Reichsbank Gold

'Think of it! ' Hjalmar Schacht exclaimed. The former Nazi minister of economics appeared to be excited and outraged: 'To break teeth out of a dead body! Think of it! ' Although Schacht helped Hitler to rise to power at the Nuremberg Trials he indignantly refused to accept responsibility for Nazi war crimes. He also claimed that he was not aware that gold deposits in the Reichsbank came from Jewish victims murdered in the death camps. Schacht was the president of the Reichsbank until 1939 and minister without portfolio for a few more years. Then in 1943 Hitler had dismissed him from the government but not before his minister introduced discriminatory laws, which prevented Jews from working in the German civil service and limited the number of Jews in business. During an interview in a Nuremberg prison cell Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a US Army psychiatrist, told Schacht that it was SS obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl, chief administrator of the concentration camps, who delivered the gold to the Reichsbank. Pohl insists, the doctor said, that he is innocent because he did not order the executions. 'Ach! Think of it! ' Schacht said.' To break teeth out of a dead body! Think of it! Obviously that dog Pohl knew everything about it. After all he was in charge of feeding and housing the inmates of the lagers'. When the doctor asked why Schacht served in Hitler's criminal government, the former minister replied: 'Because I felt that at least one honest man in that government might serve as a check on Hitler.' At this the doctor could not help and smiled. Schacht became puzzled and asked him why he was smiling. Well, the psychiatrist explained, he was quite sure that it was just a coincidence but the odious SS general Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski said the same thing. He claimed that it was for the best that 'decent fellows', like him, 'became influential in the SS and thus staved off bad things'.