his return
Washington, Stucki did not dispute Switzerland's obligation
the Jews. "There is a moral obligation and I believe that the
must be pursued with energy," he noted, proposing that the
ment introduce a new law to secure and transfer the heirless assets.
then, Stucki was considering a thirteen-page proposal delivered
Dr. F. Bienenfeld, a British lawyer representing the World
,-""'U/llC". Some heirless assets, he suggested, should be
freed to help 9,500 Jewish refugees in Switzerland, and the
banks should be protected by a new law from penalization from
future claims for handing over the heirless assets.
Franz Kanneler, a senior official in the Political
the need for a solution
and
claims, While the Allies expected the neutral
tries to
$25 million and the heirless assets to the Jews, he
the Polish and Czech governments had asked the Swiss earlier in
year for the assets deposited in Switzerland by their citizens who
died during the war. In summary, Kappeler identified the
obstacle: while the banks needed to establish the amount of heirless
assets, they had difficulties in establishing whether or not a depositor:'
was actually dead because so many foreigners had given instruction.'
that they were not to be contacted. Any investigation by the banks
discover whether their customers had survived the war might
ger those people, he wrote. One solution, he suggested, was to retain
some of the heirless assets to pay those who reappeared. In the
time, he expected the amount of heirless assets to be established soori
because most of the inheritors of other accounts would claim their'.
deposits. That summary was incontrovertible and fair. Since there
was no predetermined legal solution, any settlement required careful
thought. Yet in his conclusions, Kappeler, a pro-Nazi during the war,
revealed disdain for the Allies' plan: "It should not be assumed thai:"
just because a depositor was Jewish he would have desired that his
NAZI GOLD.
r65
would be used for repatriable refugees." Nevertheless, he sug
that a conference of banks, lawyers, notaries, trustees and their
be summoned for discussions that would lead to
in
the Allies attribute to the issue."
that the government contemplated a breach of
secrecy, the Bankers Association reacted with a mixture of artful
and defiance. Mentioning their "surprise" about Stucki's
on heirless assets-"which we were unaware of until
association curtly listed the legal requirements to establish
irless asset: namely, documentary proof that the depositor was
and that there were no heirs. "No," scribbled the Political
IpMmnent official, criticizing the association's conditions as too
In their counterproposal, the association suggested that the
canvemment should ask the Allies what they were doing to discover
assets in their countries. "It seems to us that the neutral states
do more than the signatories at the reparations conference."
"That's true," commented the official at the Polltical Department,
nnrlprstanding Switzerland's position-that the country should imple
the accord to the same extent as the Allies. The idea of shifting
fate of the heirless assets onto th~ Allies shone with advantages.
The Swiss reply on the heirless assets was handed to the French
embassy on September I I, 1946. The government, wrote Petitpierre,
studied \:he Allies' !equest '~sympathetically" and would consult
the federal authorities about the legal issues. In the meantime, the
(government was undertaking inquiries to discover "the
number and amounts of heirless estates in question."
Guy de Rahm, Stucki's assistant, approached the banks, the
insurance companies and the Swiss Lawyers Association for informa
tion. The banks and insurance companies were exnected to
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�166 •
",
TOM BOWER
estimates of the amount of heirless assets, although the
instantly refused to breach the confidentiality of their clients.
followed by the notaries' similar refusal to cooperate, looked
ciou5. In private, Schwab and Stucki had heard whispers that
banks and corporations but also Swiss individuals-lawyers,
associates, notaries and accountants-had diverted into thei
specially created accounts money held in trust for Jews who had
appeared. By its inaction, de Rahm feared, the Swiss government
encouraging more people to steal those dormant accounts.
the fate of the heirless assets had become embroiled
Switzerland's attitude to~ard the Jews and the Germans.
On November I, 1946, Robert Meyer, a respected
Zurich, called at the Political Department to propose using the
less assets, which he estimated were worth between SF40
SF50 million,.to help 5,000 Jewish refugees settle in .
The respect that Meyer's plan generated outraged lawyers
Heinrich Rothmund, the director of the Police Department.
were anxious that all foreign Jews should leave the country.
representatives rushed to de Rahm to denounce Meyer as a
mouthpiece of the World Jewish Congress. His estimate of
assets, they said decisively, was too high. "He wants 5,000 to
Jews to stay in Swit7.erland out of political rather than humanitar
motives," Rothmund's emissaries told de Rahm, adding that
·was unhealthy competition among Jewish groups to control the
less assets. The police offered an alternative proposal. To save
funds, the heirless assets should be used, until their
Switzerland, to alleviate the "big problem" of caring for the
in the spartan camps. Just as they had been during the war, the
should be seif-financing.·Since "the money belonged to the
ofpeople who would now benefit," submitted the police, the
problem at least would be solved.
Four months had elapsed since the accord was signed and
crusaders in the Treasury and State Departments, under
from Jewish groups highlighting Swiss obstruction, urged
Intelligence reports from Europe revealed that, in contrast to
NAZI GOLD. 167
the 72,000 Germans resident in Switzerland were enjoying
Swiss hospitality. Despite American demands that
suspected Nazis be expelled, only 3,000 incriminated
poli tical and intelligence operatives-had been
to rerum to Germany. On Swiss criteria, only those who
undesirable to Switzerland were expelled. The Allies' interest in
German financiers and industrialists was ignored.
from the Allies' restrictions, Eduard von Steiger, the min
of justice and the police, had also quietly altered the conditions
Germans' entry into Switzerland, a particular help for former
forbidden by the Allies to travel. Swiss officials, accepting
of SF200,OOO, provided temporary residence pernlits and
Passes" for former Nazis to move clandestinely thr.ough
and disappear beyond the Allies' control. Among the
ared routes was the regular KLM flight, booked in Swissair
to Argentina and BraziL- "The Swiss government," noted
,aruth, the assistant military attache in Bern, "made a consid
profit getting rid of [the Germans and ensured] that toO many
were not asked."
Other privileged Germans, allowed to remain in Switzerland,
enjoying such relaxed conditions that the country was con
in the House of Commons as a refuge for former Nazis. In
luxury hotels and villas, Nazi Germany's former diplomats,
dealers and SS officers, pampered by newly recruited staff,
in expensive cars. In Davos, the location of the German
Catholic sanatoria that in wartime had been centers of
espionage, former Nazis who had crossed the border look
impoverished soon tapped into their protected bank deposits to
new clothes, eat well and rejoin "the anti-Semitic movement." In
conversations, none voiced any contrition about the past.
they spoke of vengeance against the Americans for the injus
they had suffered. Among the many sources of suspected income
15 tons of gold bullion, mostly in coins, missing from a Berlin
controlled by von Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry and 3 tons
had been smuggled across the border into Switzerland at Lake
�168 •
TOM BOWER
. Constance. None of those Gernlans was pursued as the Jews
been by von Steiger's police or was subjected to investigation
Compensation Office officials, who were preventing Jews from
ing access to their funds. The accumulation of those reports
persuaded the British and French governmentS in September to
protest letters to Bern abol![ the Swiss failure to fulfill their
The instinctive reaction in Bern was to ignore any criticism,
Gem1an influence was beginning to encroach on SwitzerJann',
tude toward the accord.
)
On September 13, Stucki chaired the first meeting of the
comInission to implement the accord. Two antagonists faced
across the conference table. Robert Dunant, representing
Bankers Association, was upset and determined to forestall
fer of 50 percent of the Gem1an property, the loot and th
assetS to the Allies and Jews. Having warned Petitpierre sinoe
that the Currie agreement was dangerous, Dunant, the son
prominent Swiss diplomat, had ever since unloaded his fellow
bers' complaints onto the minister, attacking the government's
ion that "the Swiss people would not understand if the Gem1an
were left untouched." In funereal tones, the bankers' representative
eXlDressecJ his "exceptional regret," as a Swiss patriot, that the
had been signed. "It's contrary to Switzerland's constitution," he
insisted, "it will undermine Switzerland's sovereignty, and, most
olL~ly, itwill be exploited by the Allies to allow Switzerland's
petitors to discover our commercial secretS." Stucki understood
the bankers were declaring war on the accord, expecting "wit'7prl.nrl
to renege on the agreement.
The second antagonist facing Stucki was Heinrich Hornberger
the industrialists' Voron, the representative of Switzerlanc,l's
powerful clan. Hornberger's influence was only too evident: he
provided with an office In the MiniStry of Econonrics to facilitate
access to civil servantS and ministers in the shaping of Switzerland's
policies.
Stucki's opening remarks, which ruffled his adversaries' fearbers;
showed that he was not easily manipulated: "There's resistance to the
NAZI GOLD.
169
accord. We're getting reportS. that some
groups are causing problems in the freeze on
assetS." Dunant and Hornberger knew that the reality was
than Stucki and Schwab could
Swiss companies that
agreed to become protectors of Gem1an companies at the out
of the war were refusing to transfer property back to the
ms--either to protect it from seizure or purely for profit.
Swiss displayed outright greed. "It's shameful," said Max Ott
's countrymen's avarice, "how many people think that thev can
take these Gerrnan assetS."
Unknown to Hornberger and Dunant, Schwab's suspicions about
ir activities had prompted the Compensation Office to tap a num
of telephones. Schwab's motives were laudable. He was
rs and unsubstantiated reports, and his only chance of dis
loot and hidden fortunes held by those known to be workclosely with the CTCm1anS was by taps. Those suspicions nonethe
reinforced the antagonism in the room,
to Stucki,
approach would increasingly reveal his Jekyll-and-Hyde char
that to avoid isolation and allay the financiers' fears he should
direction. So, with a hint of skepticism, he began explaining
the implementation of the accord could be delayed. The
ruse, he suggested, was to argue with the Allies about the
rate for calculating the value of the Gemlan assetS. "We
like lions iIi Washington over the exchange rate," Stucki told
Hornberger and Dunant. "The Allies are obviously very interested in
'selling off the Gem1an assetS as fast as possible, not least because the
SF50 million is to be used for the Nazis' victims. But so long as
sale hasn't started, they can't have the money. So we've got a bar
counter which we shouldn't waste."
H9 m berger wam1ed. tQ StucJ9's new defiant tone, . In cryptic
'understood by everyone present he declared: "I'm pleased \\.'ith
report. I've always wondered whether the accord could ever be
iffiplemented. I've always believed that fixing the exchange rate will
;aetem1ine everything." Left unspoken, however, was his anger with
Stucki. Gem1any's assetS in Switzerland, he believed, should not be
�170 •
shared with the Allies but
to the Swiss state.
TOM BOWER
be used to payoffGermany's
Nine days later, at the second meeting, Hornberger raised a
demand. German assets in Switzerland, he told Stucki, should
used to payoff private debts owed to Swiss nationals. "That's
" protested Stucki, dearly disliking the industrialist's
"The Allies insist on using the money for reconstruction and we
hand over some money to the victims of the Nazis. There'll be a
argument with the Allies if we do wh2t Herr Hornberger
Hornberger was unimpressed: "Your arguments_ are political
everything will change." Stucki disagreed. "The accord may be
but if it looks as if we are breaking the agreement and representimi
German interests, it would do us no good and we'd be giving the
the chance to mke everything." Stucki knew how to interp.." ';'
Hornberger's silence. Switzerland's industrialists were untroubled
the Allies' feelings or threats.
Toward the ~nd of that second meeting, Dunant asked about the
fate of the heirless assets. Stucki's reply was encouraging_ Their fate,
said the
would be determined by those sitting around
table. There was no mention of asking Switzerland's financial com
munity to deliver the results of its investigation initiated by
Petirpierre. The subject would not be furmally discussed for another
rwo years.
Stucki's resolute indifference was prompted by the sudden tur
moil across the border. News reports were describing a major break
in rela"tions berween the Western Allies and the Soviet Union on the
question of Germany's economic future. For the first time a perrna- '
nent division of Germany was being discussed, In the developing
struggle to establish Europe's fate, Switzerland was too unimportant
to attract much attention from_the Allies.
The reply to the Foreign Office's mild protest in September had
been a question from Stucki calculated to deter any further interest.
Britain was asked to supply any information about the heirless assets
in Switzerland and to explain how the British government intended
to discover the heirless assets deposited in Britain, Gerry Villiers was
NAZI GOLD. 171
There was no mention of any Allied responsibility in the
Agreement, and naturally the British government had not con
searching the British banks for those assets--nor did it
such a search possible. In the absence of banking secrecy
inquiries by Jewish survivors without any information were rou
circulated among Britain's banks, and if the names matched,
bank immediately admitted the existence of an account. All that
was for the claimants to prove their right to the inheri
The Swiss, it was clear to VilIiers, were "just
" The
could not suggest to the Swiss how else to trace the assets.
best solution, Villiers decided, was to "throw the ball back" to
A mericans, such passionate supporters of the cause: "I'll be inter
to see what the result will be." Six months had elapsed since the
had promised to explain their proposals for the heirless assets.
the commercial secretary in Bern, wanted to know whether
he'should fonnally inquire about progress. The consensus in London
to ignore the Swiss query and to remain silent.
In Paris, a similar Swiss inquiry received an obfuscatory reply.
Since the nonmonetary gold found in Germany, replied the Quai
d'Orsay, had been given to the Jews, the French government was not
obliged to introduce legislation to discover and hand over to the vic
tims of Nazism any property 'deposited in France. This evasion con
cealed France's refusal, in contrast to the behavior of the British and
U.S. armies, to hand over to the Allied depository all the gold and
other valuables whose ownership was now unknown but that had
been confiscated from the Jews. Among the valuables shipped to
Paris, allegedly for the compilation of an inventory, were 2,500 kilos
of gold belonging to Hungary, and cases of jewelry and paintings,
seized from Jews, discovered in the Austrian Tyrol. Their fate in
France remained unknowjf.
The Swiss letter to the State Department was cunning: "1t would
, be helpful to the Swiss authorities to know the basis for the allegation
of the Allied governments that a considerable number of the victims
of the Nazi persecution died without heirs and had their estates in
Switzerland." At the end of the short, polite note was a reference to
�17 2 •
TOM BOWER
Poland's claims to the heirless assets ofPolish citizens. In
gle to find an answer to the main question, State Department offi(
neither pondered the mention of Poland nor contemplated
amendment of the law to discover the heirless assets in U.S.
There were no secrecy laws to prevent a bank's disclosure
deposit, and if an account was dormant for ten or more years, it
automatically disclosed in public advertisements. To
beleaguered State Department officials, the minutiae ofsmall
money and wartime principles were becoming irrelevant
with the fate of Europe. Paul Culberston, head of the
Department's Western European division, shared the British
interest in Safehaven. Irreconcilable difficulties with the Soviet
ernment relegated the differences with Switzerland to the status
unwelcome irritation. Western Europe's survival depended upon
unity of purpose. Chasing Nazi war criminals and Nazi loot
interfering with the bewildering skirmishes being fought Over
evolution of a strategy. The crusaders had become an embarrass
ment. The United States, Culbertson told William Clayton, assistant
secretary ofsta te, in October, was viewed by the Swiss as the "big bad
wolf," not least because too many staff members in the State and
Treasury Departments considered the Swiss "a bunch of crooks."
Culbertson wanted to remove the "running sore" with the Swiss and
withdraw all but one of the Safehaven personnel in Switzerland. The
Swiss should be allowed, he concluded, to run Safehaven. Clayton
agreed.
Without telling Rubin, Culbertson dispatched Benjamin
Kittridge, a State Department official, to visit Albert Nussbaumer in
Zurich. Kittridge confided to the Swiss banker, Petitpierre's roving
ambassador, that his department was "fed up with postwar animosity"
and wanted to reestablish a ~o~al ;elationship with Switzerland.
The problems, admitted Kittridge, were caused by "certain personal
ities among the American delegation in Bern whom he would inves
tigate." Nussbaumer immediately advised Petitpierre to respond to
the "indisputably" pro-Swiss State Department, "who do not agree
with the Treasury." To the minister it appeared that Safehaven was
NAZI GOLD. 173
but dead, not least because the Treasury representatives in Be~
failing to block the sieve as loot disappeared and German prop
became harder to expropriate. The quest for the heirless assets
suffering in the retreat.
Placed in the front line of the dragnet for the plunder and the
money, Max Schwab and Max Ott of the Conservation Office
andicapped. Confronted by the overwhelming hostility of the
and industrialists, they could no longer rely on the Political
"Department for suppOrt. Despite his honest but connlsed intentions,
could not untangle the myriad interlocking local relation-
between German and Swiss companies, nor could he penetrate
the secrecy laws to discover the heirless assets or the German
Schwab's failures to seize Gennan property for the Allies were fre
picked up by Allied intelligence officers in Germany inter
cepting the mail with Switzerland. Letters addressed to Swiss banks,
pften coded, revealed Germans illegally entering Switzerland to man
their assets, which should have been sold, or using their funds in
.blocked accounts to offSet debts to each other; other intercepts
revealed how Germans were transferring their fortunes Out of
Switzerland by using Chinese or South American businessmen to buy
SWiss products with the Germans' money. Inside Switzerland-unlike
the situation during the war-neither MI6 nor two American intelli
gence officers, Harvey Ginsberg and James Kronthal, had replicated
the Allies' wartime successes by comprehensively penetrating the
Swiss banks, the industrialists' boardrooms, the Compensation Office
. or Stucki's office. Inconsequential intelligence reports to London and
"Washington mentioned an increase in food parcels sent to Germany,
;:. the suspici'ous activities ofa Christian relief orgaruzation and the con
tinued presence of suspected Germans, but in total it amounted to
ignorance. Schwab and his staff, dubbed "uncooperative" by Selous,
revealed nothing. Whenever American or British diplomat~ submitted
examples of undisclosed German assets, Schwab merely replied, "We
know about that already."
