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Isabel Vincent's book is a first-rate guide to recent revelations about the Swiss banks and their business dealings with Nazi Germany. She provides a historical perspective as well as forthright description of Swiss transgressions, and weaves into her account one Jewish family's ordeal, thus never letting us forget that her story is about human agony and loss, not about faceless statistics.
This is investigative journalism at its best. Not only does Vincent provide valuable background to Swiss financial dealings with Nazi Germany, but also, and equally important, how and why these dealings became front-page news fifty years after the fact. After all, key elements of the story were known during the Second World War, and more were revealed at the Nuremberg trial. Thus it was common knowledge that the German occupiers had looted the national banks of the occupied; that jewellery was seized from concentration camp and death camp victims, and the gold fillings of the dead yanked out of their mouths; that all this looted gold was resmelted and sent to the Reichsbank; and finally, that the Swiss Bank for International Settlements bought this gold, paying for it...