FREE ESSAY ON NAZI GOLD

NAZI GOLD

It is the last great mystery of World War II: the unfinished, unprecedented search for
what may be billions of dollars in cash, gold, property, and art hidden and unclaimed by
victims of the Holocaust - or plundered by the Nazis and their accomplices before
shipping Jews to the death camps. 
In 1938 Nazi Gestapos raided the homes of over 10,000,000 innocent Jews. Their houses
were thrashed, possessions were stolen, and lives were torn for the benefit of "one
superior race." None of these people ever received compensation for their misfortunes,
but most of all they never regained their lives. They had switched their bank accounts to
the neutral country of Switzerland. This was to ensure their money was still theirs, if
by some chance they survived the terror known as the Holocaust. When all Jews were forced
into mandatory concentration camps that money mysteriously fell into the hands of Swiss
bank officials. The very few Jews that did survive the deathly concentration camps, were
denied the hard earned money that was in the Swiss banks. These people have been fighting
fifty years with bank officials to find if Switzerland still had their money. It has now
become evident that billions of dollars are left in Swiss banks. Of these billions of
dollars the few that survived the Holocaust have never seen a penny. These victims
deserve the money they earned years ago. The families of those whose lives were taken
deserve to get compensation for their ancestors. Holocaust victims and families of dead
Holocaust victims must get compensation for being terrorized.
There are millions of dollars worth of Nazi gold in the United States and Great Britain,
but most gold is stored in Switzerland. Two countries that were firmly against the
dictatorship that was going on in Germany, took millions of dollars of stolen gold from
that same country. The United States and Great Britain are said to have gold hidden in
their central banks that was looted by Nazis , but Switzerland was the main destination
for gold from the looting of the Nazis. 
For years, Swiss bankers have denied having anything but minimal amounts of Nazi loot and
unclaimed Jewish accounts in their vaults. "There's been a 50 year campaign of
dissembling," says Edgar Bronfman, the business mogul and president of the World Jewish
Congress (WJC), who leads the search for the hidden assets .
Over 50 years have passed and Switzerland has claimed they have minuscule amounts of
Holocaust victims money. It wasn't until someone dug very deep into Swiss banking
archives known as the JAG files that the truth was found.
In one of those boxes, she found a copy of the Socie#233 Ge#233rale de Surveillance, a
Geneva banking association. It listed names of Jewish nationals from Eastern Europe who
had put their money into Swiss banks, with the amounts of their deposits. Translated into
dollars and adjusted for inflation, the total came to about $20 billion. 
It has been over 50 years since the Geneva Convention concluded WWII, and until 1996
Switzerland denied they even took any sort of money from the Nazis. When a nasty paper
trail was followed, it was learned that more than $20 billion was hidden in Switzerland,
Great Britain, and the United States.
But not one penny of the money stolen by Nazis has been returned to Holocaust victims. It
has been over fifty years since Gestapos raided the homes of Holocaust victims. Almost
seven million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps, but the estimated 600,000
survivors of the Holocaust have never received restitution payments from Germany. Some
countries have overlooked Jewish concentration camp survivors, and gave money to
prominent Nazi rulers.
The age of many of the as-yet-uncompensated victims if Nazi persecutions has given
urgency to the task. Over the years, most of the victims have been overlooked while some
perpetrators and their heirs have been rewarded. The German widow of prominent Nazi
Julius Streicher, for instance, received a lump sum of 46,000 deutsche marks ($35,000)
from the West German government as compensation for money her husband might have earned
had he survived the war .
In this case the victim was overlooked and the criminal's family was rewarded. Is this
the way we are teaching our younger generations, that it actually pays to commit crime?
We must get rid of these asinine actions. The real question that ponders is: What is
being done in the future to correct the immoral actions?
After all of this came to the "official" attention of the Unites States, Great Britain,
and Switzerland there have been many actions. The United Stated Department of Commerce
hired Stuart E. Einzenstat to give a report concerning the gold and money deposited by
the German Nazis during the 1930's and 40's. The Einzenstat Report, with the help of the
Bergier Commission, found that Swiss banks handled 76% of Nazi Germany's gold
transactions. From this:
Three class action lawsuits have been brought against Switzerland's banks on behalf of
Holocaust victims and their heirs. In March 1997 a Brooklyn Federal judge ruled that the
lawsuits be consolidated and they will be administered by a 10-member executive
committee. There are thousands of plaintiffs in these lawsuits seeking billions of
dollars.7
After long deliberation between Swiss bank officials and lawyers on August 12, 1998 they
reached a settlement:
Swiss commercial banks agree to pay Holocaust survivors and their relatives more than
$1.25 billion over the next three years to end claims that Swiss banks had withheld
millions of dollars since World War II. The accord involves the banks UBS and Credit
Suisse. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs agree to drop a lawsuit against the
Government-owned Swiss National Bank. Many U.S. states and cities had threatened
sanctions on the Swiss banks if they had not agreed to an appropriate settlement.7
Finally an end was brought to something that went on far to long. At least the Swiss
commercial banks owned up to their wrong. But the United States and Great Britain didn't.
The Eizenstat Report concluded that the United States and Great Britain had little or no
involvement in money deposited from Nazi Germany. The real question one must ask is:
What's the Deal? It seems as the United State's and Great Britain's governments don't
want to own up to what they have done. I guess they figure the main culprit was
apprehended so don't worry about the rest. All governments that were involved should have
to pay restitution for what they did.
. World War II was a war that was supposedly fought for the good of all mankind to rid
the world of horrendous governments. But appears that its after effects include more than
was portrayed. It was also a war of conspiracy, cover-ups, and cheating. Over $20 billion
in gold was stolen from Holocaust victims, and none of them have been given anything to
compensate their losses. These losses mostly are centered around the lives of 6 million
Jews that were killed in concentration camps. "They can't bring those people back but
they can at least give back to my mother, in her 80's, her wealth, her history, and her
standing." It is about time any government that oppressed those that were involved with
the holocaust own up to their responsibility. It was originally thought that Great
Britain and the United states had also participated in taking golden deposits from Nazi
Germany, but when Switzerland was found guilty, the United States and Great Britain
claimed victory. It was a victory, yes, but all of the culprits need to be found and
punished. Investigations must not stop until every wrongdoing country is penalized for
their actions.
Bibliography
Abegg, Ernst. "Bank Report Shows Officials Traded Accusations About Nazi Gold."
Source Breaking News. September 19, 1996. p. 60 - 75
Chesnoff, Richard. "Fifty Years Too Late, a Reckoning." US News & World Review. 
March 17, 1997. p. 110 - 120
Chesnoff, Richard. "The Last Mystery of World War II." US News & World Review. 
June 20, 1996. p. 30 - 36
Marks John. "What the Nazis Stole." US News & World Review. March 17, 1999. p. 
90 - 100
McGeary, Johanna. "Echoes of the Holocaust." Time Magazine. February 24, 1997. p. 
40 - 51
PBS and WGBH/Frontline. "Frontline: Nazi Gold." Frontline. 
http://www,pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/ . Copyright 1998. 
Accessed November 22, 1999.