[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 59 (Thursday, May 8, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E886-E887]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE STAIN OF NAZI GOLD

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 8, 1997

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, as the only survivor of the Holocaust ever 
elected to the Congress of the United States, I want to share with my 
colleagues a thoughtful editorial from the New York Times, entitled 
``The Stain of Nazi Gold.''
  Under Secretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat, one of our Nation's 
most respected and serious public servants, deserves enormous credit 
for having pursued this entire matter with extraordinary diligence, 
intelligence, and integrity. We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

                         The Stain of Nazi Gold

       The honest excavation of history can bring sobering 
     discoveries, as the American Government has now found in an 
     examination of Nazi Germany's stolen gold and its 
     redistribution after the war. No nation emerges unscathed 
     from this investigation, including the United States, and 
     many are disgraced. It is saddening but not altogether 
     surprising to learn that morality and justice, especially the 
     international obligation to look after the survivors of the 
     Holocaust, were swiftly sacrificed to expediency when the 
     gold was divvied up after the war. Remedying this failure, as 
     the report rightly notes, is the unfinished business of World 
     War II.
       The extraordinary inquiry, which involved the 
     declassification of nearly one million pages of documents, 
     was initiated by President Clinton after Switzerland coldly 
     rebuffed Jews seeking to recover gold and other assets their 
     families had deposited in Swiss banks before the war. Under 
     the determined direction of Stuart Eizenstat, the Under 
     Secretary of Commerce, and William Slany, a State Department 
     historian, it touches on wartime economic collaboration with 
     Germany but deals mainly with the anemic postwar effort to 
     restore gold and other valuables to the nations and peoples 
     from which they had been stolen.
       Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Argentina will want to 
     take notice. The extent of their economic cooperation with 
     the Nazis has been slowly unfolding in recent years, but Mr. 
     Eizenstat makes clear they profited from their neutrality. 
     Even as the threat of German invasion waned in the last years 
     of the war, Sweden sold Germany iron ore and ball bearings, 
     Portugal provided tungsten for steelmaking, Spain traded 
     goods and raw materials and Turkey shipped chrome. Argentina 
     defied efforts to prevent the transfer of German funds there 
     from Europe.
       Switzerland is properly singled out. Though helpful to the 
     Allies as a base for spying, it served as Nazi banker, gold 
     keeper and financial broker. Switzerland provided Germany 
     with arms, ammunition, aluminum and agricultural products.
       These countries made only a fitful effort after the war to 
     return the looted gold and other assets they received in 
     payments from Germany during the war. Here America bears 
     considerable responsibility. It led the postwar effort to 
     recover and distribute the gold. Yet only a small portion of 
     the $580 million in gold stolen from conquered governments, 
     worth some $5.6 billion today, was ever recovered. Even less 
     of the millions of dollars in gold and other assets taken 
     from individuals was returned.
       Switzerland was aggressively unhelpful, resisting 
     accounting and recovery efforts for years and not honoring 
     agreements to liquidate German assets held in Switzerland. 
     The American report estimates that as much as $400 million in 
     German-looted gold remained in the Swiss National Bank at the 
     end of the war, but no more than $98 million was returned.
       The task of tracing and apportioning the gold and other 
     assets was daunting, but American officials tolerated 
     intransigence by other nations and accepted pitiful 
     restitution agreements in the name of cold-war solidarity. 
     Eager to obtain access to an Azores air base in the 1950's, 
     Washington let Portugal surrender only about one-tenth of the 
     German gold it held at the end of the war.

[[Page E887]]

       Spain eventually returned just $114,000 in looted gold from 
     a stockpile of $30 million. Turkey, which held $44 million in 
     Nazi assets and $5 million in looted gold, made no 
     restitution. Only Sweden paid up.
       The victims of this dismal record were the survivors of the 
     Holocaust and others left homeless and stateless by the war. 
     Assets that could have been used to help them were never 
     returned to the countries plundered by Germany. Worse still, 
     gold and other valuables found in Germany that had been 
     seized from millions of individuals and households across 
     Europe were knowingly mingled with assets stolen from 
     European governments by the Nazis. As a result, gold that 
     should have gone to help individuals through relief and 
     compensation programs ended up in European and American 
     government vaults, where some remains today.
       These matters remained too long obscured from public view, 
     shielded by excessive secrecy and national pride. It is late 
     to redress the wrongs, but every effort should now be made to 
     return gold and other assets to those with a legitimate 
     claim. Switzerland, after long delay, is finally making an 
     effort to trace and return assets deposited before the war. 
     Mr. Eizenstat and Mr. Slany have performed a high public 
     service by digging for the truth.

     

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