Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (31 page)

The techniques for selling off Jewish belongings and assets had their roots in Göring’s Jurisdiction Regulations for Jewish Assets of January 1939. The directive required German Jews to offer gold, gemstones, platinum, and pearls “for sale” to the government. As a result, the Economics Ministry became the center for the acquisition of gemstones and objects made of precious metals. It enlisted the help of the Berlin city government, specifically Department III of the municipal loan office, to convert these valuables into cash. To offset its administrative expenses, Berlin received a commission of 10 percent of the price. It was paid by those who were being forced to sell their belongings. Department Ill’s explicit mandate was “to seize gemstones and objects made of gold, platinum, and silver from Jewish owners and, by selling them off, to help procure the necessary currency and gold reserves to maintain state finances and wage war.”

Gold watches were mainly sold domestically and jewelry made of low-grade precious metals was melted down, but particularly valuable jewelry, gemstones, and pearls were sold abroad in order to bring in hard currency for the war effort. Diamanten-Kontor, a company based in Berlin, and Idar-Oberstein were responsible for prying gemstones from their settings and, if necessary, recutting them. In 1941, the finance minister offered several justifications for this procedure, including the creation of jobs: “The work is also necessary and important because it ensures that gemstone cutters will be able to employ a fixed number of qualified personnel.” After the stones had been recut, Diamanten-Kontor delivered them, arranged according to size and value, in “ready-for-sale lots,” each accompanied by an estimate of its monetary value.

The preferred market for gemstones was Switzerland. But the reluctance of people there to purchase gemstones of such dubious origin meant that “only a small percentage of the diamonds and pearls handed over to the central office” could “be exchanged abroad for hard currency.” Jews who surrendered valuables between 1939 and late 1941 received 10 percent of the items’ domestic value, with 10 percent of that amount deducted for administrative costs.
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An edict of Göring’s in the summer of 1943 expressed the urgency the Reich attached to this method of raising money. Göring ordered the confiscation of stamp collections owned by “enemies” and Jews, with the goal of “acquiring as much money as possible through their sale.” “The currency situation,” he wrote, “requires us to use all the means at our disposal to acquire currency, even when the individual proceeds don’t dramatically improve the books.”
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Finance Ministry officials occasionally protested at having to be involved in such transactions, but in the end their expertise was viewed as crucial. For example, in March 1941, Göring ordered Schwerin von Krosigk to take possession of two crates of gold and jewels seized from the Rothschild family in Paris. Von Krosigk did so unwillingly—especially as the proceeds from the sale of the valuables were to go not to his ministry but to a “special fund.” Göring replied that the Finance Ministry had the most “experience in the optimal liquidation of Jewish jewelry,” that is, how to sell off seized valuables at the best possible price.
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Along with Department III of the municipal pawnshop in Berlin, a number of local pawnshops also engaged in selling off Jewish-owned jewelry. The director of the municipal pawnshops in Dortmund reported in August 1941: “Jews can’t make complaints of any kind about the prices we pay. They have to take what we offer them.” On the subject of his own place in national history, he added: “If in future years a researcher who only knows of Jews by word of mouth should come and go through the files in the Dortmund city archive, he will conclude that the municipal pawnshops of Dortmund did their small part in finding a solution to the Jewish question.”
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The Dortmund pawnshop was the central point of sale for jewelry owned by Jews in Westphalia.

THE WORK of historians Gisela Möllenhoff and Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer offers a detailed picture of how Jewish assets were confiscated by the state. Using the example of one wealthy Jewish couple, Emil and Henny Uhlmann, they show how the emigration tax
(Reichsfluchtsteuer)
, the levy on Jewish wealth
(Judenvermögensabgabe)
, and the mandatory registration of assets combined to fill the German treasury:

The value of their securities and bank assets totaled 12,500 reichsmarks. Their house and property were assessed at 34,700 reichsmarks. After the emigration tax and the atonement payment, 21,350 reichsmarks of the original 47,200 remained. When they fled to Luxembourg in April 1940, they were allowed to take along only 10 reichsmarks each. A state-appointed trustee managed their assets after their departure and seized the money that came in from the rental of their property. As a result, the couple became dependent on a relative’s financial support. Their house was officially transferred to the Reich and appears on a list of municipal property from February 18, 1941. Remaining assets were confiscated when the emigrants were stripped of German citizenship and when those who remained behind (relatives) had been deported under the eleventh ordinance of the Reich Citizenship Law of November 21, 1941.

In this case, the German people saved themselves 47,180 reichsmarks in taxes. That sum allowed the state to avoid tax increases—equivalent to a 50 percent hike for eight hundred workers with two children each—that would otherwise have been necessary because of the financial situation. At the same time, the state was able to absorb some excess spending power in the middle of the war by selling off the Uhlmanns’ possessions to the highest bidder or at preset prices.

A few weeks after the Uhlmanns escaped to Luxembourg in April 1940, German soldiers conquered that country. In October 1941, they were deported to the Lodz ghetto. Emil Uhlmann died there of exhaustion on November 7, 1942. Seven weeks earlier, on September 17, 1942, Henny Uhlmann had been taken to th Chelmo extermination camp. There, that same day, she was murdered in one of the camp’s mobile gas chambers.
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The Wehrmacht invaded Norway on April 9, 1940. Two years later, Reich commissioner Josef Terboven installed Norwegian fascist leader Vidkun Quisling as the country’s prime minister. Inevitably, the Reich looked to Norway for funds to aid its war effort. Norway’s Jews numbered just over 2,100, but like their counterparts throughout Europe they were forced to turn in all their possessions.

