The injustices committed against millions of Europe's Jews did not end with the fall of the Third Reich. Long after the Nazis had seized the belongings of Holocaust victims, Swiss banks concealed and appropriated their assets, demanding that their survivors produce the death certificates or banking records of the depositors in order to claim their family's property--demands that were usually impossible for the petitioners to meet. Now the full account of the Holocaust deposits affair is revealed by the journalist who first broke the story in 1995. Relying on archival and contemporary sources, Itamar Levin describes the Jewish people's decades-long effort to return death camp victims' assets to their rightful heirs. Levin also uncovers the truth about the behavior of Swiss banking institutions, their complicity with the Nazis, and their formidable power over even their own neutral government.

From the first attempt to settle the fate of German property in neutral countries at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, through the heated negotiations following publication of Levin's investigative article in 1995, to the Swiss banks' ultimate agreement to a $1.25 billion payment in 1997, the pursuit of restitution is a story of delaying tactics and legal complications of almost unimaginable dimensions. Terrified that the traditional and highly marketable wall of secrecy surrounding the Swiss banks would tumble and destroy the industry, the banks' managements were dismissive and uncooperative in determining the location and extent of the assets in question, forcing the United States, other European countries, and Jewish organizations worldwide to apply tremendous pressure for a just resolution. The details and the central characters involved in this struggle, as well as new information about Switzerland's controversial policies during World War II, are fascinating reading for anyone concerned with the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Levin, the journalist who uncovered the affair, describes British policy toward the Jewish people during the Holocaust era, particularly the construction of obstacles that prevented thousands from being saved. Levin then examines Britain's intentional and unabashed use of Holocaust victims and survivors' property after World War II.

This is the first book to describe this affair, which is relatively unknown to the general public, but which has already been described by public figures as one of the most serious incidents of the looting of Holocaust victims' property. Levin documents, from British Public Office files, the cynical manner in which His Majesty's government expropriated victims' assets in order to compensate British citizens who had claims against former enemy countries. He also describes the suffering of survivors until some of them managed after years of struggle to retrieve small portions of their property. He also deals with the struggle for a change in British policy which began with the publication of Levin's investigative report in June, 1997 and which continues to the present. An important book for anyone concerned with the Holocaust and British contemporary history.