Schwab was lying, yet out of the Allies' sight he was fighting with
age
"I
�174 •
TOM BOWER
the banks to reveal the truth about the Allies' rcports. In qne
had inquired about a Gemlan account.· The bank replied
February 16, 1945, the day the freeze was declared, the account
not exist. After persistent questioning, Schwab discovered that
days before February r 6, in anticipation of the freeze, the
had been transferred into the name of an Englishwoman living
China and the German had continued drawing on his money.
using blank checks signed by the woman. "It is," admitted
typical case ofcloaking." Although the bank was liable to prosecutir
and a fine, no action was taken. Even the bank's refusal to reveal
client's name remained unpunished. Switzerland's prosecutors
refusing to administer a'law denounced by bankers and their
as unjust and ridiculous. ~'We're not finding much understandir
the COUr!5," Ott told Stucki. "If the courts refuse to do their job
eriy," replied Stucki, "that's their problem. That must not prevent
from prosecuting." Ott was not persuaded. His feeling was that
Germans should be grateful to the Swiss for using the freeze to
tect their assets." Their irreconcilable struggle remained unknown
Allied diplomats in Bern, who witnessed only Stucki's
defense ih the national interest of what he privately condemned.
To denigrate the Allies, Stucki called a press conference
January 1947 to announce that, although the Allies had reported one
thousand cases of hidden German assets, only five were unknown
the Swiss govenrment. In Sweden, Rubin had swiftly negotiated
agreement that 74 percent of German assets would be sold and
proceeds handed to the Allies and thence the refugees; by
the Swiss vigorously disputed the value of German assets. Instead
the$r billion estimated by Allies, the Compensation Office's valua-.
cion was $r 20 million. Stucki's department, cajoled by bankers and
industrialists, was see~ing rus~s JO avoid irnplemencing- the
and to- manif~st exemplary fairness toward the Germans as proof
Switzerland's reliability; "We cannot allow the world to think
the German owners did not get fair compensation."
Within their closed sanctum, Switzerland's bankers and industri~
alists had persuaded themselves that their country was under siege.
NAZi GOLD.
175
at the American press reports," Ernst Speiser, a director of
Boveri, the engineering giant, told Stucki and Hornberger.
even suggesting that we are trying to sabotage the
asmngron Accord." Stucki growled,"We'll have to hold on to our
The blame, he said, to general agreement, lay with the
Safehaven team, who were feeding Micha~i Hoffmim, the
Nw York Times correspondent, with malicious gossip. "It's all
money, companies and the expansion of American cartels,"
complained. Schwab agreed. Reagan,_ Conover and Mann
condemned together for sharing anti-Swiss sentiment-moci
solely by the desire to help U.S. corporations seize German
Schwab's mlsconceptions were mixed with a modicum of realSafehaven team in Bern, he told everyone, was "isolated and
count on any support from Washington." "We'll go on the
soon and deal with them," snapped Stucki. "Reagan isn't
and we're not helpless." Hornberger's prediction about the
diminution of the Allies' aggression was turning out to have been cor
weakening the effectiveness of the Compensation Offiee and
presenting an omen for Stucki as his misgivings about the bankers'
were sustained.
In spring 1947, Stucki became disquieted by the discovery that the
one of Switzerland's biggest banking chains, had
furtively ceased paying interest on foreign accounts ten years earlier.
it to be an isolated case, he told Dunant, the Bankers
Association'S representative, "I believe we have a duty not to allow the
banks' enrichment to pass unnoticed." Irritated by Stucki's moral fer
and keen to minimize the revelation, Dunant soothed, "Only
twenty-seven Kantonalbank branches according to the Compensation
Office are involved. Very few Germans deposited money in that chain.
most we talking about repaYing SFr million.
Compensation
Office, he suggested, was exaggerating the problem associated with
controlling "hot money" in 1937. Yet the implications of Dunant's
limited admission were considerable. Unclaimed deposits in the
twenty-seven banks, probably belonging to non-C'..ennan Jews, werc
worth, according to the Compensation Office, SF6 million. Among
�176 •
TOM BOWER
the thousands of individual branches of Swiss banb, the
deposits could amount to hundreds of millions of francs.
U~~"U'JU~ of Dunant, Stucki proposed that the
be referred to a court. Dunant was appalled'by that prospect.
were serious disadvantages the banks might
he told
that course were pursued. The two agreed to a compromise: a
investigation would be undertaken by the Compensation Office
Weeks later, the new investigation revealed an even more
scenario. Swiss banks, discovering that a donnant account
to a Gennan or a foreign Jew, had retrospectively deducted the
est paid over many years on savings accounts, anticipating that
would not be a complaint because the depositor could well have
murdered. By any measure, the banks were euiltv of a crude
Stucki was shocked.
Dunant was forced into the defensive. Iri a
on September 9, the bankers' representative explained, "This
done only to the Gennans but to everyone except Swiss nationals
abroad." His explanation exposed his loss of contact with
"Swiss banks infonned all their foreign customers. They a/l
what we had done and none of them protested." The idea that
German or Polish Jew living in the fear of the Gestapo who
a letter about interest payments from a Swiss bank might
about it was inconceivable to everyone except Dunant and the
bers of his association, No one pointed out that, to avoid risk,
instructions accompanying practically every
account in
Swiss bank forbade the dispatch of any correspondence to the
itOr. Letters to the banks' clients would therefore have been sent
mailboxes inside the bank itself. Stucki's inveterate ~U"IJ";}U1L>
banks were being reinforced as Dunant's explanations unfolded.
"There's
a misunderstanding," said Schwab, interruptinO'Dunant. "I was present at the National Bank when it was agreed
suspend paying interest to stop 'hot money' from coming ir
Switzerland. It was never the intention to punish savers. The small
banks have actually continued paying interest. And it's particularly'
crass that interest was retrospectively deducted."
NAZI GOLD. 177
e are trustees for the Germans," insisted Stucki. "Vie must
for their interests."
was nonplussed. His association had confiscated the
from every foreign deposit account, and here was Stucki, with
, legalistic, bureaucratic mind, wanting to make distinc
"But we can't make an exception for the Germans," he
The confusion was compounded in a written report compiled
Bankers A,>sociatlon. Most interest payments, explained
stopped only in May I946, afrer the
His earlier explanation about
.1937 had become incomprehensible. Three weeks later, the
ompensation Office's own investigation exposed Dunant's lies. In a
of all bank accounts, it was found that the interest payments
aried widely. Only I6.5 percent of all savings accounts, Stucki's
reported, were fairly administered , while 35.2 percent of the for
account.'> and 38.9 percent of German accounts were "badly"
The discrepancies exposed how the banks were
"exploiting foreign savers for their OV.TI profit.
"The bank, acted unscrupulously," Stucki
':Homhenrer as they read the report. "I just don't understand why the
defends a minority of banb."
conveniently, was absent. Schwab added his support:, "The
association swore that all the bank, had behaved with absolute hon
esty. At the last meeting Dunant said he'd shoot this one down."
Ott was outspoken: "The banks clearly thought that it was all a
theoretical discussion."
Disdainful of that unanimity, Hornberger defended the banks.
Gennans left their money here for security, not for the inter
'esf:Surely we can't Jorcethe banks to pay interest?" Amazed, Stucki
replied, "We must protect the Gennans. We'll let a court decide."
I, Hornberger, not to be outflanked as a protector of Gennan interests,
also cared for the banks. He spoke on behalf of all of Switzerland's
.,
;:
i'
�t,
17 8 •
TOM BOWER
action." Stucki accepted defeat. Schwab uttered a cry of despair:
always tell everyone that we protect the Germans. But I don
stand why interest should not be paid just because it suits the
Schwab, of course, knew the answer to his own outburst. The
enjoyed influence and protection among the nation's power
And there was now a unity of purpose among Dunant, HOTnhp",,,
and most government officials to champion Switzerland's
reassure the Germans, rebut the Allies and ignore the Jews.
II
EH.FIDIOUSSWISS
conspiracy, Walter Stucki was convinced, challenged and
Switzerland. As Switzerland's relationship with the Allies
1n1OrOved, he became obsessed witlr£fear that his country's recov
."".,"\.
was hindered by maliciou'{i:h[ea~{..ar;~ criticism published in
and American newsp}p.~f~~;:jh~;:cq"nspirators, he believed,
*':6 i!'1'-." .. h
~ ..
members of the Committee~AgaiIisf the Third World War,
chairman, he was sure, I$,...
w~;LWctVansittart, the mouthpiece
fo~theJews.
~
~
.
. ,. In fact, Vansittart, an outst'aading senidt British civil servant, had
·.N
"
. led the prewar campaign again's}; appeasem:ent and Hitler and in the
q .
: postwar years was an equally p-assionate a~ticommunist. He was not
Jewish but a devout churchmm, not anti~.?wiss, and not associated
With the committee. But Stuckd paranoia, ~ommon among his coun
en, effortlessly fed his deilThions. "Thl committee is 80 percent
c:.
" Stucki told Homberg~9and the ba~kers. "Its guiding spirit is
a French Jew." Hirsch, identified as a F;enchman involved in its
work, had been banned from entering Switzerland. "We've got to
defend ourselves against dollar imperialism," agreed the industrialist
[Ernst Speiser solenlnty. Unembarrassed oy his articulation of the
l'Tazis' doctrine associating Jews, Americans and communists, he
~dded, "The Americans are obstructive." Brazen anti-Semitism and
, pro-Nazi sentiments had become common within the Compensation
Office. Max Ott, in a discussion about the fate ofIG Farben, revealed
that "a Galacian Jew called Roth has been nominated by the
~.t'...
~
'trym'
~
.o;;
179
��'l
.~,
,
'>\
. ~
~.~ ~c ~r.J6 or
"-{
M-v'5 e.-c.r-" )
,~
.» (. . "l.:
bO\~
~~ Ge~
c..(;;.t'"-po't;
)..,...
1>
t\I el-J \lac{ 't. Qf\
Ce-'j
1=',-, .... \~~\lS :1\)1""
CONTENTS
~ \~11
KG
Preface ...................................................................................:ix
~l-(J~
Part.1 A Tarnished History
C,:31
/'(11
©1999 by George Carp07.i, Jr.
ights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanical, or any information
1ge or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in the 1976
yright Act or in writing from the publisher.
l}'
.Jests for permission should be addressed to:
; Horizon Press
Box 669
Hills,. NJ 07931
'rge Carpozi, Jr.
i Gold: The Real Story of How the World Plundered Jewish Treasures
rior Design: Susan Sanderson
ar)' of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-66168
'>l: 0-88282-167-9
Horizon Press
mfactured in the U.S.A.
2002 200t 2000 1999 / 5 4 3 2
j
.'
Suspicions of Thievery .................................. 3
Nazi Carnage on Latvia ................................. 9
A Twofold Attack ......................................... 17
Swiss History ................................................. 33
A Bonanza - The German Salt Mines .....43
'Justice, Decency, and Plain ...................... 59
Horse Sense"
Chapter 7
Well-known Facts ......................................... 71
Chapter 8
Victims' Gold ............................. :............... :103
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part II Neutral Gold Games
Chapter 9
Swiss Lucre ................. ,................................ 111
Chapter 10
Sweden's Gold Fingers ................... ;.......... 135
Chapter 11
Spain's Gold Trafficking ............................ 151
Chapter 12
Portugal's Auric Stance .............................. 169
Chapter 13
The Argentine Connection ....................... 185
Chapter 14
Turkey'S Gilded Espionage ....................... 211
Chapter 15
Vermeil Secrets of the .............................. 225
Vatican Archiyes
1
v
�Carpozi
t III Allied Gold Maneuvers
British Gold "Fallout" ............................... 249
hapter
hapter 17 French Gold Links ......................... :........... 259
hapter 18 The United States Recasts Nazi Gold ....273
hapter 19 Additional U.S. Gold Diggers ......... :........ 291
t IV Tip of the Art-berg
hapter 20 Pandora's Box ............................................. 295
t V The Insurance Rip-off
:hapter 21 Unhonored Claims ..................................... 321
:hapter 22 Congress Moves to Punish Insurers ........ 331
t VI Coming to Terms
:hapter 23 Contemporary Efforts ............................... 345
,ppendix ............................................................................ 359
;ibliography ....................................................................... 427
:ontributors ....................................................................... 445
ndex ................................................................................... 447
see?" he cried. "The American Standard
"Don't
Translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call
sin ignorance. The I<lng James translation makes a promise
in Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel--'Thou
mayest'-that gives a choice. It might be the most important
word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it
right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'-it is also true
Thou mayest not.' Don't you see?"
John Steinbeck
0/ Eden
vii
�CHAPTER 4
Swiss History
Of all the "neutral" nations of World War II, the
one with the most pernicious role, which included the
deepest and most crucial economic relationship with Nazi
Germany, was, as has now been revealed, Switzerland.
The Swiss, of course, were in a precarious position
once France fell, due to the fact that they were a landlocked
country on Germany's border and at her mercy. The Allies
were putting pressure on the neutral countries to stop or
restrict their trade with Germany, but there had to be some
balance in the case of Switzerland since Britain needed spe
cialized imports and Swiss francs. Also, the Brits were wary
that if too much pressure was brought to bear, Germany
33
�Carpozi
35
might occupy Switzerland as it had France,
Switzerland further into the Axis camp.
According to the State Departmcnt's US. andAllied
refugees were admitted from 1933 until the
. end of the war.
~q
"But Switzerland imposed on Jewish communities
the burden of sustaining the Jews admitted after the out
break of war." (Most were interned in labor
? !,
"In August and December 1944, Switzerland admit
ted an additional 1,700 concentration camp inmates from
1945 an additional 1,200
34
Efforts to RecolJer and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolm or
Hiddetl by (;CI'!!/{1I1Y DJlfi/i!j, [J/'or/d War II, Swit%.erland's role
and after the war was "very mixc.:i."
"Switzerland ended World War II as one of the
wealthiest nations in Europe," Eizenstat writes in the fore
word to the report.
"Tt conducted wide with the Allied countries as
well as with the Axis powers. The Swiss National Bank
maintained gold accounts for Nazi Germany throughout
the entire war but also received deposits of the precious
monetary metal from the United States, Canada, and Great
Britain as well."
From the Allies standpoint, the
guy" role the
Swiss played during the war was in serving a~ "a
base
for U.S. intelligence gathering" and as "a protecting
power-most critically for its POWs."
Despite the approval of
the Swiss govern
ment admitted shortly after the war that their policies on
refugees during the war fell short in that innumerable
amounts of displaced Jews looking to escape Nazi perse
cution were turned away from Swiss borders. Also, the
Swiss government persuaded Nazi Germany to incorporate
the T stamp in their efforts to 'persecute Jews. The T stamp
allowed easy. identification of Jews and in turn, made it
nearly impossible for-Jews to -flee Germany or Geririari
occupied countries and to find sanctuary in many other
countries.
However, it must be said that "As many as about
However, the Swiss washed their hands of further
because "various Jewish
.: communities were
to support these additional surBut no such demands were exacted on Swiss rela
tives of well over 100,000 non-Jewish refugees taken in
, after 1940. The government catered unselfishly to their
wants and needs after welcoming them for settlement in the
country.
At the end of 1944, "Secretary of State [Edward
Reilly] Stettinius and his State Department colleagues con
. eluded that, on balance, Switzerland's neutrality had been
more a positive than a negative for the Allies during the
'. war," the 1997 State Department
stated.
But the study found the conduct of the State De
partment to be totally misguided.
Labeling Stettinius's conclusion a "benign
ment;' the report pointed out that the view expressed by
'the Roosevelt -administration cabinet member was "not
shared by other agencies, from the War Department and
Treasury Department to the Office of Strategic Services
(aSS), and the Justice Department."
�Carpozi
37
Those agencies noted that in addition to its critical
banking practices for the Nazis, Switzerland also engaged
in direct industrial production for the Axis and helped pro
tect the enemy's investments.
"Swiss shipping lines," the teport went on, "also
furnished Germany with a large number of boats for the
transport of goods... [and] also allowed an unprecedented
use of its railways to link Germany and Italy for the trans
port of coal and other goods.
"Switzerland provided Germany with arms, ammu
nition, aluminum, machines, and precision tools, as well as
agricultural products.
"Swiss convoys [with immunity from aerial attack
by Allied forces because of its neutral status] carried
ucts from Spain across France throueh Switzerland to
German},
"Swiss banks serviced Nazi markets in Latin
America.
