Word: golds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What a thoughtless Swiss diplomat came to call nothing less than a "war" against his country started with little things. A gold ring. A novel. A chair. Before long, a chain reaction of seemingly disconnected events, an assortment of powerful personalities and a series of Swiss blunders culminated in a moral crusade to track down stolen wealth hidden away inside the vaults of Zurich and restore it to the victims of the Holocaust. The proximate cause was money, but the soul-searing intent of the men and women who set the hunt in motion was to peel back the veil...
...Bert Linder, now 85, it began the day in 1942 when the Nazis took his gold wedding ring. It was such a mean little gesture as they separated him from his loved ones. The Auschwitz ovens later claimed his wife and 10-month-old son and four other family members. Linder was one of only 2,000 to leave that charnel house alive, and so, he says, "my life was meant for something...
...idea to get money back from Switzerland's bankers, who bragged about their neutrality even while taking gold stolen, like Linder's ring, from the Jews, came to the California resident last July as he visited Austria on a lecture tour. In Vienna he read about how much looted Nazi wealth remained in Swiss banks and how others were trying to retrieve funds deposited for safekeeping there...
...neutral Switzerland. The hints of unsavory Swiss behavior enticed the ordained rabbi and former political science professor from New York City into reading a biography of Dulles, which made reference to a U.S. intelligence operation code-named Project Safehaven. Its mission: to track down Nazi gold and loot being smuggled out of the Third Reich...
This is not the first time the U.S. has sought to account for all the gold bars the Nazis looted from occupied countries, the Jewish assets seized, the jewelry, gold dental fillings and wedding rings wrenched from concentration-camp victims. As early as 1943, when Washington launched Project Safehaven to locate the Nazi plunder and find out where it was going, the U.S. knew most of it was entering Switzerland. That year, spymaster Dulles warned the Swiss government that much of the 100 tons of gold bullion the Reichsbank was selling for Swiss francs was stolen. Eventually, Safehaven agents concluded...