Pack of Thieves, By Richard Z. Chesnoff

Pack of Thieves: How Hitler and Europe Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History, By Richard Z Chesnoff
Doubleday, 1999
281 pages plus Afterword, Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments and Index
16 photographs (2 sets of 8 pages
Library: 940.53 CHE

Front Matter
It was the largest organized robbery in history-the detailed, systematic looting of Europe's Jews by the azis and most of the nations of Europe: Axis, Allied and neutral. Now, for the first time, prizewinning journalist Richard Z Chesnoff details the full scope of this monumental theft of money, gold, jewels, art, and property that began in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler, continued through the Holocaust and the Third Reich's occupation of Europe, and culminated in a postwar cloaking campaign that stretched from Scandinavia to the Balkans to Iberia.

Chesnoff, who was among the first reporters to break the story that Swiss banks were still hoarding the assets of Holocaust victims, traveled to fourteen countries to research this heart-breaking, compelling story of human greed. With direct access to hitherto classified files and through exclusive interviews with bankers, government and Jewish officials, camp survivors, and the families of the victims, Chesnoff tells a tragic tale that will make the headlines of tomorrow's newspapers.

Revealing new details that many governments and bankers would prefer to remain secret, he describes the detective work work used to trace Holocaust survivors that continue to be hidden inside the systems of Allied nations such as France and the Netherlands. With the deftness that comes with a journalist's deep understanding of events, Chesnoff explains why it has taken more than fifty years for the world to even begin to come to terms with the massive pillage and plunder.

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Germany: The Plunder Plot
2. Austria: Last Year at Mauerbach
3. Czechoslovakia:
--Czech Republic - The Ganef of Prague
--Slovakia: The Shops on Main Street
4. The Netherlands: Loot Thy Neighbor
5. Traitors in their Midst
6. France: Les Biens des Juifs
7. Eastern Europe: Plundering the Killing Fields
--Poland: Forever Strangers
--Hungary: The Bloody Danube
8. Switzerland: Neighbors Make Good Fences
9. The Other Neutrals
--Spain and Portugal: Playing Both Sides
--Sweden: All in the Family
--Argentina: Latin Safehaven
--Turkey: Booty Bazaar
The Vatican: See No Evil
10. Restitution: Righting Wrongs
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

Photos
--Day after Kristallnacht, removing name from Jewish-owned store
--Drawing by 12-year old Helga Weissova
--Scrip money issued to Jews
--form postcard fro Theresienstadt
--moving van owned by Dutch Puls company
--Unidentified Jewish businessman and agents of Property Administration and Annuities Institute
--Hermann Goering leaves Goudstikker Art Gallery, Amsterdam, 1940
--Nazi scrip for use in Westbork detention center
--7 unidentified members of Lippmann-Rosenthal, playing cards
--Unidentified Dutch Jews boarding trains bound for death camps
--Norwegian Nazi Rolf Svindal
--"Le Juif et la France: Prochainement". Anti-Jewish exhibit in Paris, 1942
--Old Jewish Frenchman wearing yellow star
--unidentified Frenchmen in August 1941
---unidentified Vichy authorities seal door of confiscated apartment
--Fanny Cukier anf her children, Ginette and Irene. Before being sent to Auschwitz
--Joseph Zajdenberg, wife Anna, daughter Claudia in 1936
--Unidentified people in front of Austerlitz camp warehouse in Paris
--Hans Biebow and unidentified official
--Nazi scrip issued for use in Lodz ghetto
--Unidentified Jew about to be killed, and two unidentified Croatian Ustae troops
--Unidentified Jewish women sorting clothing near Chelmno
--1938 photo of Great Tlomackie reform synagogue in Warsaw (destroyed in 1943)
--The Blue tower (on the site today)
--unidentified Hungarian peasants
--Argentinean First Lady Evita Peron dancing in Berne with Swiss Foreign Minister Max Petitpierre, 1947
--Lisa Mikova
--American banker Thomas McKittrick, Japan's Y. Yamamoto, Nazi Germany's Paul Hechler, plud four other unidentified banking officials
--Bundles of loot in Merkur salt mine
--Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower,, Omar Bradley and George Patton inspecting stolen art, April 12, 1945
Israel Singer, Edgar Bronfam, Elan Steinberg
--US Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, British Foreign Minister Robin Cook, 1998 London Gold Conference
--Thomas Borer, head of the Swiss Task Force on Holocaust Assets