61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

SS member Helmuth Maurer and the Zurich Cantonal Bank illustrates that in
some circumstances such bank accounts were used to move millions in gold and
currency; yet Maurer does not appear on any of the Nazi lists used. The account
was discovered because it was reported by the bank when the obligation to
register German assets was implemented in 1945. 35
The more prominent and exposed a person was in Nazi Germany, the less likely
it is that an openly declared bank account existed, as this would have been
tantamount to committing an offence against the various foreign exchange laws
under the threat of severe punishment. In the run-up to the Nuremberg trials,
the Americans had every opportunity to put pressure on the «principal war
criminals» who were later convicted, and to undertake appropriate follow-up
investigations. In none of these cases was anything found. Even a man like
Hermann Goering, whose grasping business acumen is legendary and who
regularly sent emissaries to Switzerland, left no identifiable bank account. 36 It
would, however, be wrong to conclude that no significant assets from convicted
Nazis were moved into or through Switzerland. The American operation
«Safehaven» assumed – justifiably – that such a situation could arise, just as it
had happened after World War I. Nevertheless, all the evidence suggests that
such movements of assets did not take the form of ordinary bank accounts. It is
much more likely that assets were held by confidential agents such as trustees,
lawyers, or businessmen of various kinds.
Even in those cases where an account existed for a time, it made sense to ensure
that it disappeared well before the end of the war. 37 The freezing of German
assets had been discussed for several months before it took place on 16 February
1945. When again months later, from autumn 1945 onwards, the safe deposit
boxes rented by Germans were systematically opened, around ten per cent were
completely empty. For various people who maintained intensive contacts in
Switzerland throughout the war, such as the staff of Hermann Goering’s Four
Year Plan Authority (Vierjahresplanbehörde), no account was ever found. These
particularly well-informed groups with multiple connections in Switzerland
had access, by virtue of their official functions, to other ways of making transfers
of their own money as well in the final phase of the war, and thus providing for
their post-war lives. This raises the question of whether and to what extent
Switzerland became a refuge or stopping off point for fleeing Nazis.
Transit: Switzerland as a temporary place of asylum and stopping-off point
Carl Ludwig’s report on Swiss refugee policy, published in 1957, sums up the
situation as follows: «Occasional reports in the foreign press that asylum had
been granted to war criminals were pure invention. But Switzerland did not
issue any denial.» 38 Although there have been no systematic investigations, it
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