Uk Denies Allies Knew Nazi Gold Was Looted

Jewish groups accused the World War Two Allied powers on Wednesday of knowingly using gold stolen by the Nazis from Jewish holocaust victims and other individuals to restock European banks.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) told an international conference on Nazi gold that declassified documents in U.S. National Archives proved the Allies knew 50 to 60 tonnes of gold stolen from individuals known as non-monetary gold went into the pool of so-called monetary gold transferred to central banks.

But Francis Richards, head of the British delegation, told the 41-nation conference the WJC claim was not true. If any monetary gold was mixed with non-monetary gold, it is impossible to say how much that might have been. It could only have been a very small amount, he said, but declined to specify the possible amount.

 

Jewish organisations say non-monetary gold worth between $500 and $600 million now should have been paid to Holocaust survivors rather than the banks.

The drama developed on the second day of the conference, where 240 delegates from 41 countries and other organisations are trying to determine the origin and fate of gold looted by the Nazis.

WJC executive director Elan Steinberg produced documents which appeared to be records of the U.S. delegation to the Tripartite Gold Commission (TGC), set up with Britain and France after the war to return monetary gold to central banks looted by Germany.

We want the TGC archives open, Steinberg told reporters. Jewish groups could only finalise their claims for compensation once they had the full commission accounts of where the gold had come from.

The TGC has made clear that it will not make available the documents until the final 5.5 tonnes of gold in its storerooms have been distributed.

The problem is the French, Steinberg told reporters. Paris, he said, was refusing to allow the archives to be opened. But a French delegate said the TGC had long agreed the archives should be shut until the commission had finished its business.

Steinberg read out a section of the documents covering the TGCs decision on claims by the Austrian central bank for 91 tonnes of gold Vienna said was taken by Berlin after Austria was incorporated into the German Reich in 1938.

According to the documents, the commission decided that 13 tonnes of the claim did not belong to the central bank because it had been collected by force from Austrian individuals under a post-occupation German decree that all private gold must be given to the state.

But a British official said that just because the Austrians had claimed 91 tonnes of gold, it did not mean that either the entire 91 tonnes or the disputed 13 tonnes of bullion was actually ever in the TGC pool.

This document only concerns the claims it does not mean the Austrians knew the 91 tonnes was in the pool and wanted it back, the official told reporters.

Switzerland has come under most fire for its wartime record and for its large purchases of gold from Hitlers bankers. But the U.S. delegation pointed the finger at four other neutral countries which had bought looted Nazi gold.

It said Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Turkey had as a whole returned only a fraction of the looted gold in its stocks and had largely been unco-operative during negotiations with the Allies on handing back the stolen the bullion.