"This conduct continued even as the Germans
retreated and the threat of invasion [of England bv Nazi
troops} evaporated.
"As late in the war as early 1945, Switz<:rland viti
ated an agreement it had
reached with the United States
to freeze German assets and to restrict purchases of
from Germany."
Switzerland's indifferent and unconcernced attitude
persisted in the postwar negotiations, and it' was in that
period which the. State Department study, in the words of
its historian \'(1illiam Siany, "is most incomprehensible."
The report's most damning findings against the
Swiss to surface are: "The Swiss teams were obdurate
negotiators, using legalistic positions to defend their every
. interest, regardless of the moral issues also at stake.
opposed returning any Nazi
for instance,
. gold to those from whom it was stolen, and they denied
having received any looted gold. The Swiss contended
that they had purchased it in good faith, that it was war
booty obtained in accordance with international
principles by the Third Reich during its. victorious cam
paigns, and that there was no international
principle
which would entitle the Allies to recover and redistribute
Nazi assets."
That stance flew squarely in the face of all that is
honest and righteous, for the amount of Germany'S gold
reserves before the war was well known. The evidence pre
sented in the State Department report is eminently clear
and incontrovertible.
The Swiss National Bank and private Swiss
bankers knew, as the war progressed, that the Reichsbank's.
own reserves had been depleted and that the Swiss were
handling vast sums of looted
Intelligence reports indicate the Swiss were totally
aware of the Nazi gold heists from central bank reserves of
neutral and occupied countries.
36
The ever-so-difficult-to-pin-down Swiss were
fina11y corralled in 1946 with an agreement hammered out
between the Allies and the Swiss at a gathering' in the
United States in Washington, D.C.
The accord obligated Switzerland to transfer 250
�38
Carpozi
in gold to the Allies for
million Swiss francs ($58.1
of which a portion
the reconstruction of war-torn
was to be redirected to the assistance of stateless victims,
for the most part Jews.
In that same agreement, the Swiss committed
themselves to identify dormant accounts that were heirless
and could be used for the benefit of Nazi victims.
That $58.1 million in German-looted gold to be
turned over to the Allies was far less than the range of
$185-to-$289 million in stolen funds the State and Treasury
Departments estimated was stashed at the end of the war
in the Swiss National Bank vault in its own
account.
An additional $120 million of German-looted gold
was also estimated to be on deposit for other countries at
that time. But the Swiss were not forthcoming about the
possible availability of those funds for the "humanitarian"
purposes they consented to participate in.
The $58.1 million finally coughed up by Switzerland
was promptly paid to the Tripartite Gold Commission
(TGC) for redistribution to claimant countries.
"But the other part of the Accord," according to
the State Department's report, "the liquidation of hun
dreds of millions of dollars in German assets, was neither
promptly nor even fully implemented." In an effort to
avoid fulfIlling their part of the accord, the Swiss pro
longed the process by raising arbitrary questions and bela
boring fIne poilHs of the agreement. They also demanded
concessions from the United States including the unblock
ing of the same German assets the Swiss were supposed to
liquidate.
Nazi Gold
39
"They refused to make an exemption for the assets
of surviving Jews from Germany and heirless German
Jewish assets, and continued to make them subiect to
dation," William Slany's study ret)OI:te(:i.
"They refused to recognize any moral obligation to
return looted Dutch gold when evidence became available
after the conclusion of the 1946 negotiations."
By 1950 United States mediators grimly concluded
. that the Swiss "had no intention of ever implementing the
1946 Washington Accord."
Secretary of State Dean Acheson was then com
pelled to remark: "If Sweden has been an intransigent
negotiator, then Switzerland was intransigence 'cubed.'"
While the United States was trying to make the
Swiss acknowledge the Nazi gold stockpiled in thei! banks,
action was taken in September 1946 to carry out a mandate
of the past January's Paris Reparations Agreement reached
by representatives of the United States, Britain, and France'
and which was called the Tripartite Gold Commission
(TGC), to be headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
Its task was to review and adjudicate claims from
governments (not individuals) for the restitution of looted
monetary gold recovered in Germany or acquired from the
"neutrals" in their negotiations with the Allies.
The TGC was to ensure that each claimant coun
try would receive restitution from the gold pool assembled
by the Allies for the Commission in proportion to its loss
of monetary gold at the hands of the Germans during the
war.
�40
.;,
1
~
11
Carpozi
Immediately after the TGC's establishment, ten
nations made claims for the looted Nazi gold: AJbania,
Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia, and finally and ironically,
Germany's wartime ally, Italy.
The Commission made its first distribution of $143
million from the gold pool in October 1947 .. AJ1ocations
went to Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia.
Frarlce, one of the participants in the Tripartite's
formation, did not file as a claimant but was entided to
receive reparations in 'the same manner as the ten other
nations who filed for compensation.
A second round of allocations was made by the
TGC between 1958 and 1966. A payment went out to
Albania as recently as October 1996.
Overall, payments of 329 metric tons of gold, ini
. tially worth $380 million (today $4 billion) have been made
to the claimant nations. Of that amount, $264 million came
from the Foreign Exchange Depository (FED) that was
formed in 1945 as a section of the Office of Military
Government United States (OMGUS) by the American
occupation force in Germany.
The FED was
supervision over the Reichs
bank building in Frankfurt and made custodian of some
400 million reichsmarks in gold that the bank had hidden in
the Merkers salt mines which were discovered bv American
troops who overran Germany in 1945.
. Be~een 1945 and i 948, the FED collected, guarded,
inventoried, and distributed to various countries nearly $300
million in gold bullion and gold coins ($2.9 billion
41
The FED worked with Allied governments, occu
pation authorities, and the Tripartite Gold Commission in
. inventorying that collection (consistent with official defini- .
tions of monetary and non-monetary gold), and making
disbursements as agreei:l:
Just when it seemed everything was settled and
terms had been arranged to have the Swiss release their ill
gotten Nazi gold, a voice against the terms of the Allied
Swiss agreement was sounded by United States Senator
Harley Kilgore, who earlier had approved the pact.
Writing to President Harry S. Truman,
argued that the agreement "violates both in spirit and in
form the Allies' pledge to route out Nazism and the
German war potential" and would "leave intact Nazi
resources and strengthen the hand of Nazis and Nazi col
laborationists in Switzerland, and eventually in all neutral
and Allied countries."
That was Kilgore's first voHev. He had more' to
complain about, much more ....
�"'.
CHAPTER 5
j,
A Bonanza-
The German Salt Mines
The effort to restore the Nazi
to its rightful
owners wouldn't have been possible at all had it not been
for the intrepidness of United States troops in their mop
up operations
the last days of the war in April 1945.
Barely two months earlier, in February 1945, as the
Allied forces closed in on Hider's belfaguered troops,
German officials took steps to relocate all German
·reserves in their· possession to various ·remote hideaways
south of Berlin.
About 400 million reichsmarks in
were shipped
43
�44
Carpozi
to the Merkers salt mines in Thuringia in the southwest
region of eastern
and stashed in the labvrinthine
mazes of that underground
In addition, fifty million reichsmarks in gold were
distributed to branch offices of the Reichsbank in central
and southern Germany. Both the Merkers treasure and
most of the lesser holdings were recovered by United
States Armed forces in the closing days of the war and
transported to Frankfurt am Main for what was intended to
be purposes of "security and central accounting."
I\c'rnni"na to
the salt mine bonanza probably repre
sented about 20 percent of all gold held in lJe:rrrlan,y.
When American troops stormed the Merkers mine,
found a spectacular and substantial
currency, and other valuables.
Word was flashed to the Treasury
Washington about what the soldiers had found.
Secretary Henry Morgenthau was advised by his top aide,
Frank
that the recovered bullion must be placed in a
"reparations fund" until final plans were drafted to dispose
Morgenthau didn't immediately
to Coe's
opting to "take the recommendation under advise
ment."
The preliminary part of the report, U.S. and Allied
to Recover and Restore Gold, states, "The Reichsbank trea
sUre
by the United States Army in the salt mines
at Merkers consisted of more than just
bars and cur
rency. Lying in one area of the mines were
bags of
silver and gold alloy bars and 189
boxes, suitcases,
Nazi Gold
45
and trunks containing jewelry; gold and silver articles such as
. watches,
rings, cigarette cases, compacts, 'fJ!<::LI.aL.lt:
frames, candle sticks, and Passover cups; hundreds of
of dental crowns and fillin!lS; and !lold and silver
':Also captured at Merkers was Albert
head
of the Reichsbank's Precious Metals
identified the 207 bags and containers as
'Melmer' account belonging to the SS [the German Secret
Police, also known as Storm Troopers].
"The implications of this SS horde were immedi
ately recognized. Brigadier General Frank McSherry sug
gested that 'this SS property contains evidence which might
be useful in the prosecution of war criminals' and had the
and containers stored in a separate room in the vaults
of the Foreign Exchange Depository."
Over the next two years, British and American
forces investigatory teams did a thorough examination of
Reichsbank records and
German officials
involved in the thievery committed
Jews and
Gentile "enemies" of the Third Reich and pieced together
the story of the Melmer account. Most important sources
of information were. Thoms, Reichsbank Vice President
Emil. Puhl, and SS-Hautsurmfuhrer (Captain) Bruno
Melmer, all of whom were interrogated by or at the request
of the United States Army's Finance Division.
What they found was
together chiefly at
Frankfurt.
to records from the
the FED's Central Files, and
�46
Carpozi
Nazi Gold
47
i
provided sworn statements, this is the sum and substance
of the way Hitler's secret police pcocessed the loot they
extracted from their victims:
Puhl claimed that sometime in the Summer of
1942, Reichsbank president and Reich Minister of
Economy Walter Funk informed him of an agreement
between Reich chieftain of the SS and its police force
Himrnler and Reich Finance Minister Lutz Schwerin vonn
Krosigk, which sanctioned the Reichsbank to receive ship
ments of confiscated jewelry and securities from the SS.
After converting these shipments into cash, the
bank was to use the funds to finance Germany's industrial
enterprises.
Funk instructed Puhl to make the necessary arrange
ments for these shipments with Oswald Pohl, head of the SS
Economic Administrative Main Office (SS-\WHA). After
meeting with Pohl, Reichsbank Vice President Puhl relin
quished responsibility for dealing with the shipments to Otto
Frommknecht, the Reichsbank's director for cash and vault,
and to Frommknecht's subordinate Thorns, the head of the
bank's Precious Metals Department.
In his interrogation by the United States Army,
'Pohl confirmed that he met with Puhl in the summer of
1942, and the two worked "in the utmost secrecy in arrang
. ing for gold, jewelry, and foreign currency to be deposited
in the Reichsbank-while gold teeth and crowns taken
from concentration camp victims were to be melted down
and the. gold ingots transferred to the Reichsbank."
After those arrangements had been agreed upon, all
subsequent shipments from the East and from concentra
tion camps were forwarded to the Reichsbank.
As head of the. Precious Metals Department,
Thorns was able to provide many details about the SS ship
ments to officials of the Finance Division, which employed
. him to examine the captured Reichsbank records for traces
of the looted central bank gold.
Thorns recalled that, again in the summer of 1942,
Frommknecht sent him to Puhl, who informed him that the
SS was about to begin delivering shipments to the
Reichsbank that would contain not only gold, silver, and for
eign currency, which was in the Reichsbank's area of compe
. tence, but also jewelry and other .types of property whose
disposal would be the Reichsbank's responsibility. Puhl also
told Thorns that in the interest of secrecy the Reichsbank
must dispose of those items itself.
Shortly after that meeting, Pohl's deputy, SS
Brigadefuhrer (Brigadier General) August Frank informed
Thorns that an SS officer named Melrner would deliver the
first shipment in a truck.
The shipment arrived on August 26, 1942, and
other deliveries quickly followed.
The tenth delivery, in November 1942, was the first
that included dental gold, and subsequent shipments con
tained .even larger amounts of similar grisly metaL
The deliveries were first deposited into an account
designated "Melmer." The Reichshank then sorted and
inventoned the deliveries before disposing of them.
Gold and silver bars and currency w:ere bought by
the bank at full value from the SS and small items like gold
rings were sent to the Prussian Mint for smelting.
Jewelry and larger foreign currency were dispatched
to the Municipal Pawnshop, which sold the better items
!
1
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�48
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Carpozi
abroad for foreign currency and sent most of the rest to
the Degussa firm for
Degussa, the Deutsche Gold-und Silber-Scheidean
German industrial enterprise that engaged
stalt, was a
in the refinement of precious metals and manufacture of
and chemicals, including hydrogen cyanide, the poi
son used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
(foday, the Frankfort-based firm·and world's leading man
ufacturer of dental alloys, is
a lawsuit filed in late
August 1998 bv Holocaust victims' families and survivors
for billions of
During the war, Degussa was allowed to keep a cer
'tain amount of gold for industrial purposes, but any gold
exceeding the permitted amount was sold back to the
Reichsbank and credit for the proceeds was deposited in
the SS account.
Thoms noted that a few of the deliveries contained
stamps or other designations indicating that they came
from concentration camps or from the cities of Auschwitz
and Lublin.
Reichsbank records confiscated at Merkers by the
Army and studied by the Finance Division provided addi
tional support for the claims of Thoms and MeImer about
the way gold and other assets were appropriated bv Hitler's
Storm Troopers.
On June 5, the Four Powers in occupation' of Ger
many-the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and
France-issued a declaration assuming supreme authority in
Germany. How to find; identify and gain control of looted
gold dominated that year. During July and August 1945, at
the Potsdam Conference, these powers appointed the Allied
Nazi Gold
49
Control Council in Berlin to claim custody of German
owned assets in other countries not already under Allied con-'
tro!. The Soviet Union would be able to claim property only
in Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Romania and the eastern part ,
of Austria. The Western Allies would take control of
German property in former neutral nations.
A gold
was established for the looted mone
tary gold recovered from Germany and the neutral coun
tries. Later, it was distributed to formerly occupied coun
tries. The idea of trus so-caUed gold pool, an American
suggestion, was taken up in November and December at
the' Paris Reparation Conference. Eighteen countries
attended and formally agreed that the United States, Great
Britain and France would administer the pool, and its work
was to be carried out by a speciaUy appointed commis
sion-the Tripartite Gold Commission,
Preparatory to that same conference, the British
view was that identifiable gold should be given back to the
owner while what was left should be put into the repara
tions settlement, However, according to the minutes of the
meeting, the British representative was forced to compro
mise and accept the French and American view that
because of the problems in identifying gold "all gold found
in Germany should be divided between the countries wruch
had the right to restitution, in proportion corresponding to
their losses."
It was decided to fund at least twenty million dollars
of aid to the victims of the Nazis who were now homeless
so that they could receive some part of the German repara
tions. In order to accomplish this, the non-monetary gold
found as well as some other German assets would be used.
�50
:\:
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11
In
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Carpozi
1946, the United States Military Government
knew from available records and from interrogations that,
beginning in August 1942, the Reichsbank received and
converted gold and other valuables that the SShad looted
from Jews the Nazis enslaved and 'murdered in Poland
and from Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp
inmates.
In fact, Puhl's role in arranging for "the receipt,
classification;deposit, conversion, and disposal of proper
ties taken by the SS from victims exterminated in concen
tration camps" formed the basis for his indictment in 1946
before the United States Military Tribunal at Nuremberg,
which subsequently sentenced him to five years' imprison
ment.
The source of the gold and other valuables in those
shipments was clear from the "Reinhardt" designation of
the file in which Melmer kept the correspondence relating
to his deliveries to the Reichsbank. The name of this fIle
referred to Operation Reinhardt, the SS program for
exploiting Jewish property and labor and murdering mil
lions of Jews in killing centers in Eastern Poland.
The Allies learned about the details of Operation
Reinhardt shortly after the war, and documents linkirig
.Oswald Pohl with the Reinhardt program contributed to
the decision of the United States Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg to sentence him to death.
The Reichsbank's Precious Metals Department
records captured at Merkers included receipts for at least
some of the SS shipments whose contents had been dis
posed of' or "processed," although the receipts didn't
Nazi Gold
51
include the value of the "non-currency" contents of deljv
eries that were disposed of through other agencies.
Based on those receipts, the Foreign Exchange
pepository concluded that there were seventy-eight deliv
eries of which about forty-three were fully inventoried by
the Reichsbank, which put the total value of the invento
ried deliveries at 23,455,78L96 reichsmarks, of which RM
1,866,329.18 were gold coins, and RM 3,018,623.13 gold
bars.
Thus it was possible to say that approximat~ly $1:6
million in gold coins and bars were received by the
Reichsbank in the first forty-odd deliveries of Melmer (SS
loot) received.
The bottom line in all these gymnastics bearing on
Nazi gold was repeated time and time again by the thieving
Nazis.
So that in the end, they had deposited the grand
total of $255.96 million worth of stolen gold in the
Reichsbankand the other repositories it chose toward war's
end as a safe haven for the loot in order to keep it out of
the hands of victorious Allied captors.
Comparisons of captured records from the Berlin
Reichsbank and United States Army inventories at the
Frankfurt Reichsbank show without equivocation that
approximately 98.6 percent of the $255.96 million worth of
. gold had been found and secured.
