Where Did the Jewish Money Go?

By Steve Rodan

Historians of the Holocaust have written of what has been termed the "Becher Deposit," the cash and jewels handed over by SS Col. Kurt Becher to a Jewish Agency envoy and later seized by the U.S. Army in Austria in May 1945. After intensive negotiations, the agency claimed that the hoped-for treasure amounted only to some $55,000. Eventually, the agency divided the Becher Deposit with its U.S. partner, the Joint Distribution Committee.

U.S. and JDC documents, however, show that the Becher Deposit was a fable. A U.S. Army investigation determined that the loot transported by Jewish Agency envoy Moshe Schweiger was worth at least eight million francs, or nearly $2 million. But the inventory of the valuables as well as those who took possession of the loot disappeared from the army's Counter-Intelligence Corps. Instead, what we have been left with is the Jewish Agency's narrative.

Documents obtained from JDC as well as testimony from U.S. Army investigators show that the Jewish Agency sought to avoid sharing the Becher Deposit with the U.S. charity. They also reveal that Becher managed to use a key JDC representative to smuggle perhaps millions of dollars worth of Jewish loot to Nazi bank accounts in Switzerland.

The Jewish Agency and JDC were supposed to be partners in relief and rescue work throughout World War II. Under the arrangement, JDC was assigned to pay most of the bills and the agency would do the work. Actually, the agency, the formal representative of the Jewish community in Palestine, conducted little to no rescue while claiming huge expenses from the New York-based group. Their relationship was under severe strain, and senior members of JDC urged their organization to end the partnership with the agency.

The Becher Deposit represented an important example of how the Jewish Agency was able to acquire and conceal Jewish assets during and after the war. After extended negotiations, the State Department instructed the U.S. Army to hand over the loot Becher had acquired to the Jewish Agency. The agency, however, dragged its feet in reporting and relaying to JDC its share of the money. The two organizations had agreed to liquidate the assets in Switzerland. But JDC's representative in Switzerland, Saly Mayer, refused to participate.

Inexplicably, JDC did not appoint somebody else and the job was handled solely by the Jewish Agency's Haim Posner. But JDC maintained responsibility for compensating anybody who could prove that the Becher Deposit contained valuables grabbed by the Germans in Hungary in 1944. The result was that the Jewish Agency kept the money while JDC had to deal with compensation claims.

In all, the agency transferred $5,082.01 to JDC. The transaction took place in 1955, nearly a decade after World War II and years after the agency received the Becher Deposit. Why would such a small sum take so long to liquidate and return has never been explained.

According to correspondence between the two organizations, JDC had been pursuing this issue since at least 1947. In one letter, the Jewish Agency claimed that its accountant was away in Europe and would not return for two months.

"We are pleased to inform you that at long last the last remnants of the deposit in our possession have been sold," the Jewish Agency's European Treasury wrote to the JDC's Simon Shargo on March 15, 1955. "In accordance with an agreement between us, you are to receive 50% of the proceeds after deduction of all expenses."

As it turned out, the JDC suspected that it was being cheated by the Jewish Agency -- that the Becher Deposit had long ago been processed. As early as 1950, JDC was told by its representatives that the Jewish assets were far more valuable than reported by the agency.

In a Nov. 29, 1950 letter to JDC's J.J. Jacobson, Dr. Kurt Wehle, a Czech attorney, reviewed the Becher Deposit. Wehle said the deposit was given to the Jewish Agency over the claims by such groups as the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Conference. In the end, the State Department designated the Jewish Agency as a trustee, obligated to return any identifiable property.

But the Jewish Agency maintained secrecy. In a letter on Nov. 5, 1947, the agency's general counsel told JDC in Vienna that the Becher Deposit "will be handled exclusively from here." The letter was in response to an inquiry by the legal adviser of JDC in Salzburg, "indicating that he had initiated some investigations in order to 'justify the suspicions that considerable parts of this treasure disappeared without trace.'"

The assessment by JDC was that the value of the Becher Deposit reached at least $800,000. The Jewish Agency did not reply.

There have been answers to the Becher Deposit and other loot taken by the SS colonel. A CIC investigation in the summer of 1945 determined that Becher had managed to smuggle perhaps millions of dollars in jewels and cash to Swiss banks. The investigation, conducted by Capt. Carl Kittstein and Sgt. Richard Essex, said Saly Mayer had admitted to depositing the stolen Jewish valuables into Swiss bank accounts that could be accessed by Becher.

In 2000, Essex recalled that the October 1945 report on the Becher loot was quashed by CIC. He was summoned to CIC headquarters in Salzburg and told, "I don't want you to say anything to anybody about the case, and that's a goddamned order!" Essex was later transferred to another unit.

In late 1947, Kurt Becher was released from a U.S. prison at Nuremberg and returned to West Germany. Within a year, he became a very rich man and soon a leading business executive close to the pro-Nazi regime of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The new State of Israel made Becher into one of its leading trade representatives in Europe.

Below: Letter from Dr. Kurt Wehle to J.J. Jacobson, Nov. 29. 1950. [Egon Mayer Collection, 21B S-1106]