Isabel Vincent "Hitler's Silent Partners: Swiss Banks, Nazi Gold, And The Pursuit Of Justice."
A journalist for Toronto's "Globe and Mail" details the continuing, wretched story of Swiss collusion―as financiers and dealers in stolen goods―with Nazi Germany.
Vienna, 1939: "If anything happens to us, I have money in Switzerland." These were among the last words that sixteen-year-old Renie Lang's grandfather said to her before he perished in the Holocaust. Fifty years later, Renee and thousands like her are trying to find their rightful inheritances in Swiss banks―and the world faces appalling revelations that "neutral" Switzerland acted as secret banker to the Nazis, abetting the German war against the Jewish people.
Award-winning journalist Isabel Vincent unravels the labyrinthine story behind the headlines: how desperate men and women tried to secure their families' futures by opening bank accounts in Switzerland; how the Nazis laundered, through Swiss banks, gold seized from the treasuries of occupied countries, much of it looted from the Jews; how the demands of international business, Swiss bank secrecy, and greed have conspired to prevent the truth from being disclosed for over half a century and still prevent restitution.
Balanced, rigorous, and often heartbreaking, this major work also gives a human face to the statistics: a crusading Toronto lawyer; Edgar Bronfman, the passionate head of the World Jewish Congress; a Swiss parliamentarian determined to discover her country's past; and Renie, a survivor waiting in the shadows for some small justice, already a little too late.
The story isn't simple, and the culpability extends far beyond Swiss bankers. For instance, Vincent notes that a US intelligence report from 1945 suggested that even the International Committee of the Red Cross, with headquarters in Switzerland, smuggled ``Nazi assets and valuables across Europe in diplomatic pouches.'' A number of Swiss firms may also have worked closely (and profitably) with the Nazis.
While it was known in official circles that Switzerland flagrantly abused its neutrality, its complicity was only lightly considered by the Allied victors, largely because of pragmatic realpolitik. Although Swiss banks, throughout the war, paid Germany needed foreign currency for gold bullion usurped from the central banks of conquered countries and for bars refined from the gold gathered from the ring fingers and teeth of millions of slaughtered Jews, they were not pursued by any international courts. Secret accounts established by beleaguered Jews before they disappeared were ignored, too. An amount approaching $6 billion (in current dollars) may have been involved.
William Morrow; First Edition.
Hardcover. 1997.
New book. Remainder mark on bottom of pages. Otherwise, book in excellent visual and technical condition.