The question is, what happened to the 1.4 percent
of that precious metal that remained unaccounted for?
Three million was stolen and unaccounted fot somewhere
between the Berlin and Frankfurt terminals. To learn the
�52
Carpozi
answer, the Paris Conference on Reparation is pivotal:.
Part III of the Final Act
of the Paris Confer~nce on Reparation
(Monetary Gold)
A. All the monetary gold found in Germany by the
Allied Forces and that referred to in paragraph
G below (including gold coins, except those of
numismatic or historical value which shall be
restored directly if identifiable) shall be pooled
for distribution as restitution among the coun
tries participating in the pool in proportion to
their respective losses of gold through looting or
by wrongful removal to Germany.
B. Without prejudice to claims by way of repara
tion for unrestored gold, the portion of mone
tary gold thus accruing to each country partici
pating in the pool shall be accepted by that
country in full satisfaction of all claims against
Germany for restitution of monetary gold.
C A proportional share of the gold shall be allo
cated to each country concerned which adheres
to this arrangement for the restitution of mone
tary gold and which can establish that a definite
amount of monetary gold belonging to it was
looted by Germany, or, at any time after 12
March 1938, was wrongfully removed into
German territory~
n The question of the eventual participation of
countries not represented at the Conference
(other than Germany but including Austria and
53
Italy) in the abovementioned distribution shall
. be reserved, and the equivalent of the total
shares which these countries would receive, if
they were eventually admitted to participate,
shall be set aside to be disposed of at a later date
in such manner as may be decided by the Allied
Governments concerned.
E.. The various countries participating in the pool
shall supply to the Governments of the United
States of America, France and the United
Kingdom as the occupying Powers concerned,
detailed and verifiable data regarding the gold
losses suffered through looting by, or removal to,
Germany.
F The· Governments of the United States of
America, France and the United I(jngdom shall
take appropriate steps within the zones of
Germany occupied by them respectively to
implement distribution in accordance with the
foregoing provisions.
'
G. Any monetary gold which may be recovered
from a third country to which it was transferred
from Germany shall be distributed in accor
dance with this arrangement for the restitution
of monetary gold.
Part I, Article 8: Allocation of the Reparation
Share to Non-Repatriable Victims of
German Action
(Non-monetary Gold)
In recognition of the fact that large numbers of
�54
Carpozi
persons have suffered heavily at the hands of the
Nazis and now stand in dire need of aid to promote
their rehabilitation but will be unable to claim the
assistance of any Government receiving reparation
from
the Governments of the United
States of America, France, the United Kingdom,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in consultation with
the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees,
shall, as soon as possible, work out in common
agreement a plan on the following general lines:
A. A share of reparation conslstlOg of all the
non-monetary gold found bv the Allied Armed
Forces in .Jermany and in addition a sum not
exc:ee,cllOg "weIIlV""V'" million dollars shall be
allocated for the rehabilitation and resettlement
of non-reoatriable victims of German action.
B. The sum of twentv-five million dollars shall be
met from a portion of the proceeds of
German assets in neutral countries which are
available for reparation.
C. Governments of neutral countries shall be
requested to make available for this purpose (in
addition to the sum of twenty-five million dol
lars) assets in such countries of victims of Nazi
action who have since died and left no heirs.
o The persons eligible for aid under the plan in
question snall be restricted to 'true victims' of
Nazi persecution and to their immediate fami
lies and dependents, in the foUowing classes:
(i) Refugees from Nazi
or Austria
Nazi Gold
55
who
aid and cannot be returned to
their countries within a reasonable time
because of prevailing conditions.
German and Austrian nationals now resident
in Germany or Austria in exceptional cases
in which it is reasonable on I2rounds of
Nationals of countries formerlv occupied by
the Germans who cannot be repatriated or
are not in a position to be repatriated within
a reasonable time, In order to concentrate
aid in the most needy and deserving refugees
and to exclude persons whose loyalty to the
United Nations is or was doubtful, aid shall
be restricted to nationals or former nationals
of previously occupied countries who were
victims of Nazi concentration camps or of
concentration camps established by regimes
under Nazi influence but not including per
sons who have been confined
in pris
oners of war camps:
E. The sums made available under
A
and B above shall be administered
the
or
Inter-Governmental Committee on
by a United Nations Agency to which apPl"pll
ate functions of the
Committee may in the furore be transferred. The
sums made available under paragraph C above
shall be administered for the l2enerai purposes
�56
Carpozi
referred to in this article under a program of
administration to be formulated by the five
Governments named above.
F. The non-monetary gold found in Germany
shall be placed at the disposal of the
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees as
soon as a plan has been worked out as provided
above.
G. The Intergovernmental Committee on
Refugees shall have power to carry out the pur
poses of the fund through appropriate public
and private field organizations.
H. The fund shall be used, not for the compensa
tion of individual victims, but to further the
rehabilitation or resettlement of persons in the
eligible classes.
1. Nothing in tlus Article shall be considered to
prejudice the claims which individual refugees
may have against a future German Government,
except to the amount of the benefits that such
refugees may have received from the sources
referred to in paragraphs A and C above.
To implement the ideas agreed upon in Paris, there
would have to be agreements with everyone of the neutrals
holding German assets. These neutrals were invited to a
March meeting to be held in the United States in
Washi~gton: DC. Another agreement"was signed in'May.
Sweden and Switzerland, which held the largest
assets, would, according to the plan, be dealt with first.
Nazi Gold
57
Thereafter, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland would be handled,
and, finally, Turkey and Argentina.
On May 31, 1946, negotiations with Sweden
began in Washington. While the Allies tried to formulate
a joint Swedish-Allied control of German assets,. the
Swedes rejected joint control, as they had been doing.
They wanted any control mechanism to be solely in their
hands. The major powers, however, pressed their ideas.
The final agreement provided for .requisitioning, exami
nation, and liquidation of German assets in Sweden
through the auspices of the Foreign Capital Control
Office. The agreement disposed of $378 million of liqui
dated assets: One hundred fifty million dollars was to be
put into a Swedish Riksbank account to purchase essen
tials for the German economy. One hundred twenty-five
million dollars was in financial aid, and fifty million dol
lars of this was to go to the . International Refugee
Organization in London for reparation and the resettle
ment of non-repatriable victims of the Nazis.
Sweden, at the end of the negotiations, announced
that they would return gold which had been stolen from
occupied countries-according to the Allies, all gold that
was acquired after January 1943 was to be considered looted
since it was their contention that all legitimately acquired
this date.
gold reserves of the Germans had been utilized
"The Allied line of reas9ning," detailed the report of the
proceedings, "was based on the following points: Before the
'seizure of .the Austrian central bank's gold, Germany had
not more than approximately USD 100 million in gold at its
disposal .... With the addition of approximately twenty-three
�58
Carpozi
million acquired legitimately from the Soviet Union before
the outbreak of the war and the fifty-three million taken
.from Austria and the thirty-three million from
Czechoslovakia, this last portion seized forcibly, Germany
began the war with some 210 million in gold."
And yet, because Germany kept meticulous records
of all the gold it confiscated between 1933 and 1945, the
total amount of gold now known to have been looted is
$8.5 billion. Of this, one-third or $2.6 billion came from
individual victims and private businesses.
"The precision is down to a single bar of gold,"
said Elan Steinberg, Executive Director of the World
Jewish Congress which probed Nazi Germany's wartime
financial transactions. Today there is no doubt that more
than was originally thought, 75 percent of the current val
uation of the $5.2 billion, was shipped first to Switzerland
and then to other neutrals and Axis-friendly countries in
order for the Nazis to buy strategic goods and services.
CHAPTER 6
"Justice, Decency,
and Plain Horse Sense"
Senator Kilgore was playing hardball when he
urged President Truman to renounce the Allied-Swiss
agreement, basing his main argument on the understanding
that the Germans had looted more than $700 million in
Europe, that $400 million in gold was transferred to
Switzerland, and that it was reasonable to estimate that
SFit:zeriand re<:eiyed ~tJeast $200 tQ $300 willion in loot~d
gold from countries conquered by the Nazis.
He expressed further disrriay over the way Allied
Swiss negotiators agreed that $130 million in looted gold
59
�CHAPTER 21
Unhonored Claims
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Not. only gold ~nd personal possessIons were
forcibly extracted from the Jewish victims of World War II.
Three Holocaust survivors detailed in 1997 at an NAIC Fall
Presentation their families' experiences.
Margaret Zentner of Little Neck, New York
how her German father bought dowry insurance, an annu
common in Europe at the time, payable when she
reached
twenty-one. When Zentner, after surviving
several Nazi concentration camps, tried to collect the
benefits, the insurance company refused to pay
Marta Drucker Corner-a native of Rakovnlk,
today part of the Czech Republic-was sent with her
321
�ole family to concentration camps, and she alone sur
ed. Her father had several insurance policies. Not one
,uld be paid to her.
Rudy Rosenberg-born in Brussels-was also sent
th his family to the camps. They had bought, like many
wish families, a specialmsurance policy and were asked to
.commend other Jews interested in purchasing policies for
leir children's future. The company refused to pay
.osenberg.
Like Zentner, Corner, and Rosenberg, after World
Var II, some Holocaust survivors and relatives of those
.'hose lives were brutally taken by the Third Reich tried to
,ress claims against European insurance companies for
ndemnification .of property losses and other material
~oods seized or destroyed by the Nazis.
The claimants were immediately denied payment
'..vhen they were unable to produce death certificates, policy
. ,umher~.,
.
r)ther documentation.
,...~.::-!. .'.11:::';::::: ~ j
~ r)SI- :l
'.lctlon
,:l,-a~ filed in
C)f
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Y Cf:·:-.
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323
Nazi Gold
Carpozi
defendants concealed, stole, and liquidated assets of
Holocaust victims and then callously refused to honor
claims on the grounds that survivors were unable to pro
duce death certificates for the victims.
Eugene Anderson, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys
said, "Insurance companies have always been in the denial
business. In this case, simply by dQing what they do habit
ually, major insurance companies linked themselves to (-mc
of history's great tragedies."
The most shocking aspect about those insurance
rip-offs was the revelation that the top executives of the
biggest German indemnification agency, Allianz AG,
",-Qrked clQseiy 'W-ith the Third Reich to seize policies owned
:;!) ::::l:?·;,,;-,d .\ljj·;U1Z'S bust.'1ess in C0n
~r) ...../~:
Anderson, Kill & Olick, :lI1d kllhn, :,wiii " ("1':1' . .1 r,;
plaintiffs in the case are Holocaust victims or beirs aged
sixty or seventy who are seeking to recover billions of dol-.
lars from seven European insurance companies in Austria,
France, Italy, and Germany, some of whom have agency
agreements with Aetna Life and Casualty Company in the:.
United States. The companies being sued regularly transact
business-in New York.
In the suit, the plaintiffs produced insurance.docu-:
ments of. their families. Alleged by the plaintiffs is that the . ~
.,
".
".
(Jt'::~d:~ r.f jn;~j(:(:rA.t~( i:""!.~.~ rr)
limit claimS gro\\mg am uI rFJ[, irJ.': ~ .• ~;;:i.c:
"r',
destroy Jewish-owned properties.
An all-telling document was unearthed in the search
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ill
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r-\' r.,~e :,\:;:ow Yl'rk in:::Uf:ll1CC liti~-;l!nr. 1,in(h Gcr~tc1.
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German
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coming to them for losses they suffered during [he ~a:il
regtme.
This document blew the lid off the Nazi-orches
trated insurance scam against millions of Jews. It was a sin
gle copy of an Austrian State Police report, a fill-in-the
'_ blanks form that was so apparently banal that researchers at
first didn't even appreciate its significance, according to
.:
.,
"
�324
Carpozi
Terrell E. Hunt, president of Risk International, a Houston
company engaged in insurance research.
The form, dated 1946, directed the Italian sub
of Allianz to turn over to the Reich Treasury the
proceeds of a life insurance policy owned by Salomon
Israel Korner of Vienna.
According to Hunt, the numbering on ·the form
suggested that it was only one of tens of thousands of
such illegal "releases" in the files of the state police in
Austria, which was occupied by Nazi forces in March 1938
during the so-called "Auschluss," the unopposed and out
right takeover of that country.
"This document is the key for hundreds of thou
sands of r.cople to make claims," Hunt explained. "Its sig
nificance is that it is a standard form on which the Nazis
listed the name and address of the insured, the insurance
company, and the policy number, which were the details
needed to make a claim." And it showed the way at least
one insurance company had taken advantage of a Jewish
client and deprived him of his claim.
Under the 1933 German law mentioned earlier, the
property of Jews who emigrated to other lands was confis
cated. After Hitler began his "Final Solution" program
against the Jews, those who were forcibly deported to death
camps were considered to be "emigrants" under that law.
. TheJone document was addressed "to the manage
ment office for the German Reich" in the Vienna office Of
Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta, the Italian subsidiary of
Allianz,. indicating that the Nazis had their own personnel
in the office of at least one insurer-if not, more than
likely, many others.
Nazi Gold
325
The significance of the document recovered from
the archives was disputed by Allianz's senior spokesm.an,
Emilio Galli-Zugaro. While confirming that tens of thou
s~nds of similar documents existed, he said reparations the
German government made to Holocaust survivors and vic
tims' relatives after the war settled all claims.
However, there's not a shred of evidence to show
that Germany-or any other government-fully compen
sated a single Jew after the war for insured losses sustained
during Hitler's reign.
The suit filed by attorney Linda Gerstel on behalf
of Holocaust victims against Allianz and fourteen other
companies might not have materialized as expeditiously if
it wasn't for a rarc happenstance that occurred In
December 1996 in the Manhattan law offices of Edward D.
Fagan.
It was shortly before noon when Fagan's assistant,
Edith Pollack-Edra, was opening the mail and found one
envelope containing a single page from a notepad. She rec
ognized it as a scrawl written by a former Nazi death camp
prisoner.
"It listed a batch of numbers:' Ms. Pollack-Edra told
the author in an inrervie\v, "I put two and twO together and
concluded that they were digits from an insurance policy,"
After a few hours of sleuthing on the telephone,
Ms. Pollack-Edra got through to the agency that had issued
the policy-Allianz AG!
'~l read them the policy identification numbers and
was told almost at once, 'Oh, we paid that claim just after
the war.m
The response came back so swiftly and curtly that
�326
~
Carpozi
all kinds of flags were raised for Ms. Pollack-Edrn, who
wasted no time passing on those details to her boss. Fagan
then delved more deeply into the matter and soon found
that Linda Gerstel was in pursuit of similar information
from Allianz for one of her own clients, who showed her
an actual policy with that company.
Allianz's spokesman, Galli-Zugaro, speaking on the
phone from his company's office in 1998 in Rome to New
York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, stood on his insis
tence that "All reparations paid by Germany to Holocaust
survivors and victims' 'relatives after the war settled all
claims."
Then he offered gratuitously to Johnston U""'Ull15
in the paper's newsroom on \Xi'est Forty-third Street,
"During the war it was normal-it is horrifying to say that
now, hut it was normal procedure then-to seize the insur
ance policies of Jews and give them to the Nazis.
"All survivors, of which there are not very many.
and their heirs and those who could benefit, collected their
money back to then from the German government. Until
this lawsuit was filed in New York last year, which hit us
quite unexpectedly, we had not had a claim made in twenty
years."
The suit was filed jointly by attorneys Fagan and
Gerstel in New York's Federal District Court (Southern
District in Manhattan). The application sought a court
. order to compel Allianz and the other insurers who issued
policies to Jews in the prewar years to open their files so
that the lawyers could cull their lists for the names of
clients who had gone to them for payment of losses suf·
fered during the Hitler era.
Nazi Gold
327
Since the suit was instituted, Galli-Zugaro claimed,
"Eighteen-hundred people had called our toll-free hotline,
but we found only two hundred valid claims."
Edward Fagan wasn't about to rely on his words.
"The suggestion that those people [the 200] were paid by
the German Government is just preposterous," Fagan
protested. "Allianz and other insurers controlled the infor
mation needed to pay claims and relied on technicalities to
deny payment or to provide compensation for considerably
less than was owed."
The trickery and chicanery European insurance
firms employed to fleece Jews with policies that covered
losses they might suffer in the event of catastrophic occur
rences such as riotS, sabotage, or incendiary destruction of
their properties and possessions was horrifying.
One stunning revelation that evolved out of that
probe was that some Allianz executives became senior offi
cials in the Nazi Government.
They described the way they courted Nazi officials
and began making political contributions to the Nazi party,
as early as 1932, when Hitler ascended to the dictatorship
of Germany.
Kurt Schmitt, the chief executive of Allianz in
those early years, became Hitler's first minister of econom
ics and one of his closest confidantes. He even dined fre
quently with Der Fuhrer.
The testimony elicited by American interrogators
also disclosed that Schmitt wore an SS uniform and rubbed·
elbows with another Allianz executive, Eduard Hilgard,
who served the Nazi
as head of the Eleventh
�328
Carpozi
Industrial Group of the Third Reich, which oversaw insur
ance companies.
