Walter Funk, German Minister of Economics, was responsible for execution of the measures which drove Jews from German economic life and stripped them of their possessions, U.S. prosecutor Lieut. Meltzer charged today before the International War Crimes Tribunal.
Lieut. Meltzer introduced an address delivered by Funk in Berlin on Nov. 15, 1938, in which he said that “one cannot exclude Jews from political life and let them work in the economic sphere. The economics chief attributed the Nazi-sponsored destruction of Jewish homes and shops the previous week, during the pogroms of Nov. 10, to the fact that the German people were dissatisfied with the speed with which Jewish property was being expropriated.
“The complete elimination of Jews from the economics has already been decreed in Goering’s laws covering various aspects of German economic life, Funk said, reporting that Jews had been excluded from stock exchanges, banks and almost all large businesses and industrial enterprises.
He announced in conclusion that of the estimated 7,000,000,000 marks worth of property held by Jews, 2,000,000,000 had been transferred to German possession.”
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