Adolf Eichmann, whose trial for directing the mass-murder of 6,000,000 Jews in Nazi Europe will open in Jerusalem on Tuesday, may be the sole living man who knows the location of $750,000,000 in cash and treasures hidden by the Nazi regime after robbing the Jewish victims, the French newspaper Paris Presse reported today.
Declaring that it received its information from Israeli sources, the newspaper stated that, in 1944, Eichmann, with the help of other Nazi agents, opened bank accounts in Switzerland. One account, No. 2279, was allegedly opened at the National Bank of Berne. Another account, No. 1854, was reportedly in the Swiss Banking Union. There was alleged to be a third secret account.
The first two were in the name of Hans Eichlemann, a pseudonym for Eichmann, while the third account was said to be in the name of Franz Leers, former Nazi expert on anti-Jewish persecutions, who is now a “Jewish expert” in Cairo, employed by the United Arab Republic. The three cash accounts reportedly aggregate $1,250,000 in Swiss francs.
According to Paris Presse, Eichmann, entrusted in 1944 with the task of hiding various Jewish treasures, also took charge of many valuables buried in a forest near the Austrian village of Maria Enzeldorf. Those treasures were reportedly buried by Russian prisoners of war, commanded by a high Nazi, who ordered the Russians killed to hide their secret. Later, it is alleged, Eichmann had those treasures reburied, and he is now supposedly the only man alive who knows where the valuables are.
These valuables, the Paris Presse said, included a large ransom given to the Nazis by the Rothschild family in payment for the lives of some members of the Rothschild family. Now, the paper added, Israel would like to recover at least some of the money and valuables looted from Jewish victims by the Nazi regime, and hopes to achieve this recovery by convicting Eichmann.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.