In late October 1942, a few days after the Norwegian cabinet moved to “Aryanize” the country, Quisling issued a two-part secret decree: “1. Pocket and wristwatches confiscated during the seizure of Jewish assets according to the law of October 26, 1942, are to be handed over immediately to the Wehrmacht for use in the war and to the German Security Police. 2. Confiscated gold, silver, and jewelry are to be used to help meet the costs of war and are to be put, via the Security Police, at the immediate disposal of the German government.”
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(The letter containing this decree was the basis for Instruction no. 2 of the Liquidation Office for Confiscated Jewish Assets.) In total, Quisling’s office sold off the possessions of 2,173 Norwegian Jews, with an estimated value of 23 million Norwegian crowns, or some 11 million reichsmarks. Securities and similar assets were sold for the benefit of the Norwegian treasury.
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Although the sums in question were comparatively small, the money found its way into the Norwegian budget. From there it passed into the account for occupation costs and finally directly into the pockets of German soldiers, the budgets of procurement officers, and the wage packets of Norwegian workers employed to build military fortifications.
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In November 1943, accountants from the Reich General Auditor’s Office checked up on “gold and silver items” stored at the German civilian administration in Oslo. (These items consisted mainly of valuables handed over by the Liquidation Office.) The previous Christmas, in 1942, 337 gold and other timepieces had been given free of charge to Alois Windisch-Graetz, Eduard Dietl, and Ferdinand Schoerner, the commanding generals of German units stationed in Norway. Subordinates who had been of particular service found the timepieces under their Christmas trees as tokens of their superiors’ appreciation.
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Later instructions directed that concert and upright pianos be handed over for the entertainment of German troops.
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Moreover, after paying in devalued Norwegian crowns for all the textile articles the Liquidation Office had collected, the Reich shipped them back to Germany.
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THE SITUATION was entirely different in Belgium, which had been invaded in May 1940. As elsewhere, a collaborationist government was installed, but in Belgium, the anti-Jewish campaign was carried out exclusively by the German military administration—not by Belgian authorities. On October 28,1940, a few months into the occupation, the German military commander ordered that Jews be subjected to “such measures as are deemed absolutelynecessary to maintain security.” Among them was the registration of all Jewish residents of the country and all businesses in which Jews had influence. In addition, the Wehrmacht introduced regulations requiring advance military approval for every ordinance concerning Jewish businesses and properties. They also ordered “the removal of Jews from all public offices and positions.”

Three weeks later, German military leaders took their next step. On November 16, the commander in chief of the army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, decreed that “the highest priority should be given to accelerating the removal of Jews from the economy; existing stocks from Jewish businesses should be liquidated for the benefit of the troops or the Reich.” But the Belgians proved reluctant partners, and the plan “to de-Jewify the economy, as in France, through legislation passed by the occupied country” was a failure. The Belgian cabinet secretaries who had remained behind after the government went into exile refused to cooperate, citing “constitutional conflicts.”
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This example of noncompliance stands in stark contrast to the collaboration that was the rule almost everywhere else in Europe.

The contrast with Belgium highlights the vested interest the Norwegian government had in the “de-Jewification” of the country. It also shows that German expropriation policies faltered when they could not exploit the anti-Semitism of civil servants in the occupied country itself. While confiscation and liquidation institutions in Oslo ran with maximum efficiency, German generals in Brussels complained about highly obstructionist “circles within the Belgian judiciary.” The Belgian Chief state prosecutor, for example, explicitly forbade his notaries to certify contracts concerning the liquidation of Jewish assets. The occupation authorities—who were members of the Wehrmacht, not the SS—forced du Roi to step down. “His instructions, however, remained in force” because no one in the Belgian judiciary was prepared to annul them.

Consequently, on December 21, 1943, the German military commander was compelled to issue an order allowing German notaries to certify Belgian contracts. Even then, occupation authorities had difficulty finding customers for confiscated assets, either because Belgians sympathized with the victims of Nazi persecution or because they took note of Germany’s declining military fortunes. In any case, Belgian courts of chancery pursued a similar course of obstructionism. Throughout the occupation, they adamantly refused to strike from their records the 6,057 Jewish businesses that Germans had liquidated in the country. The Belgian Ministry of Justice was ordered to carry out this task, but it, too, declined to do so.
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Earlier in the occupation, on May 31, 1941, the German military administration had issued an “Ordinance on Economic Measures against the Jews.” The edict mandated the registration of all Jewish-owned real estate, ordered Jews to place securities in escrow, and required them to deposit whatever cash they possessed in bank accounts. In total, Belgian Jews reported ownership of 7,700 businesses, 3,000 parcels of commercial real estate, and 17,400 private savings and investment portfolios.
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By February 1942, the German military commander in Belgium could claim that “Jewish wealth has been documented.”
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But many Belgian Jews were able to avoid reporting their liquid assets, safety deposit boxes, bank accounts, and stock holdings because Belgian bank directors and employees madin fo efforts to find out which of their customers were Jewish. Even accounts easily recognizable as Jewish-owned were left untouched. The only accounts that were reported were those whose owners, fearing the consequences of disobedience, had “spontaneously” identified themselves.
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Deeply concerned about the efforts of Belgian citizens and public officials to obstruct the seizure of Jewish assets, the Nazi administration tried a different tack. Following the invasion in 1940, the German occupiers had set up a shell corporation called the Brösseler Treuhandgesellschaft (Brussels Trust Company) to administer the seizure and disposal of property belonging to Jews and other “enemies” of the Reich. Though registered as a legitimate business entity, the company was nothing more than a front for the Wehrmacht; German military employees served in its senior executive posts and eventually dominated its board of directors. “This close connection,” wrote one official, “ensured that the central importance of the military administration in the Brussels Trust Company was respected. The board of directors, which was set up later, consisted likewise mainly of employees of the military administration, including the director of the economics division, who was the board’s chairman.”