- Playing a role in those two positions, Hilgard
divulged how he was uniquely qualified to "help German
insurance companies settle claims for only three cents on
the dollar from Kristallnacht." (These were the nights of
November 8 and 9, 1938, when Hitler's government
allowed gangs of Nazis to rampage across the country,
arresting and killing Jews, and burning synagogues and
Jewish-owned businesses.)
Hilgard's testimony further revealed that the money
was paid by the insurers to the Reich treasury-not to the
victimized Jews-and "by discounting the claims, the insur
ers saved as much as nineteen million dollars."
Furthermore, "When the Nazis conquered a coun
try, the assets of local insurance companies were taken over
by Allianz and other German insurance companies, as well
as the Assicurazioni Generali, an Italian insurance com
pany."
That information came to light only recently after a
long-secret report from Central Intelligence Agency eco
nomic experts was declassi fied.
The next-to-Iast word on this subject came from
Galli-Zugaro. "There is no question that Allianz sought to
profit from the war, but the company never sought to
profit from the Holocaust."
Attorneys Fagan and· Gerstel have armed them
selves with the ultimate ·weapon that would bring relief to
the Jewish peoples who were robbed of their indemnities
by the avaricious insurers-the awful truth.
Nazi Gold
329
The companies who were the targets of the suit
lodged in Manhattan's United States Courthouse all had
one thing in common, from Allianz AG down to each and
everyone of the other fourteen carriers named in the liti
gation papers. They aJl have operations in the United States.
Allianz owns Fireman's Fund, one of the largest of
property and casualty companies in the United States. Then
there is a Minnesota life insuiimce company that does busi
ness with the Allianz name. And, too, there are the
Jefferson and MonticeJlo insurance companies in New
York.
These are the firms that the la"IN)'ers now want to
open their books for scrutiny in order to see how mlmy
Jewish victims or their descendants are owed insurance pay
ments and how much money is coming to them.
The day of reckoning began on January 27, 1998....
�i!
CHAPTER 23
Contemporary Efforts
Retracing the bloodstained trail of Nazi gold leads
all over the world. Yet the journey must be undertaken even
as it brings us at each juncture to painful tjuestions and
even more painful answers. These confound and accuse not
individuals, companies and institutions but whole gov
ernments, challenging their historical identities and interna
tional reputations. Yet, unless we reexamine our past, the
footsteps of yesterday will echo down the corridors of
tomorrow. And those echoes will sound audible recrimina
tions that the searing injustices of history still go unre
deemed. A moral accounting must be rendered before it is
too late.
345
�346
Carpozi
Indeed, such a tabulation is made even more neces
sary by the headlines of today. For the lessons 0 f history
haven't been learned while anti-Semitism and racism are
still very much alive.
Rabbi Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the
Simon Wiesenrhal Center, the international organization
established in 1977 that bears the name of legendary Nazi
hunter and humanitarian Simo~ Wiesenthal. The organiza
tion has relentlessly striven to "perpetuate the memory and
teach the lessons of The Holocaust-as well as ensuring
the future of the world's thirteen million Jews."
To that end, 'the center's operatives have made sig
nificant advances in exposing ~nti-Semitic attacks against
America's Jewry and exerting every effort to dissipate
"flare-ups of hatred wherever they happen-before they
explode into firestorms."
One of Wiesenthal's prmclpal recent successes on
behalf of the 385,000 member families in its North
American constituency was in mounting a global campaign
that urged officials at the highest levels of government to
clisclose ,the trail of assets stdlen from victims of the Nazis
during the Holocaust. The plea went to Switzerland,
Argentina, Turkey, France, Spain, Britain, and the United
States.
Until 1998, Center lawyers had located one bank's
list with data from 1941 on 1,600 accounts (with a total
value of ninety million dollars). That information was
posted on the Internet, and within just a few
weeks Wiesenthal investigators identiried sixteen families
whose rightful assets may still be held in secret Swiss bank
accounts.
Nazi Gold
347
An important adjunct of the work that Rabbi Hier
has instituted at the Center is a relentless campaign to sup
press anti-Semitism, which he described as being "alive,
well, and thriving throughout the world today."
He went on to state, "What's more alarming, is that
it appears to be growing more robust, more strident, more
vicious--and more 'respectable' ....
"The human race seems to be suffering more fre
quent attacks of selective memory loss in which the hor
rors of the death camps recede and ancient hatreds arc
revived. It would be difficult to imagine a development
with more disturbing implications for humanity."
Even as Rabbi Hier uttered these warnings from the
prestigious Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, an
Associated Press dispatch from Dresden on January 25,
1998, chronicled details about a starding uprising by hun
dreds of leftists and nco-Nazis, who brawled on a train
bound for the "Florence on the Elbe," Germany's home of
, some of the worJd's greatest art treasures.
The donnybrook was touched off by competing
protests over an anti-Nazi exhibit showing that soldiers of
the Wehrmacht, Hitler's regular army, committed atrocities
alongside the infamous unitS of the Third Reich, such as
the dread SS troops.
Dubbed "\Var of Extermination: Crimes of the
Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1945," the exhibit had been tour
ing in Germany for nearly three years. It was displaying
photos and documents to demonstrate that even rank-and
file German soldiers killed Jews and other civilians,
However, many older Germans still viewed the
Wehrmacht as an honorable military force that fought for
"
1\
"
1
Ii
;:
l;
1!
�348
Carpozi
the homeland-but they hadn't addressed the frequent,
often overwhelming charges of brutality and cruelty visited
on Jews and other oppressed peoples during the war.
The tumult broke out while the train carrying about
300 leftists en route from Berlin to Dresden, about 110
miles to the south, was set upon in Wurzen, a town in
Saxony, some thirty~five miles from its destination.
As rocks and stones pelted the train along the
right-of-way, someone pulled the emergency cord that
braked the train to a stop. The protesters then battled the
passengers for an hour inside and outside the train before
police ended the clash and shooed tbe demonstrators
away-after arresting four rightists with baseball bats and
blank -cartridge pi s tols.
JUSt a day before, a state court approved 'the
National Democratic Party's right to demonstrate against
the "War of Extermination" exhibit and, in a simultaneous
ruling, allowed the Alliance Against Rightists to stage its
own protests.
The court stipulated emphaticaHy that the protests
were to be held in separate parts of the city to prevent
c1ashes-::;-but feelings ran so high that what happened on
that mid winter's day in Germany made Rabbi Hier's con
cerns stand out in bold relief.. ..
"\'Ve can deny the accumulating evidence that the
world is in the early stages of a virulent new strain of anti
Semitism. We can dismiss it as a series of relatively incon
sequential incidents and truSt that a Holocaust can never
happen again.
"Or, we can dedicate and rededicate ourselves to the
Nazi Gold
349
effon necessary to snuff out flare-ups of hatred wherever
they happen-before they explode into firestorms ...."
At just about the time that Germany's pro and anti
Nazi factions were at each other's throats, a small but influ
ential group of politically conservative Jews-aligned with
evangelical Christian groups on the issue of anti-Christian
discrimination around the world-lodged a complaint
against a seemingly unlikely target: A fourteen-minute film
being screened at the National Holocaust Museum in
Washington, nc.
The movie, Anti-Semiti.rm, is a'sober but wrenching
account of the history and consequences of that virulent
discriminatory practice and describes the role of Christian
churches in fomenting sentiment against Jews in Europe.
Led by Michael J. Horowitz, a senior feHow at the
Hudson Institute, a conservative research organization, the
Jewish critics issued a steamy press release that expressed
an abiding concern for "our evangelical Christian
allies," and proceeded with the declaration, "The docu
mentary [ftlm] Anti-Semitism is inaccurate and anti
Christian, and we ask that it be altered." .
As Museum officials undertook a review of the
f:t.lm, they and their board of Christian advisers maintained
that it was accurate and not in need of revision.
"There was intense anti-Semitism within the
Catholic and Protestant communities at a region -cultural
level which helped bring about the Holocaust," said the
chairman of the Holocaust Museum's Church Relations
Council, the Reverend John T. Pawlowski, a professor of
social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
"To pretend otherwise is to distort
�350
Carpozi
The Hudson Institute's Michael Horowitz said he
had written the protest :tfter watching the film with evan
gelical friends and claimed they were "deeply offended by
it but who felt that as Christians, they were in no position
to complain about a Holocaust Museum film dealing with
genocl(ie whose victims were primarily Jews."
The letter's other signatories were Elliott Abrams,
Chester E. Finn, and Michael Ledeen, all Reagan Admini
stration officials, David Dalin, a historian who
at the
-heological Seminary and most
at Catholic
a film critic and writer.
The letter described the museum as "an irreplace
able institution," but maintained that the film pr<)paJ<alted
"libels of Christianity" and supported "a profoundly inac
curate thesis: that Christianity and Christian leaders were
the initial causes of anti-Semitism and have at all times
been its major proponents."
New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who filed a
report with her newspaper about this sudden and unex
pected dissension in the Jewish community, observed,
"Among the signers' other points was that the ftim failed to
note that anti-Semitism predated
and that it
ignored 'Islam's theology and its oft~n violent practice of
anti-Semitism.'"
the background for the
Ms: Miller
noted that it stemmed from "a broad political offensive
mounted. by conservative
and the Christian right to
esniblish as a public issue the
of Christians
abroad, often by Muslim governments, many of which also
oppose Israel."
The writer went on to analyze the dispute's political
Nazi Gold
351
implications. "Mr. Horowitz is among those who
draft
now pending on Capitol Hill that would
impose economic sanctions upon such countries as China
and Saudi Arabia, where the Clinton Administration has
identified patterns of persecution against Christians. The
Administration opposes the legislation."
That political backdrop prompted some scholars
and museum ofticials to challenge the motives of the film's
critics.
"They're trying to show the evangelical
how
credible thev are," declared Rabbi Michael Berenbaum,
director of the Holocaust Museum, who
of the film's
Miles Ler!TIan, the museum's chairman, put a lid on
the whole problem by describing how the museum was
to handle the matter. "While we take all letters and
complaints seriously, the Church Relations subcommittee,
responsible for such issues, has decided that the film was
accurate and would not be revised"
The open examination of the past advocated by the
museum, whether prompted by artistic, 'political, or histor
ical scholarly inquiries and no matter how unsparing, must
not be extinguished.
In the supplement to the Eizensrat Report released
in June 1998 the telling and potent words of the original
foreword are restated: "Ultimately, the United States, our
Allies, and the neutral nations alike should be judged not so
generation,
the actions or inactions of a
wiillingn,ess to face the past
to help nght the wrongs, and to deal with the
fered by the victims of Nazi aglgressl1on.
�In
truth, it is not only the AJliesand neutrals but all
civilized nations which must work to accomplish this goal.
For, according to Elan Steinberg, "Every country prof
ited--or at least individuals and institutions profited
from the plunder and wholesale thievery of the Nazi
regime."
There is a tragic history lesson laid bare on the
pages of this book. For, as we focused on the neutrals
besides Switzerland one by one--Sweden, Portugal, Spain,
Turkey, and Argent.ina-we learned that though
Switzerland was Nazi Germany's major banker, all these
countries provided essential goods and tools to keep World
War II going. In exchange, the), received the looted Nazi
gold and valuables which came to them from occupied
countries in large part, and from the seized possessions of
Holocaust victims.
Even more shocking, the Allies-France, England,
and the United States-as ma), be seen by the chapters
delineating their war transactions, arc not innocent of the
taint of Nazi gold. We have seen how the records of eco
nomic succor of allies, neutrals, and belligerents reveal that
the selfish motive of profit and the ver)' human desire for
survival figured prominently in the actions of government
representatives, citizens, and too many nations at the
expense of the rights of those who were helpless victims of
the Holocaust.
The International Committee of the Red Cross was
even used by the Germans. United States intelligence doc
uments allege that its representatives conveyed information
to Berlin, sometimes by U.S. diplomatic mail and that assets
were placed in pouches to get them to Switzerland. In 1995,
J
the international committee referred to its "moral failure"
during the war to denounce what was happening in Hitler's
concentration camps to Jews and other minorities.
Nevertheless and despite all this, it must also not be
forgotten that in many nations-both friend and enemy
individual people courageously helped some of the
refugees escape almost certain death in concentration
camps where six million Jews were exterminated. Even
Germany had its Schindler. Other nations had their own
Schindlers.
.
Portugal not only allowed Jewish organizations to
relocate in Lisbon but enabled 5,000 Jews to get passage to
America. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat
acting on his own, issued 10,000 visas before he was dis
missed from his post.
Spain, despite its overt actions showing Axis sym
pathy, helped between 30,000 and 40,000 Jewish refugees to
escape and also protected 4,000 Jews with Spanish heritage
living in occupied countri.es in Europe.
Turkey, historically ·a point of refuge for fleeing
Jews since 1492, sheltered 100,000 Jews, and the govern
men.t rescued refugees from the Balkan nations. In addi
tion, Jewish representat.ives in Turkey were allowed to
arrange for the air passage to Palestine of victims in Central
. and Eastern Europe.
Argentina's pro-Nazi government took in almost
45,000 Jews, more than an)' country in thelf hemisphere.
Sweden aided Denmark in smuggling virtually all
Danish Jews-almost 7,000--to safe haven in Sweden, and
the heroic Raoul Wallenberg, aided with· money from the
�,
,
.
~
Carpozi
"
·~It
~d
States War Refugee Board, saved 20,000 to 30,000
from certain death in the camps.'
Switzerland, whose request to the Nazis to distinJewish passports led to the infamous 'J stamp,"
ltted over 50,000 Jewish refugees. Carl Lutz, a Swiss
consul, provided letters of protection for 62,000 Jews,
~ America saved only 21,000. Amid criticism singling it
lS the Nazis' main banker, Switzerland is grappling with
lOW painfully exposed ties to Nazi Germany. The
'ker Commission, also known as the Independent
lmittee of Eminent Persons, established in May 1996,
:cts the formal agreement of the Swiss Bankers
)ciation, the World Jewish Congress, and the World
sh Restitution Organization. It is overseeing Arthur
lersen, KPMG Peat Marwick, and Price Waterhouse in
,ti~ying and recovering dormant accounts of Holocaust
lms. The Independent Commission of Experts, also
wn as the Bergier Commission, is conducting a review
,;witzerland's historic ties to Nazism. And, most impor
as noted earlier, on August 13, 1998, three of
tzerland's major banking institutions announced a 1.25
on dollar settlement with the Holocaust victims.
In the last few years, as more and more revelations
e surfaced about Nazi gold, "a consensus is crystalliz
:' according to the Eizenstat report, "among nations
t this tragic history must galvanize us to do justice in
's that provide both material and moral justice to the
:lms and survivors of the Holocaust."
This new attitud,e of coming to terms with a dark
pter in history in which all have played parts has resulted
,najor efforts. The most electrifying in terms of its effect
,.~
...
;.i;
Nazi Gold
355
on the catholic people of many countries may be the
Vatican's study released in March 1998, "We Remember: A
Reflection on the Shoah," which the Vatican has called "an
act of repentance."
There are other less dramatic but equally positive
efforts.
In April 1998, Spain completed its study on
wartime gold headed by former Justice Minister Enrique
Mugica.
Turkey'S commission, headed by Minister of State
Gurel, Centers on Gold, reported on gold purchases by the
,central bank of Turkey.
In Sweden, a commission has been appointed to
report on inter-governmental monetary gold transactions
during World War II. At the London Conference the
Swedish Independent Archives Inquiry gave a report detail
ing the gold transactions of the Sveriges Riksbank on Nazi
gold. And in January 1998 Prime Minister Persson began a
countrywide initiative for Holocaust education which will
highlight a new ,booklet on the Holocaust to be used to
educate all Swedish citizens and which has already gone out
to 250,000 households.
The British government led the meeting of forty
one countries in the London Conference on Nazi Gold in
December 1997. For the first time, the international
responsibility of all the convening countries was f<?cused
upon. The result of the conference, among other things, is
a pledge from several nations of $57 million to be given to
Holocaust victims and the promise of additional funds
from other countries. Their goal: to disperse all the money
to survivors or their heirs by century's end.
: '
�...;_.
~,
Carpozi
~.<-'
Nazi Gold
357
"J
I
Britain has also established the Nazi Persecutee
ief Fund which will be directed towards those who suf
~d under Nazism and Communism, as well as other vic
s. Nine other countries have also contributed to the
including the United States.
France 'has initiated new programs to find out
'ut millions of dollars of looted bank accounts and
':r assets plundered from Jewish victims during tne Nazi
:upation of their country. In 1997, a commission was
ointed to investigate Jewish property stolen by the
1y government for the Nazis. Finance Minister
ninique Strauss-Kahn and Bank of France Governor
-Claude Trichet announced in March 1998 they are cre
~ "a surveillance committee."
Argentina is providing bank records to help inves
ors track down gold cash and art work transferred to
~ntina by Nazi agents, and a commission has been
)lished by President Menem and Foreign Minister
10 Di Tel1a to study Nazi activities in Argentina during
var.
