quote:Hitler's Bank Bares Its Dark Past
There's no way to put a positive spin on German industry's collaboration with the Nazi regime before and during World War II, so Dresdner Bank Chief Executive Herbert Walter didn't try. Presenting the results of an independent study of Dresdner's role in the Holocaust, Walter admitted: "It confronts us with bitter historical truths. We accept these truths, even when they are painful."
Painful is hardly a strong enough word. According to the study by a team of historians from German universities, Dresdner functioned as the house bank to Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS), lending more money than any other bank to the organization that was at the forefront of the most ghastly atrocities. Dresdner, co-founded by Eugen Gutmann, who was Jewish, quickly expelled its Jewish employees after the Nazi takeover and arbitrarily cut the pension payments of Jewish retirees. The bank even owned a stake in the construction company that built the crematorium at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
quote:U.S. wants Holocaust archives opened
U.S. officials and Holocaust museum leaders want the historical archives of the Nazi genocide opened to the public despite German vows to keep it closed...
Information on 17.5 million people are stored in it, including details on which prisoners were experimented on and who, including Jews, collaborated with Nazis, reports. The New York Times
quote:"The disaster facing European Jewry is not directly my business," said Ben-Gurion in 1943.
quote:Throughout the 18th century, the total population of Germany tripled in size. The Jewish community in Germany also increased at high rate. Because of this rapid increase, many Jews were forced to live in poverty. Jews had few employment opportunities and were not allowed to join the army, work as laborers or own land to farm. While they were forced to live as beggars, a law was decreed so as to make Jewish begging illegal. Jews who were caught begging could be punished by death.
The majority of impoverished Jews were not taken care of by their communities. They were instead forced to roam the country, begging for food, and eventually turning to thievery. This intense poverty led to an eruption of Jewish gangs. Criminal gangs became well-organized groups, creating charity funds to give to the families of other criminals or to the sick. The Jewish gangs were so organized, in fact, that many gang members found themselves rising in their societal status.
