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A Nazi's Trail Leads to a Gold Cache in Brazil (English)
Diana Jean Schemo
21 September 1997
1 reference
As Defeat Loomed, Nazis Hid Loot. If the ''final solution'' was the industrialized murder of European Jewry, the looting of the dead was no less systematic.From August 1942 to late 1944, the Nazi SS organized scores of shipments -- of currency, jewelry and gold teeth -- from death camps to the Reichsbank in Berlin, the journalist Ladislas Farago wrote in his 1974 book, ''Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich'' (Simon & Schuster). At one point, he wrote, some 30 clerks were needed to sort and repackage the valuables.With defeat imminent, senior German officials began hiding looted property in foreign accounts as part of a vast operation that the Allies code-named Safe Haven. Some of that money helped finance Odessa, an underground railroad for Nazi officials who were fleeing Germany and expected arrest. (English)