At the London Conference, in December 1997, the
ral Reserve Bank of New York presented its report,
ldding major new evidence is the United States major
. US. and Allied Efforts to RecolJer and Restore Gold and
A.r.ret.r Stolen or Hidden I?Y Germany During World War II
;ed in May 1997. In 1998 the supplemental study
.ing on the neutral countries was released. In addition,
or Alfonse D'Amato's hearings before the Senate
Committee in the summer of 1998 have added,
ltS into America's role in receiving Nazi gold.
In November 1998, the United States' Washington,
nc.,
Conference will attempt to develop principles and
processes, to review progress on the gold issue, to deal with
art and the other plundered valuables of Holocaust victims,
and to renew the drive to open the archives.
Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Gutennes is
making all his government's documents relating to the
transfer of Nazi gold to Portugal available to research and
has appointed a three-person commission to review
Portugal's dealings during the war.
The Netherlands has budgeted $400 million addi
tional moneys for existing Dutch programs to assist war
and persecution victims. Fifty thousand Holocaust victims
will be given grants and benefits under the program.
Norway, which has never before made financial
provisions, has established a $60 million restitution fund
for Norwegian Holocaust survivors of what, Norwegian
Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik announced, were
moral injustices as well as material losses.
A $111 million contribution by Germany over the
next four years will build on the $60 billion repartition
effort during the last forty years to compensate Holocaust
survivors. And, on August 31, 1998, Germany's biggest
bank, Deutsche Bank A.G. released a historian's report
commissioned by the bank which gave evidence that it had
dealt in Nazi gold during World War II, which will certainly
strengthen and expand the class suit of Holocaust sur
vivors against both the Dresdner and Deutsche banks. A
spokesman for the bank announced it "regrets most deeply
injustices that occurred."
Other countries which have orwilI soon be appoint
ing Commissions and/or completing reports on Nazi gold
1\
~;
w
. ~
J
II
!
�•
Carpozi
nsactions are Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Latvia,
huania, and Poland.
latter is working on legislation
those whose property was seized to reclaim it or
elve some compensation.
Nevertheless, though much is being attempted,
lch remains to be done. As the millennium comes
w, many survivors awaiting recompense have already
d while others are at the end of their lives. More die with
:ry passing day. They and their heirs have waited half a
ltury for the world to pay attention and, from the con
~nce of humanity, make proper restitution.
The time to act must be now, if justice so long
ayed is finally not to be denied.
APPENDIX:
THE OFFICIAL LIST OF DORMANT
ACCOUNTS IN SWISS BANKS
The following pages contain the names of some
6,500 people to whom dormant assets are owed and can be
proven as having
deposited at a bank in Switzerland
to May 9, 1945-two days after Nazi Germany surren
V-E Day.
dered to end World War II in Europe and a day
officials of the State and Treasury Departments
in Washington, DC. had demanded nothing less
disclosure of names of Holoca1.:lst victims and of otherJews
PI
who were lucky enough to :ha:v:e avoided Nazi German cap
tivity ~n ~ount~ies overrun~Y:J:Iit1e~'s hordes, and who
depOSIts 111 SWISS banks R~loy,t~Lthe end of World War II.
In August, 199~t~the Swi~s Federation
Banksurged on by government:'officialsfissued a list of some 6,500
depositors whose acc0iints hag' no activity in the postwar
era. Thanks must als.§l:be giver to the Volcker Committee,
formerly known as trii Indepe~dent Committee of Eminent
.
'-"1"
Persons. The organi'iation was created persuant to an agree
ment between international Jewish organizations and
Swiss banks on May 2, 1996. The Volcker Committee had
charged three international auditing firms with identifying
Swiss banks that held the dormant assets belonging to thou
sands of victims of Nazi persecution.
Over the next year, hundreds of bank employees
searched through archival material and ultimately produced a
list that came from 123 banks in Switzerland that reported
"
359
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FOREWORD
Since the publication in SepteJ1lber 1996 of the First Edition of this
History Note, the British, US and Swiss governments have all engaged in
further activity to investigate the question of Nazi gold.
The FCO released a short note in September 1996 on the Tripartite
Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold, an organisation
established by the British, French and US Governments after the Second
World War to restore monetary gold looted during the War from occupied
countries by the Nazis. This is reproduced as Annex A to the present
edition. We are considering, in consultation with the French and US
governments, requests from Jewish organisations that the residual gold in
the Commission'S monetary gold pool be used to compensate individual
victims of Nazism. We are concerned to ensure that the outcome of these
discussions should fulfil not only our legal obligations in connection with
the Commission gold, but also our moral obligations: the question of
compensation for survivors of the Holocaust is an important one, which it is
right for us to review regularly.
We are currently conducting further research into FCO archives to try. to
establish the origins of the monetary and non-monetary gold recovered by
the Allies after the War, and what was done with it. The question has been
raised whether non-monetary gold, and in particular gold taken from
Holocaust victims, might have found its way into the Tripartite Gold
Commission's monetary gold pooL From the documents we have so far
f~und, it appears that those involved in the post-War division of gold found
in Germany made every effort to keep monetary and non-monetary gold
separate, and to allocate only monetary gold to the Commission's pool. But
our research is not yet complete. We plan to publish the results of this
research in the next month or so.
.
In the US, the President has established an inter-agency Presidential
Taskforce on Nazi gold.. The taskforce is conducting a review of
government archives on the SUbject, and its initial report is expected in mid
February.
The Swiss Parliament passed in December 199Q a law establishing an
international Committee of Experts to investigate all Swiss financial
transactions with the Third Reich. The law authorises the Committee to
work for up to 5 years; Foreign Minister Cotti has however expressed the
hope that the Committee's research may be completed sooner. There will be
interim reports.
�. . , _ . _.______________________..,
~I!I~.m!H--------------
practice very little the I
damaging their own ecor
the countries concerne(
Declaration might make
cloal< the effects of their
with the neutral countril:
H. Gregory, Head of tl
March 1943, Mr. Bolton
preventing the Axis from
the further disposal of
p~ev"'nted, appalling com
have been aggravated w.
of :information gleaned from intercepted cables, movements of Swiss and
Portuguese bank returns, and occasional confidential reports from HM
Representatives in Portugal, MEW and the Bank of England put together an
account of the uses of, three Bank of Portugal accounts with the Swiss
National Bank. One, carrying gold earmarked for account of the Bank of
Portugal by the Swiss National Bank against escudos in Lisbon \\-'as thought
to represent Switzerland's own purchases of escudos. A se~nd account
:believed to be part of a tortuous procedure for marketing German gold<
mvolved the sale of German gold to Swiss banks, who bought escudos from
Portugese commercial banks and transferred them to a Reichsbank account
in Lisbon; the Portuguese bank then surrendered its Swiss francs against
escudos to the Bank of Portugal, which used the Swiss francs to buy gold from
th~ Swiss National Bank and feed it into the Bank of Portugal's account. A
third account represented gold earmarked by the Swiss National Bank for the
account of the Bank of Portugal at the direct requ~st of the Reichsbank.
.
Technically, the Decl2
further measure was ne(
flow of German gold tc
Treasury on 14 April, M
an exaggeration to say
position with most of the
shortly she will be forcei
than she has done hithe:
sold since the war an am
no reason to believe th,
Therefore, all the gold .
looted and we suggest t
. fact, and they should be
are laying themselves (
Declaration ofJanuary :
threa t effective, since I
neutrals after the war th
it would not be possible
the ground that it is st,
made unrecognisable. 1:
could not be 100% effi
100% ineffective.'B
Similarly detailed infonnation reached MEW relating to German gold
sales to Sweden and Spain. As the war, and Gennan military success,
progressed, the British Government felt less inclined to take an emollient
approach to the neutrals who were aiding and abetting the enemy. The
United States Government took a similai view. In 1942 discussions began on
whether there was any way of curbing Gennan trade with the neutrals.
Allied attempts to control the export of German assets
Aware that Gennany was ~sing of looted property of all kinds in
neutral countries, the British Government instigated discussions with her allies
on w~ether some ~d of warning should be issued to the neutrals. Following
a pen?d
consul~tl:m the Inter-Allied DeclaratWn against Acts if'Dispossession
CfJmTmtted 1J2 Tem/ones under EnmrY Occupation or Control was issued on 5
January 1943 by Britain and 16 other governments of the United Nations.
Stating their detennination to 'combat and defeat the plundering by the
enemy Powers of the territories which have been overrun or brought under
enemy control', the signatories reserved their rights 'to declare invalid any
transfers or, or dealings with, property, rights and interests or any description
whatsoever which are, or have been, situated in the territories which have
come under the occupation or control, direct or indirect, of the Governments
with which they are at war,.6
m:
Not only the Treasu
warning to the neutrals
British Embassy in June;
although the US Treas
Bank of England is6u!
repayments would be r·
or Switzerland until c
The decision to issue this declaration was a political one: the Treasury and
Bank of England expressed doubts that it would achieve the desired effect, or
achieve anything. The basic problem which was to beset Allied relations with
the neutrals throughout the war and after had now to be faced: there was in
, Bank of England documents
, The Declaration was published as Cmd. 6418 of 1943. See also Foreign Relations of the United States
(hereafter FRUSl. 1943. vol. I. pp. 439ff.
• Gibbs-Waley correspondenr
4
I
�practice very little the Allies could do to enforce the Declaration without
damaging their own economic situation, and prejudicing future relations with
the countries concerned. Mr. G.L.F. Bolton of the Bank thought the
Declaration might make the enemy 'take every·possible legal step to hide or
cloak the effects of their policy of looting Europe', as well as causing friction
with the neutral countries if they were to refuse to cooperate. Writing to Mr.
H. Gregory, Head of the FO Trading with the Enemy Department, on 9
March 1943, Mr. Bolton recited a formidable list of difficulties in the way of
preventing the Axis from benefitting from looted property, and concluded: 'If
the further disposal of loot in neutral countries cannot be effectively
prevented, appalling complications will arise after the war as the position will
have been
with the passage of time.'?
,Ies, movements of Swiss and
:.mfidential reports from HM
nk of England put together an
19a1 accounts with the Swiss
d for account of the Bank of
:scudos in Lisbon, was thought
f escudos. A second account,
for marketing GenTIan gold',
nks, who bought escudos from
diem to a Reichsbank account
dered its Swiss francs against
: Swiss francs to buy gold from
Bank of Portugal's account. A
he Swiss National Bank for the
~quest of the Reichsbank.
<
E,W
to German gold
lIld German military success,
inclined to take an emollient
Il1d abetting the enemy. The
.. In 1942 discussions began on
1 trade with the neutrals.
•f German assets
.oted property of all kinds in
gated discussions with her allies
sued to the neutrals. Follo\\o>ing
lion against Acts if Dispossession
n or Control was issued on 5
Iments of the United Nations.
defeat the plundering by the
een overrun or brought under
rights 'to declare invalid any
md interests or any description
I in the territories which' have
r indirect, of the Governmems
Technically, the Declaration covered gold. MEW felt, however, that some
further measure was needed if there were to be any hope of stemming the
flow of German gold to the neutrals. Writing to Sir David Waley at the
Treasury on 14 April, Mr. G. Gibbs of MEW "'Tote: 'We believe that it is not
an exaggeration to say that Germany is in difficulties over her exchange
position with most of the adjacent neutral countries and that, therefore, very
shortly she will be forced to attempt to make greater use of her gold stocks
than she has done hitherto.. . . There seems little doubt that Germany has
sold since the war an amount equal to the whole of these stocks, and we have
no reason to believe that she has added to her gold stocks by Ia",fu) means .
Therefore, all the gold on which she can now lay hand may be said to be
looted and we suggest that the attention of neutrals should be drawn to this
fact, and they should be warned that if they accept gold from Germany they
are laying themselves open to claims under the terms .of the Inter-Allied
Declaration ofJanuary 5th.' Sir D. Waley disagreed: 'We could not make this
threat effective, since there is no practical means of extorting from the
neutrals after the war the gold which they have received from Germany, and
it would not be possible for us to refuse to accept this gold after the war on
the ground that it is stolen property since gold can be melted down and
made unrecognisable. In short, I agree with your view that such a warning
could not be 100% effective in the sense that I am sure that it would be
100% ineffective.'B
Not only the Treasury were unenthusiastic about the idea of a further
warning to the neutrals on gold. The State Department, approached by the
British Embassy in June, were unwilling to join in any approach at the time,
although the US Treasury thought it might be worth trying. In August the
Bank of England issued a notice that no interest, dividends or capital
repayments would be received by or credited to persons resident in Sweden
or Switzerland until collecting banks had received 'solemn and detailed
Jolitical one: the Treasury and
I achieve the desired effect, or
IS to beset Allied relations with
now to be faced: there was in
, Bank of England documents.
Iso Foreign Reltltions of the United Slims
'Gibbs·Waley correspondence. FO 11513982.
5
.
j"""'t1_.., .~~~*'*"' ........ "'·~~,"~t•• :,,:''',~:~,";·' .... l'....."'''''''··>··
__
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _IAJ....III'· _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _. . . . . . . ._ _. . . . .,""_ "" .
_
. ...... ,.
�p
declarations from selected banking institutions in those two countries to the
effect that the securities concerned are free from enemy taint'.9 By the end of
1943, however, the US Government had not only come round to the idea of
a declaration on gold but had made proposals far more sweeping than those
suggested a few months' earlier by the British: their draft declaration stated
that the US would not recognise the transference of title to looted gold' which
the Axis disposed of on world markets, nor buy any gold from other couritries
unless they were satisfied it did not originate from the Axis countries.
The Treasury were very doubtful about the far-reaching implications of
such a declaration, because of the difl:iculty of identifYing gold that had been
looted: 'it is submitted that any action which commits the United States or
the United Kingdom to a continuing policy of discriminating against
unidentifiable gold after the war may involve many embarrassments'.fO On
balance, however, Treasury and Bank of England officials agreed that 'on the
general ground of Anglo-American relations we had better associate
ourselves with the American declaration'. HMG's Statement regarding the
acquisition of gold was issued on 22 February 1944, declaring that the
Treasury would not buy any gold from countries which had not broken with
the Axis unless and until they were 'fulIX satisfied' that it had not come
directly or indirectly from the Axis powers. I .
The Gold Declaration marked the opening of a period in which the Allies,
and in particular the United States, took a harder line towards the neutrals,
eSflCcially Switzerland, with regard to their gold dealings with Nazi Germany.
Despite the Declaration of 5 January 1943, information received by British
and American economic warfare bodies suggested that Switzerland
continued to receive consignments of gold during 1943 from Germany, both
for banking in Switzerland and en route to third countries. The US estimate
of German gold reserves in 1939 had also been revised downwards, making
the amount of looted gold sent outside Germany more apparent. In addition,
the tide of war seemed now to be turning firmly'in favour of the Allies. Thus
M. Gautier of the Svviss Embassy in London, seeking reassurance from Mr.
Cobbold of the Bank of England as to the implications of the Gold
Declaration for Switzerland, found little: 'I said that 1 was unable to give him
any comfort and told him frankly that 1 thought one of the objects of the
measure was to make difl:iculties for people who bought gold from Germany
at first or second hand. I thought he could rely on having the maximum
amount of trouble after the war over any such gold."2 .
'u 4 147137 15no. FO 371
Nevertheless. when dl<'
Declaration by' asking dll'
accepting any gold from
gold already in Switzerl:ll
Mr. Rowe-Dutton mmut,·
out that if the Swiss weI'
treatment to all belligtr,
cannot get Swiss francs 0;
amounts.' '!Vir. Hawker \
practical difl:iculties in the
by claims from the Orir.i:l'·
be possible for e.g. a rdu,
coin tendered by the G,
property or the propen
holdin!1S are concerned, ,
still in "'enemy territory. T
the identity of gold.' 13
The Allied Governmc
!!Old was reinforced b\' d
financial Conference hck
the Final Act, noting th::r
leaders enemv National
and th;ough ~eutral COli
their influence, power aI:
domination', recommellc
take action calling upon 1
transfer of enemy assets,
of Bretton Woods the'S;
depriving the enemy of
gotten. A Safe~aven d~p;
same type of informanol'
. the form of monthly S
information with the US
In August 1944, the r
askino- the Sw~ss for all U'
in or"'receive for deposit
Germany and associated
or acquisition of such .gt'
ll
Swiss National Bank. ']
" Minutes and letters.. 4 May
35463.
Washington. 5 January 1945. T 236191 L
"Copy ofstatement in T 2361911; also printed in The Times.
" Minute of 1 March 1944. Bank of England.
I. Telegram CAMER 17 from the Treasury 10 HM Embassy.
6
" Published as Cmd. 6546 of
" Lener from US EmlJa<.<y. 1
Minister in Berne. T 236/121.
�It,
,
.'
· in those two countries to the
m enemy taint'.9 By the end of
mly come round to the idea of
far more sweeping than those
: their draft declaration stated
Ice of title to looted gold which
any gold from other countries
)m the Axis countries.
