Is there an estimate on how much money was stolen from the Jews during the holocaust?

Answer 1

Who knows?

The Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Slovakia will put its case forward in a Berlin regional court next spring. The group claims up to $3.9 million was paid to Germany by the Nazi-puppet Slovak state.

In 1942, 57,800 Slovak Jews were deported to concentration camps. Nearly all were murdered.

A price of 500 deutschemarks was placed on each head, but the group says official Slovak state records show that only a portion of the overall sum changed hands.

"This is not just a legal but a moral problem," said the Central Union's director, Jozef Weiss. "Slovakia was the only country during the war to actually pay for Jews to be sent to camps. Germany does have a responsibility."

According to Weiss, the money used to pay the Nazis did not come from the Slovak state budget but from assets confiscated from the country's Jewish community. "The money was stolen from Jewish families in Slovakia," he said.

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Friday January 17, 1997

Data shows Swiss hauled stolen Jewish gold for Nazis

DANIEL KURTZMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The gold, worth an estimated $250 million to $500 million, came from the central banks of countries occupied by Germany and taken from dead Holocaust victims.

The gold was carried in trucks bearing the Swiss national emblem and insured by Swiss companies, according to a 1946 U.S. intelligence memo and a transcript of a 1945 military interrogation of the Nazi official who headed Germany's wartime gold department.

"Switzerland emerges as not only a banking center for Hitler's Germany, but a one-stop laundering center," said Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director.

Handbook helps Jewish families claim stolen art


AFP, BERLIN
Monday, Apr 23, 2007, Page 6
In the wake of sensational sales of art that was seized by the Nazis, German authors have published the first handbook to help Jewish families win back masterpieces that are still in the wrong hands.

The 528-page tome Nazi Looted Art -- Art Restitution Worldwide is sold as a do-it-yourself law manual for heirs of Holocaust victims hoping to confront museums and collectors in different corners of the world in a bid to recover lost canvasses.

Co-author Gunnar Schnabel makes an educated guess that "there are still thousands of masterpieces and tens of thousands of lesser paintings that should be returned to the rightful heirs.

"For example, some 30,000 art works were taken out of France, but 16,000 never resurfaced. It is the museums' policy to keep all of this top secret. There are works in basements and vaults," Schnabel, a lawyer who handles restitution claims, said.

Even before it hit the shelves last month, the book he wrote with historian Monika Tatzkow was adding to pressure on the German government to return a painting from the Biedermeier era featured on its cover.

Answer 2

--There was a special on tv that reported how the swiss hoarded the gold of the Jews that they received from the Nazis on PBS.--If I remember correctly it was at least billions in gold, from their teeth rings etc.

*** g02 11/22 p. 29 Watching the World ***

Switzerland Decides to Join the UN

“By a slender margin, neutral Switzerland decided in a countrywide vote . . . to leave behind decades of isolationism and become a member of the United Nations,” reports The New York Times. The submission of a formal application to the UN General Assembly is required to make Switzerland the 190th member of the organization. When the Swiss last voted on membership in 1986, the proposition was overwhelmingly rejected, “driven by fears that the nation’s traditional neutrality would be compromised.” What brought about the change? “Although the country is host to the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva and is active in a number of its agencies, the government feared that a continued reluctance to become a member would undercut Switzerland politically and economically, and undermine its mediation efforts in far-flung conflicts,” says the Times. Switzerland may also have seen a need to improve its image after recent disclosures that Swiss banks had hoarded the accounts of Holocaust victims and that Switzerland had turned away from its borders many refugees who were trying to flee Nazi Germany."
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Answer 3

One can only guess. Just in the Netherlands the value of stolen goods, extorted money, and emptied accounts is estimated between 170 millions US$ and maybe 1700 millions US$.

"Pilferage. The Plundering of Jewish Possessions during the Second World War", Gerard Aalders, review in Foreign Policy, No. 119 (Summer, 2000), pp. 142-145 : http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0015-7228(200022)119%3C142%3ARDOVJB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

And nobody seems to have an idea about the number of numbered Nazi accounts in Swiss banks with stolen or blackmailed Jewish money.