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Eizenstat report 25 years ago – How Switzerland enriched itself from Nazi looted gold



US official Eizenstat: “The Swiss National Bank must have known that some of the gold had been stolen from occupied countries.” (dpa/picture alliance)

Heidi and the Matterhorn, chocolate and precision watches – Swiss clichés. In addition, freedom-loving people like Wilhelm Tell and honorable politicians with waistcoats as pure as the mountain air.

But in the 1990s the idyll became fragile. At that time it came to light that Switzerland had bought tons of stolen gold from the Nazis during the Second World War – in exchange for hard currency. The Third Reich needed these in order to obtain militarily important raw materials from abroad. The allegedly neutral Alpine republic – a gold panning plant for Hitler’s Germany. And more, according to US government official and anti-Semitism researcher Gregg Rickman:

Did Swiss aid extend the war by a year?

“They were the bankers for the Nazis, which gave them contacts with the rest of the world. This gave the Nazis a place to store their stolen assets, diamonds, artifacts, gold, bank accounts and so on. Switzerland provided ammunition, cars, weapons, everything that Germany needed, especially towards the end. Swiss aid may have extended the war by a year.”

Many had suspected that, but nobody could prove it for a long time. Then, in September 1996, the British Foreign Office first published previously secret documents. In it, the value of the transferred gold was estimated at an outrageous US$ 500 million, which corresponds to around US$ 9 billion today. And Parliamentarian Greville Janner made it clear:

Gold worth around nine billion dollars today

We’re talking about stolen assets here. Whether it’s gold bars, personal belongings, or gold from the corpses of Auschwitz. Not only is it against the law of any civilized country to steal, but also to pass on stolen things.”

Thousands of miles away in Washington, Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat learned of the allegations from London. He asked his President, Bill Clinton, to set up a commission of inquiry. Nine months later, on May 7, 1997, Eizenstat appeared before the press with a 200-page report.

The Swiss National Bank must have known that some of the gold had been stolen from occupied countries. It was well known that the Reichsbank hardly owned any gold of its own.”

World Jewish Congress: Biggest robbery in human history

The Nazi gold also came from Holocaust victims. Jewellery, melted dental gold. After the publication of the Eizenstat report, the World Jewish Congress spoke of the greatest robbery in human history. The world public reacted in horror – and the Swiss questioned their self-image. The historian Stefan Keller:

“I think there was something very important in that process: the love withdrawal of a part of the US, that is, the US media. The Swiss never expected that. That suddenly they aren’t so nice anymore, children, they also eat our chocolate. That was a tremendous shock.”

The shock was also so great because at the same time it was revealed that Swiss banks, citing their much-vaunted banking secrecy, had been denying the descendants of Jews murdered in concentration camps access to their nameless numbered accounts for decades. That wouldn’t work without a death certificate, so the more than cynical justification.

Switzerland denied descendants access to numbered accounts

For a long time, Switzerland believed that it had bought itself free of historic guilt with the so-called Washington Agreement of 1946. At that time, the Allied victors had agreed with Bern on a one-off payment of 250 million Swiss francs for European reconstruction. Also because the Cold War was already raging. Greg Rickman:

Europe needed Switzerland, it needed them against the Soviet Union. Germany had to be built up as a buffer zone. And from the documents we know that at the end of the war Britain was trying to get credit from Switzerland and that’s why Britain was particularly accommodating.”

Not all accounts found yet

After the Eizenstat report of 1997, the pressure on Switzerland grew. Bern set up a commission of inquiry. Over 50,000 accounts related to Holocaust victims were located. Swiss banks finally agreed to pay a total of $1.25 billion to descendants of account owners who were killed. However, the whereabouts of the Nazi looted gold has not yet been fully elucidated

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