Ie far-reaching implications of
·identifying gold that had been
commits the United States or
!icy of discriminating a~nst
: many embarrassmentS': On
md officials agreed that 'on the
·ns we had better associate
J:G's Statement regarding the
lary 1944, declaring that the
ies which had not broken with
ttisfied' that it had not corne
of a period in which the Allies,
lrder line towards the neutrals,
!d dealings with Nazi Germany.
information received by British
suggested that Switzerland
ring 1943 from Germany, both
.ird countries. The US estimate
:en revised downwards, making
·ny more apparent In addition,
nly in favour of the Allies. Thus
seeking reassurance from Mr.
the implications of the Gold.
I that I was unable to give him
19ht one of th~ objects of the
ho bought gold from Germany
rely on having the maximum
, gold."2
Nevertheless, when the US Government proposed to reinforce the Gold
Declaration by asking the Swiss Government to agree .to a formula for not
accepting any gold from Axis territories, to be applied retrospectively to any
gold already in S"~tzerland, TY1EW and Treasury officials were doubtfuL As
Mr. Rowe-Dutton minuted to his Treasury colleague IV&. Playfair: 'I pointed
out that if the Sv.~ were to take the line that they must give the same
treatment to all belligerents, we should be in a complete mess, since we
cannot get Swiss francs otheMse than by tendering gold, save in quite small
amounts.' Mr. Hawker (Bank of England) agreed: 'there would be great
practical difficulties in the way of attaching particular holdings of enemy gold
by claims from the original owners. In the first place it would seldom, if ever,
be possible for e.g. a refugee Allied Government to say that particular bars or
coin tcndered by the Germans to the Swiss at a given time were its own
property or the property of its nationals. In the second, where private
holdings are concerned, the original owners are no doubts for the most part
still in enemy territory. Thirdly, it is the easiest thing in the world to destroy
. .
the identity of gold."3
The Allied Governments' determination to try and control the traffic in
gold was reinforced by the Final Act of the United Nations Monetary and
financial Conference held at Bretton Woods, July 1-22 1944. H Article VI of
the Final Act, noting that 'in anticipation of their impending defeat, enemy
leaders, enemy Nationals and their collaborators are transferring assets to
and through neutral countries in order to conceal them and to perpetuate
their influence, power and ability to plan future aggrandizement and world
domination', recommended that all countries represented at the conference
take action calling upon neutrals to take immediate measures to prevent the
transfer of enemy assets, including looted gold, to their territories. As a result
of Bretton Woods the 'Safehaven' programme was launched with the aim of
depriving the enemy of his assets abroad, whether honestly acquired or ill
gotten. A Safehaven department was set up in TY1EW, which made use of the
same type of information already being gathered but provided a synthesis in
the form of monthly Safehaven reports, and a more formal pooling of
information with the US Safehaven authorities.
In August 1944, the British Government agreed to join the Americans in
asking the Swiss for an undertaking that they would not 'acquire any interest
in or receive for deposit gold in which any person in occupied territories or
Germany and associated countries has an interest' and to prohibit the receipt
or acquisition of such gold by anyone within Swiss jurisdiction, including the
Swiss National Bank. is The British drew the line, however, at seeking similar
"Minutes and letters. 4 May-28 July. T 23611602.
· Washington. 5 January 1945. T 236191!.
'S,
" Published as Cmd. 6546 of 1944.
., Letter from US Embassy. London. to Lord Drogheda, MEW, 15 August. and instructions to HM
Minister in Berne. T 2361121.
7
�( >
W1dertakings from the other neutral powers: 'The war is rapidly drawing to
an end: it seems to us much better to hold over the neutrals' head a vigorous
threat of future action based on the fact that they must realise that any gold
they now take may well be looted, rather than to tie them to precise
W1dertakings which bind us in our tum, and may therefore prove
inconvenient later on.'16
What the 'vigorous threat of future action' might be was not specified at
the time, but the question of what practical measures were open to the Allies
to prevail upon the neutral countries to cease trading in German gold
be<;ame .more pressing as the war moved into its 6naJ stages, and it became
possible to envisage a time when restitution would demand the discovery of
German external assets. The FO's Trading with the Enemy Department
produced a memorandum on 22 September 1944 designed to get the ball
rolling on the question of compensating German Jews who had suffered
property losses from Nazi persecution or legal discrimination. The problems
seemed formidable: it was impossible to 'put the clock back'; individual claims
might be pursued through the courts, or there might be a collective claim. In
any case, 'compensation will probably be the rule and restitution the
exception'.17 Meanwhlle, the Swiss had not replied to the Anglo-American
approach made in August; and discussions continued through the autumn' of
1944 on what further warnings could be issued to neutral cOW1tries, and what
sanctions might be applied if these warnings were ignored. The British view,
on the whole, was that formal W1dertakings should not be sought, as 'a
demand for an W1dertaking is nei0tiations, because we then have to think
what to do if the COW1try refuses'. I However, they agreed to present a note
to, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey drawing their attention to the
Bretton Woods resolution. The United Nations cOW1iries were also urged to
take action if they had not already done so to implement the Gold
Declaration of February 1944. 19
. Although the S...viss Government bad not replied to the notes of August
1944, they now seemed ready to take the sort of measures for which the
Allies were pressing. On 28 December 1944 they anounced that all
Hungarian, Slovak and Croatian assets in Switzerland had been blocked by a
decree of 20 December, and on 7 February 1945 British and American
delegations travelled to Berne lOr negotiations on an agreement over
immediate economic warfare objectives, including discussions on Svviss exports
to Germany, supplies for Switzerland and the Safehaven programme, for
which the Allies needed a census of Axis assets in Switzerland. While not .
W1willing to cooperate, the Swiss Government were .anxious to secure in
rerum help in acquiring raw
from the Allies and assistant
assets were blocked in Switz.
16 February 1945, and on 8
Governments, W1der whicl
measures to ensure that the
be used as a cache for lootee
Switzerland and to purcha
quantity needed for diploma
also conducted negotiatiot
Government; which ended .
agreement alth0'i:/5h comn
clearing purposes.
The end of hostilities
As far as Nazi gold was C(
to find, identify and gain con
cOW1tries; and what to do wi
discussed before and during
most intractable. Attempts tc
the reparations delegations
differed as to whether all gc
regarded as reparation to b.
Potsdam Conference, or wi
gold for which an owner COl
The story of these negotia
detail in published diplomat
important documents with r
were the declarations issu·
occupation of Germany, by
authority in Germany; ana
Conference of 2 August 19'
for Germany would take ~
control over German assets
assets where these were fl(
Both these documents con
were not easy to exercise in
'" Details of Decree and Agreemen.
"Letter from Mr. Playfair to Sir D. Waley, 21 August 1944, T 236/121.
!7
Memo. in CCG(BE) Finance Division files. FO 10461136.
Docume11Is on BriJish Policy 0
(Potsdam). vols. i and ii. On the De<
11
"Minute by Mr. Playfair, 9 October. T 2361121.
Government Nonh·West Europe 1944
"Instructions to HM Representatives in UN countries. January 1945, T 2361121.
DBPO. lac. cit.. No. 603.
8
�.•.. ~ . . ,.."~M'....-.... j ... ·;~;·:.xl-:1O\loC~'""'·>'._ _................_ _ ... ........ _ _ _ _....._
...
......
''
'm"'·mc"""nt _
IIIlIIII.lIIl1R1IIl1!ll!_-------------
,
...._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
the neutral nations to co:
the war',2;
Gold found in Gennany
, Of all the gold discovered ,by the Occupying forces in Germany, the
hidden store of gold and foreIgn exchange discovered in a salt mine at
Merkers was the most spectacular and substantial,22 However, MEW
estimated that it probably represented only about 20% of all gold held in
. Germany, and the American forces in particular went on to discover a
number of gold hoards in their Zone, They, and the British forces were
. helped in their search by the Reichsbank records also recovered at i\lerkers
and by information derived from the interrogation of Prisoners of War, Th~
records of the Banking and Finance Divisions of the Control Commission for
Germany co?tain many repor:s of such interrogations, and of expeditions to
discover NazI gol~ held both 111 banks throughout Germany, and in hidden
hoar~. One such mformant led to the discovery of a gold hoard amassed by
von Ribbentrop, and guarded by German Foreign Office officials. 23
The Occupying forces and their investigatory teams followed up all leads,
but were well aware that they were unlikely to uncover all gold hidden in
Nazi Germany. What they found, however, was gathered together, mostly at
F~ and unless. cle~rly identifiable was later used for the gold pool' to be
distributed by the TnpartJte Gold Commission established in 1946,
Nazi gold held outside Gennany
Gold held in other countries was dealt with as part of Germany's external
assets. In July 1945 neutral governments were informed that 'the four Allied
Powe~ claim ti?e to or control over Axis-owned or controlled companies',
but this declarauon was not well-received. As MEW and the Treasury were
well aware, the Allies' legal position in seekincr to gain control of German
assets outside Germany was 'exceedingly weak','?· Both the Swedish and Swiss
Governments were quick. to reply that such a demand conflicted both with
their own legislation and, with their status as neutrals. An approach suggested .
by the US Representauve on Safehaven negotiations, Mr. Rubin, seemed
more promising: he proposed to invite the neutral countries to cooperate on
moral grounds in the discovery of German assets and hand them over to the
Alli~s, on the grounds that the neutral governments had profited from the
sacnfices made by the United Nations during the war, and because 'as one of
the n:cess:'ry prerequisites to, neutral participation in the reconstitued family
of nauons In the post-war penod, some affirmative action should be taken by
Discussions on a possib'
entangled with the wider
Germany on the Vesti
agreement was reached I
December 1945. Mean",
the Allied governments
question qf the restitution
gold should be given bad
reparations settlement. J
and accept the US ar
identifYing gold, all gold
countries which had the
their losses. 26
The preparatory coni
Reparations Conference
of the Final Act, dated ~
Gold and directed that
Forces, including coins (
should be restored direc
restitution, There was a
Neutral Countries statll
the war against Nazi G,
for distribution in accor
looted gold transferred i
The Resolution offer'
the neutral countries
territories, The Final
Governments to act 0'
German external assets,
neutral countries on go
separate negotiations .
agreed that the first set
Swiss Government, wh
l'!
"Details ofrne find are given in !VIEW's weekly report of 19 April 1945, FO 1046133. and in • letter
from the Bank of England to Mr. Playfair, 26 April, giving rne grand total of gold found as £54m (T
236/931).
U
Information on von Ribbentrop's hoard of gold and other treasures can be found in FO 1046127. 33.
267 and 537.
,. DBPO. Series I. Vol. I, No. 124, Vol. V. No, 33,ii.
10
Meetings in Economic W:
also DBPO. Series I. Vol. v, 1'1
20,
Minutes of 3rd meeting
recommendation of 29 Novem
(MEW). FO 83711274; cf. F
Marshalling legislation are prin
n Final Act of the Paris Ref'
�, I
the neutral nations to contribute to the rehabilitation of areas damaged by
the war'.25
tpying forces in Germany, the
, discovered in a salt mine at
substantial. 22 However, MEW
about 20% of all gold held in
rticular went on to discover a
:y, and the British forces, were
'ords also recovered at Merkers,
gation of Prisoners of War. The
s of the Control Commission for
.TOgatiOns, and of expeditions to
'.ghout Germany, and in hidden
'cry of a gold hoard amassed by
'reign Office officials. 23
Discussions on a possible approach to the neutrals on the above lines were
entangled 'With the 'Wider question of passing a law in the Control Council for
Germany on the Vesting and Marsha1Iing of German assets, and no
agreement was reached by the Allies on the terms of such an approach until
December 1945. Meanwhile, at the preparatory conference on Reparations
the Allied governments had 'With difficulty reached agreement on the
question of the restitution of gold. The British view had been that identifiable
gold should be given back to its owners, while the rest should form part of the
reparations setdement. However, Sir D. Waley was forced to compromise
and accept the US and French view that because of the problems in
identifYing gold, all gold found in Germany should be divided between the
countries which had the right to restitution, in proportions corresponding to
their losses. 26
ory teams followed up all leads,
y to uncover all gold hidden in
las gathered together, mosdyat
a~er used for the gold pool to be
1 established in 1946.
The preparatory conference's recommendation was taken forward to the
Reparations Conference held in Paris, November-December 1945. Part III
of the Final Act, dated 21 December, dealt with the Restitution of Monetary
Gold and directed that all monetary gold found in Germany by the Allied
Forces, including coins (except those of numismatic or historical value which
should be restored direcdy if identifiable) was to be pooled for distribution as
. restitution. There was also a separate resolution on Gold Transferred to the
Neutral CoUntries stating that the countries which had remained neutral in
the war against Nazi Germany should be 'prevailed upon to make available
for distribution in accordance with Part ill of the foregoin? Agreement all
looted gold transferred into their territories from Germany.'2
as part of Germany's external
informed that 'the four Allied
wned or controlled companies',
s MEW and the Treasury were
in9, to gain control of German
k'. 4 Both the Swedish and Swiss
a demand conilicted both 'With
leutrals, An approach suggested
:gotiations, Mr. Rubin, seemed
:utral countries to cooperate on
sets and hand them over to the
rnments had profited from the
the war, and because 'as one of
)ation in the reconstitued family
!ative action should be taken by
.1
.1:
The Resolution offered no guide to the Allies as to how to 'prevail' upon
the neutral countries to make available German gold held 'Within their
territories. The Final Act had authorised the British, French and US
Governments to act on behalf of the other signatories in the matter of
German external assets, and they now took the lead in negotiations with the
neutral countries on gold. It now seemed clear that there would need to be
separate negotiations 'With the neutral countries on this issue, and it was
agreed that the first set of negotiations would be held in Washington with the
Swiss Government, who professed themselves keen to get round the table
" Meetings in Economic Warfare Dept. FO. on 15 and 16 August 1945, FO l042nIO. FO 1046174. See
also DBPO. Series I. Vol.
!9 April 1945, FO 1046133. and in a letter
v. No. 33.L
the grand total of gold found os £54m (T
." Minutes of 3m meeting of preparalory conferences, 31 October 1945. T 236/932; see also drnft
. treasures can be found in FO 1046127. 33,
(MEW). FO 83711274; cf. FRUS 1945. vol. iii. pp. 1366-7. Documents relating to Vesting and
reconunendalion of 29 November, T 2361988. and letter from Miss Jennings (Treasury) to Mr. Bmndt
Marshalling legislation are printed in DBPO. Series I. Vol. V. passim.
"Final Act of the Paris Reparations Conference, published as Cmd. 6721 of 1946.
11
L
�dealings between Nazi C
addition, the interrogatioJ
dealt with the Swiss Natio
officials had been aware tl
with the Allies on this question: they did not wish to conceal German assets in
.Switzerland, but they'could not recognize validity of the suppressino- order or
agree that German assets in Switzerland whether belongin a to Na:rls or anti.
. Nazis should indiscriminately be liquidated and transferred ~o the Allies.'w
Although the evidence
of Swiss gold dealings wi
produced in negotiations
did not know. They had r
in Germany but held in
$200m, but M. Hirs let
figure of 500m Swiss frn
moved on to other destin
proof, and the deterrni~ec
looted gold could not, In .
revelation of the extent ot
to have the effect of unbi
the liquidation of Germa]
30
May 1946.
~ons
held between the three Allies leading up to the negotiations
continued to reveal some difference of view. The Americans wished to
empl?y the threat of sanctions if neutral countries would not cooperate in
handing over German assets, but this idea was rejected by the British
Government, which felt sanctions would be unenforceable in peacetime:
.'Neutral governments are morally and economically in a much strono-er
..
.
.
\:)
poSluon to resJStsancuons than they were du..ring the course of hostilities. At
the same time the Allies can no longer impose the same moral and economic
pressure.'29 The Swiss were fonnally invited on II February 1946 to send a
delega~on to Washington in March to negotiate an agreement on the
liqwdauon of German assets. While maintaining its juridical reservations
about Allied rights to dispose of German assets in Switzerland, the Swiss
Government accepted the invitation. It was clear that without such an
agreement the release of Swiss assets blocked in Germany and the United
States, and the removal of Swiss concerns from the Black List of prohibited
traders, would not be considered by the Allies. Negotiations began in
Washington on 18 March.
Although there were a number of issues on which the Swiss and I\llied
Governments disagreed-such as the Swiss proposal to offset German assets
in Switzerland against Swiss assets in Germany-gold was in fact the chief
point of contention and the one which threate~ed the prospect of an
~greement o~ German assets· in general. The Swiss delegation, which
mcluded M. Hirs of the Swiss National Bank, rejected the Allied estimates of
~en:na~ gold reserves at the beginning of the war and the consequent
unplicatlons for looted gold supposedly in Switzerland. The Swiss National
Bank. declared itself innocent of taking in any tainted gold, and stated that the
quesuon of restoring any gold which may have been looted could only be
decided by the Swiss Federal Council. A technical committee was established
to deal ?nly with the question of gold, and it was in this forum that questions
of detail were addressed. The French delegate, M Vaidie, produced
documents exchanged between the Reichsbank and the Bank of France
concerning the Belgian gold and its transfer from France to Dakar and
thence to Berlin, which stated that the Reichsbank had resmelted the Bel!!ian
gol?, changed the. numbe:s on the ingots, and shipped most of i~ to
S~.tzerland. Other. informauon, ~ased on reports compiled during the war by
Bntish and Amencan econormc warfare authorities and detailing gold
,
(
Under the terms of th,
place at the disposal of t
Swiss francs, payable on
amount, the Allied gove]
Government and Swiss
during the war with Gen
by the Allied negotiators
offer. The Swiss maintail
liable to restore the entir
to Switzerland, some of \'
of the negotiations they
traceable originally to B,
from 1939·45, but they d
to the Allies.
