| Nazi Gold - The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust Survivors
(1997)
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| Front Cover |
Book Details |
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| Genre |
Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Banks and banking - Corrupt practices - Switzerland - History - 20th century; Foreign bank accounts - Switzerland - History - 20th century; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Jewish property - Switzerland; Jews - Europe - Claims |
| Publication Date |
4/3/1997 |
| Format |
Hardcover (9.7
x
6.7
mm)
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| Publisher |
HarperCollins |
| Language |
English |
| Extras |
Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover |
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| Description |
| Nazi Gold is the expose of the fifty-year conspiracy by Swiss bankers to steal deposits by European Jews and help German Nazis hide the money they looted from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is also about a group of dedicated Americans with the U.S. Treasury Department - Sam Klaus, Orvis Schmidt, James Mann, and Seymour Rubin, to name a few - who struggled tirelessly for many years following World War II, with little support from the British and French, to get the Swiss to release the deposits to the rightful owners or their heirs. Finally, Nazi Gold is about the victims themselves - constantly rebuffed, denied, and humiliated in their efforts to recover their money and survive in a postwar world that showed them nothing but indifference, prejudice, and hate. Based on intensive research and incontrovertible evidence, Nazi Gold is the last dramatic chapter in the history of the Holocaust. Tom Bower, a distinguished British investigative historian, reveals for the first time in full the despicable role played by Swiss banks and the Swiss government in exploiting World War II and the persecution of the Jews to their financial advantage. He describes how Swiss industries manufactured and sold military equipment to the Germans during the war at a substantial profit, then after the war cynically turned away survivors and heirs of victims of the Holocaust with lies, obfuscation, and impossible-to-satisfy demands for proof of relationship to deceased depositors. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished and sensational source material, as well as interviews with many individuals on all sides of the controversy, Bower is also able to re-create important and secret meetings and telephone conversations that are often astounding in the bluntness of their revelations. |
| Personal Details |
| Acquire Date |
6/10/2010 |
| Condition |
Very Good/Very Good |
| Rating |
0 |
| Links |
Library of Congress
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| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
HG3204 .B68 1997 |
| Dewey |
940.5314 |
| ISBN |
9780060175351 |
| Edition |
[1st ed.] |
| Cover Price |
$25.00 |
| No. of Pages |
400 |
| First Edition |
Yes |
| Rare |
No |
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| Notes/Review |
I found this book infuriating. Not the book, surely, but the topic.
I don't really know anything about Swiss banks. But in American pop culture, Swiss banks are depicted as being conservative and upright. Thinking about Swiss banks and the secrecy laws their government enacted over the years, though, leads inevitably to the conclusion that their only real purpose is to hide money. To hide the proceeds of crimes (mafioso, drug cartels, etc), to hide money from governments in pursuit of tax fraud, or to hide assets in nasty divorces.
Obviously, there are some cases where it's not criminal to hide assets for your government. In the early pages of this book we are provided perhaps the best example of this: European Jews getting their assets out of Nazi Germany; to protect their wealth from theft. Surely, the Swiss banks' reputation for honesty and discretion could be counted on.
As it turns out, Jews could not have made a much larger mistake than to trust the Swiss or their banks. Switzerland was nominally neutral, but quite sympathetic to Nazi Germany. Anti-semitism was both virulent and endemic in Europe; it wasn't limited to Germany. In fact, we learn in this book, in the 1930s Switzerland enacted many laws similar to the Nazis'. In 1936, Jewish bankers, members of long-established Swiss families, had been requested by their countrymen to resign their directorships and memberships in the council of the Zurich stock exchange.
Nonetheless, much of the wealth of Europe's Jews was moved to Switzerland, either into bank accounts or into private hands acting as fiduciaries with the idea that these assets would be protected from Nazi theft. Unfortunately, due to a combination of virulent anti-semitism that continued for decades after the end of the war and toxic greed of the bankers, almost none of this wealth was returned to the victims of the Nazis for over fifty years.
Arguably the greatest crime in history is the Nazi theft from and murder of Europe's Jews. A crime of such massive scope couldn't be perpetrated without aid. Much of that aid came from the willing and eager participation of the German population who happily took their Jewish neighbors' apartments and businesses or who gladly enlisted in the SS. And on the financial side, in scenic Swiss valleys safely distant from the concentration camps, the Swiss banks aided and abetted the Nazi crime.
Most of the book deals with the plunder of the Jews. But the Jews weren't the Nazis' only victims. The Nazis stole from everybody. When their armies vanquished their foes, the Nazis confiscated all the gold in the National banks of the defeated nations. Much of this gold was funneled through Swiss banks to other "neutral" countries to finance the Nazi war machine.
I've read extensively about World War II, but until now have come across almost nothing about Switzerland's role. On maps of the time, Switzerland is a blank spot. After reading this book, I'm compelled to read more, to try to fill in that hole. This book is a damning start. The picture it paints is not a flattering one. This book shows Switzerland as a willing partner in Nazi crimes. |
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