The Allied negotiator
much less than they felt .
with the proposal to split
50-50 with the Allies. Th,
accepted, and that the p"
hearted support by the S
'" A detailed account of the no
,. Berne [elegram No. 761 Arfar.6 December 1945.· FO 10461210; Lener from M. Ruegger. Swiss
Embassy.
[0
Sir A. Cadogan. 18 December. Z 90190143. FO 371160479.
,. Memo. by British Embassy. Washington. 221anuary 1946. FO 115/4285.
12
the meetings can be found in FO :
n The Agreement was publish<
11514285.
�l)
vish to conceal German assets in
ilidity of the suppressing order or
ether belonging to Nazis or anti·
nd transferred to the Allies.'2B
dealings between Nazi Germany and Svvitzerland, were also produced. In
addition, the interrogation report on Dr. Puhl of the Reichsbank, who had
dealt with the Swiss National Bank., stated clearly that in his view Swiss bank
officials had been aware that the gold in question was looted.
i leading up to the negotiations
iew. The Americans wished to
)untries would not cooperate in
ea was rejected by the British
')e unenforceable in peacetime:
onomically in a much stronger
uring the course of hostilities. At
,se the same moral and economic
on I I February 1946 to send a
tegotiate an agreement on, th~
ttaining its juridical reseIVations
assets in Switzerland, the Swiss
vas clear that without such' an
;ed in Germany and the United
rom the Black List of prohibited
: Allies. Negotiations began in
Although the evidence produced by the Allies supplied part of the picture
of Swiss gold dealings with Nazi Germany (and similar evidence was later
produced in negotiations with other neutral countries), there was much they
on which the Swiss and Allied
proposal to offset German assets
Jany-gold was in fact the chief
threatened the prospect of an
L The Swiss delegation, which
::, rejected the Allied estimates of
)f the war and the consequent
Switzerland, The Swiss National
{ tainted gold, and stated that'the
nave been looted could only be
hnical committee was established
It was in this forum that questions
:lelegate, M Vaidie, produced
"bank and the' Bank of France,
fer from France to Dakar and
lsbank had resmelted the Belgian
.ts, and shipped most of it to
ports compiled during the war by
authorities and detailing gold
did not know. They had no clear idea of the total amount of gold originating
in Germany but held in Swiss banks (the US estimate was approximately
$200m, but M. Hirs let slip during a meeting of the gold committee the
figure of 500m Swiss francs). They did not know exactly how much had
moved on to other destinations. They had suspicions, but no comprehensive
proof, and the determined S",~ss rebuttal of the charge of knowingly receiving
looted gold could not, in the end be countered conclusively. Nevertheless, the
revelation of the extent of Allied awareness of wartime transactions appeared
to have the effect of unblocking the negotiations. An Agreement concerning
the liquidation of German property in Switzerland was finaJly signed on 25
May 1946. 30
,
Under the terms of the Agreement, the Swiss Government undertook to
place at the disposal of the three Allied governments the amount of 250m
Swiss francs, payable on demand in gold in New York. In accepting this
amount, the Allied governments waived all further claims against the Swiss
Government and Swiss National Bank in connection with gold acquired
during the war with Germany.3 1 'This sum, far less than the $130m asked for
by the Allied negotiators, was presented by the Swiss delegation as its final
offer. The Swiss maintained consistently that Switzerland could not be held
liable to restore the entire amount of looted gold transferred from Germany
to Switzerland, some of which was transferred to third countries. In the course
of the negotiations they admitted, that they had bought $88m of gold
traceable originally to Bclgium, and about $415m in total of German gold
from 1939·45, but they did not concede that they should restore this amount
to the Allies.
The Allied negotiators considered that the Swiss offer on gold, though
much less than they felt was due, might be the best they could get, together
with the proposal to split the proceeds of other German assets in Switzerland
50-50 with the Allies. The American delegation felt the Swiss offer should be
accepted, and that the prospect of an agreement 'which would secure whole
hearted support by the Swiss of the Allied economic security objective', should
,. A detailed account of the negotiations is given in FRUS 1946. vol. iv, pp. 202·220. British records of
) 1046/210; Letter from M. Ruegger, Swiss
;71160479.
)46, FO 115/4285.
the meetings can be found in FO 371/60419, FO 115/42S5, T 2361933 and in Bank of England documents,
)I
The Agreement was published asCmd. 6884 of 1946. See also documents in FO 371/60479 and FO
11514285.
13
�,
.
r
not be jeopardised for the sake of 'a few more dollars', and that if it' became
necessary to apply sanctions a",aainst Switzerland this would mean continuin(T
wartime restrictions at a time when 'antagonism was .increasing evervwher~
~aainst ~ch controls,.32 The British and French delegations supported this
Vlew, feeling they had struck the best deal possible in a difficult neO'otiation
and that 250m Swiss francs was a lot better than nothing. As a brief by l\1r:
Abbott of HM Treasury made clear in response to a complaint to the IARA
by.the .Czechoslovaks that the Swiss were .let off lightly, 'no arguments of
Allied nghts could move the unalterable atntude of the Swiss that there was
no le~ bas~ which they would admit as conveying an Allied right to German
assets III SWltzeriand . . . In the case of Switzerland, the claims against
Germany were very large and, on balance, the Allied negotiators had every
reason to be satisfied that the ~est terms possible were made.'33
Negotiations on the implementation of the Washington Agreement with
regard to the liquidation of German assets were protracted, due to difficulties
over the rate of exchange to be adopted, the settling of inter-custoclial
disputes and compensation claims by expropriated German owners. Further
agreements on German property in Switzerland were signed berween
Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany on 26 August 1952; and
berween Sv,'1tzerland and France, the UK and US on 28 Amrust 1952
providing for the payment of 121.5m Swiss francs into. the Int~mational
Refugees Organisation. Within Switzerland, there were Federal decrees
passed in 1962 and 1975 regarcling assets in Switzerland belonging to
foreigners or stateless persons who were, or were presumed to have been,
victims of racial, religious or political persecution and concerning whom there
had been no news since the end of the war.
The 250m Swiss francs to be paid out of German gold in Switzerland
however, were paid into the Federal Reserve Bank in New York in 1947 and
formed the basis for the gold pool to be administered by the Tripartite Gold
Commission.
The Tripartite Gold Co.mmission
The Commission was established to implement Part III of the Fma! Act of
the Paris Reparations, and was formally constituted in September 1946. 34
The Commission was not itself involved in assembling the gold pool which was
to be distributed to countries in proportion to their losses durin" the war
except in the limited sense of arrangements for physical transfer. Apart /Torr:
"FRUS. ibid.. pp. 216-17.
the initial Swiss deposit, th,
the Foreign Exchange Dep'
the gold f(;mnd by the Occ
was transferred from Fral
Federal Reserve Bank, Ne,
Commission, preparatory t<
a questionnaire to all ill<
(lARA), Poland and Italy.
monetary gold and also fc
receipts, duPng the wartim
The questionnaire also (
for use by the Comrnissic
wrongful removal, was car
reserve, either in the' acc(
accounts of the claimant c
at home or abroad.' This
exclucling any private clain
had been illegal for priva
examination of the probleJ
values of the possible. "pri'
would be small in compari
looted national gold resen
"private claims" likely to I
might run into many thow
the Commission to do
examination of the retum~
The TGC has been
distributions to eligible COl
gold held in the joint naJ
drawing to the end of
perioclically to Parliamenl
Postscript
The story of Nazi gold
c1iscovery, collation and (
speculation as to how m
restitution, however, all d
accordance with the agJ
restitution to those cow:
"Brief of September 1946 and letterto Mr_ Villiers (EWD, FO) of 15 Detober, FO 83711268.
I ,..
The Articles of the Commission were published in the London Gazetle on 27 September 1946. See
also an account of the TGC's early activities given by the UK Commissioner, Sir Desmond Morton, on 19
" Memo. by Sir Desmond MOl
" See, for, example. Mr. Rifki.
the two banks as S24m (in New Y(
July 1947, T 2361988.
14
�;,
,
.
.:.
the initial Swiss deposit, the bulk of the gold for the gold pool originated in
the Foreign Exchange Depository in Frankfurt into which had been gathered
the gold found by the Occupying forces in Germany and Austria. The gold
was transferred from Frankfurt for deposit in the Bank of England and
Federal Reserve Bank, New York in the names of the three members of the
Commission, preparatory to distribution. In June 1947 the Commission issued
a questionnaire to all members of the Inter Allied Reparations Agency
(lARA), Poland and Italy, calling for a statement of wrongful removal of
monetary gold and also for a statement of movements, covering losses and
receipts, during the wartime period.
: dollars', and that if it became
nd this would mean continuing
sm was increasing eve~here
nch delegations supported this
Issible in a difficult negotiation,
han nothing. As a brief by Mr.
,se to a complaint to the IARA
:t off lighdy, 'no arguments of
lIde of the Swiss that there was
;ying an Allied right to German
.witzerland, the claims against
.le Allied negotiators had every
ble were made.'33
The'questionnaire also contained the definition of 'monetary gold' agreed
for use by the Commission: 'All gold which, at the time of its looting or
wrongful removal, was carried as a part of the claimant country's monetary
reserve, either in the accounts of the claimant Government itself or in the
accounts of the claimant country's central bank or other monetary authority
at home or abroad.' Ibis definition was intentionally narrow, and aimed at
excluding any private claims for restirution, partly because in some countries it
had been illegal for private individuals to hold gold, but also because 'an
examination of the problem shewed generally that on the one hand the total
values of the possible "private claims" proveable by documentary evidence,
would be small in comparison ....,ith governmental claims for the restirution of
looted national gold reserves, and on the other hand, that the total number if
'):>rivate claims" likely to be presented to the Commission, if allowed at all,
might run into many thousands. This would render it impossible in practice for
the Commission to do the essential work required.' A preliminary
examination of the rerurns received by the Commission confirmed this view. 35
~
Washington Agreement with
re protracted, due to difficulties
the settling of inter-custodial
iated German owners. Further
~erland were signed between
:many on 26 August 1952, and
and US on 28 August 1952
francs into the International
there were Federal decrees
in Switzerland belonging to
were presumed to have been,
)n and concerning whom there
The TGC has been in operation since the war, making periodic
distributions to eligible countries under the terms of the Paris agreement from
gold held in the joint names of the Commission members, and is only now
drawing to the end of its work. Details of its work have been given
periodically to Parliament36 •
. German gold in Switzerland,
Bank in New York in 1947 and
;nistered by the Tripartite Gold
Postscript
.ent Part III of. the Final Act' of
nstiruted in September 1946. 3f
:mbling the gold pool which was
to their losses during the war,
or physical transfer. Apart from
The s'tory of Nazi gold did not, of course, end in 1946. Arrangements for its
discovery, collation and distribution continued into the post-war years; and
speculation as to how much remains undiscovered continues. In regard to
rescirution, however, all disbursement of gold by the Allies has been made in
accordance with the agreement reached at Paris in 1945, on .the basis of
restirution to those countries which had lost gold during the war. Special
FO) of 15 October, FO.837/1268.
" Memo. by Sir Desmond Morton, 10 July 1947, notes by Mr. Raven, 15 July, T 2361988.
.ondiJn Glllene on 27 September 1946. See
,. See, for, example, Mr. Rifkind's reply of 17 May 1984 giving the amounts of gold currently held in
:omrnissioner, Sir Desmond Morton, on 19
the two banks as $24m (in Ncw York) and $60.7m (Bank of England) respectively.
15
L
..
,...,t""Ii,,;o;.,;.•
�arrangements for aid to non-repatriable refugees were' made through
international refugee organisations. Other individuals, however, having a
claim for property of any kind taken from them during the war were
expected to make their claim for reparation or restitution either through
their o\Vn government, or to a particular foreign government, institution or
person if their claim was sufficiently specific and could be corroborated
conclusively. In their discussion on reparation and restitution in 1945 and
1946, the Allies agreed from the start on the impossibility of making individual
restitution or meeting individual claims unless for very specific items whose
origin was uncontestable.
Far more gold was lost during the war than was ,available for restitution:
the Bank of England estimated in August 1945 that 'a maximum distribution
of 58% against gold claims is indicated',S5 'This meant, inevitably, that no
country would receive back all the gold it claimed to have lost, and that
individual claims would be extremely difficult to prosecute. However, the
documents show that the Allies did their best to gather in the maximum
amount of Nazi gold, in Germany or abroad, and to make it available to
restitution to meet, at least in part, as many claims as they could. ,
Published Source~
The documents pul
British Policy Oversea
(FRUS) provide an in!
the principles underl
Gennany, the treatmeJ
the various neutral COl
Documents on Briti
,Conference at Potsdan
DBPO, Series I,
London, Washington,:
DBPO, Series I, Vc
December 1945 (HM~
Foreign Relations l
The British Common\
FRUS, 1943 Volur
FRUS, 1944 Vol
(Washington, USGPC
FRUS, 1945 Volu
(Washington, USGP(
FRUS, 1946 Volur:
Europe (Washington,
Inventory 1945-1
Gennany (British E
1993).
W. N. Medlicott,
revised edn. 1978).
Original Sou reI
Relevant British c
Office, the Treasu~
Element) deposited:
General Foreign t
useful are the files
Legation (FO 192).
" Letter to Treasury. 21 August 1945. T 236/933,
16
�•
~
f
I
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, formed in 1998, was charged with investigating what happened to the assets of victims of the Holocaust that ended up in the possession of the United States Federal government. The final report of the Commission, <a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/pcha/PlunderRestitution.html/html/Home_Contents.html"> “Plunder and Restitution: Findings and Recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States and Staff Report"</a> was submitted to President Clinton in December 2000.</p>
<p>Chairman - Edgar Bronfman<br /> Executive Director - Kenneth Klothen</p>
<p>The collection consists of 19 series. The first fifteen series of the collection are composed mostly of photocopied federal records. These records were reproduced at the National Archives and Records Administration by commission members for their research. The records relate to Holocaust assets created between the mid 1930’s and early 1950’s by a variety of U. S. Government agencies and foreign sources.</p>
<p>Subseries:<br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Art+and+Cultural+Property+">Art and Cultural Property</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Gold+">Gold</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Gold+Team+Review+Form+Binders+">Gold Team Review Form Binders</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Art+and+Cultural+Property+and+%E2%80%9COthers%E2%80%9D+Review+Form+Binders">Art and Cultural Property and “Others” Review Form Binders</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Non-Gold+Financial+Assets+Review+Form+Binders">Non-Gold Financial Assets Review Form Binders</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=History+Associates+Binder+">History Associates Binder</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Non-Gold+Financial+Assets+Review+Form+Binders+%282%29">Non-Gold Financial Assets Review Form Binders (2)</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Financial+Assets+Documents">Financial Assets Documents</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=RG+84%2C+Foreign+Service+Posts+of+the+State+Department%E2%80%94Turkey">RG 84, Foreign Service Posts of the State Department—Turkey</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Financial+Assets+Documents">Financial Assets Documents</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=%5BJewish+Restitution+Successor+Organization+%28JRSO%29%2C+Oral+Histories%5D&range=&collection=20&type=&user=&tags=&public=&featured=&exhibit=&submit_search=Search+for+items">[Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO), Oral Histories]</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=PCHA+Secondary+Sources">PCHA Secondary Sources</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Researcher+Notes">Researcher Notes</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Unnumbered+Documents+from+Archives+II+and+Various+Notes">Unnumbered Documents from Archives II and Various Notes</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=RG+260%2C+Finance+Inventory+Forms">RG 260, Finance Inventory Forms</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Reparations">Reparations</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Chase+National+Bank">Chase National Bank</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Administrative+Files">Administrative Files</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Art+%26+Cultural+Property+Theft">Art & Cultural Property Theft</a></p>
<p>Topics covered by these records include the recovery of confiscated art and cultural property; the reparation of gold and other financial assets; and the investigation of events surrounding capture of the Hungarian Gold Train at the close of World War II. These files contain memoranda, correspondence, inventories, reports, and secondary source material related to the final disposition of art and cultural property, gold, and other financial assets confiscated during the Holocaust.</p>
<p>For more information concerning this collection consult the<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/35992"> finding aid</a>.</p>
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/35992" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1040718" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
2954 folders
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[Nazi Gold] [2]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States
Art & Cultural Property Theft
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Box 224
<a href="http://clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/Systematic/Holocaust-Assets.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="http://catalog.archives.gov/description/6997222" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Adobe Acrobat Document
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Medium
The material or physical carrier of the resource.
Reproduction-Reference
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
6/24/2013
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
6997223-nazi-gold-2
6997222