Tales of Nazi gold have fuelled the popular imagination since war's end.Hollywood was making films about the subject as early as 1948, but truth has inevitably been stranger than film or fiction.
Historian Ronald Zweig now adds another bizarre tale to the Nazi gold canon, this time concerning the pillage of Hungarian Jewry and the fate of the plundered goods. Zweig places this tale of venality, greed and brutality in its context, with the initial sections of the book dealing with the position of Jews in Hungarian society as well as the complex history of Hungary and its fate in wartime.
With the occupation of Hungary by the Germans in March 1944, the liquidation of the Jewish population began. The radical right and fascist element, which had gained considerable ground in Hungary, came into its own. Neighbours and so-called friends handed Jews over to the Germans enthusiastically, sometimes outdoing them in their zeal and then trying to profit from the bloodstained plunder. As Zweig put it: "The elimination of the Jewish community was able to proceed with a relentlessness and speed that was unprecedented elsewhere in Europe."
In tandem with the rounding up, there went the plunder of assets by both Germans and Hungarista fascists. Crudely put, the Germans plundered from the very wealthiest of Hungarian Jewry, whilst the Hungaristas stripped the rest, the middle classes and even the Jewish poor. Zweig persuasively argues that anti-Semitism in Hungary was a complex phenomenon, fuelled, after 1917, by the image of the Bolshevik Jew. Also, the stereotypical notion that all Jews were wealthy, stoked by the madness of wartime, meant that those who stripped Jews of their possessions believed in "the possibility of seizing prosperity and economic well-being from one ethnic group and transferring it to another." Zweig sums up the atmosphere in Hungary thus: "Criminals had come to power, and looting was now government policy. But despite the appearance of legality, the reality of theft and murder was never far below the surface."
With the advance of Soviet troops in December 1944, the booty had to be spirited away and a train was commandeered, manned by a number of officials and led by Arpad Toldi, a Hungarian policeman who had come to prominence during the Nazi occupation, principally because of his vicious anti-Semitism. The train's 42 wagons were packed with gold and treasured possessions, ranging from religious artefacts, wedding rings and jewellery to Persian carpets. Eventually, after a tortuous and farcical three-month journey, the train and its cargo ended up in Austria.
En route, the booty diminished as it was used for bribes, sold off or stolen. When it was taken by the Americans, no documentation was issued to confirm that it was Hungarian state property, which was one of the motives for the plunder in the first place. As far as the new occupiers, the Allies, were concerned, it was definitely looted goods.
The subsequent post-war fate of the train's cargo was as tortuous as its journey out of Hungary, with bitter squabbles about the ownership and distribution of the assets continuing for decades. This is a highly complex episode from the second World War and, as clearly as it is told by Ronald Zweig, the narrative is at times confusing. Those readers hoping for a tale of skulduggery and derring-do à la Ian Fleming should look elsewhere. This is serious history and an interesting addition to the copious writings on the Holocaust.
Katrina Goldstone is a researcher
and critic
Katrina Goldstone
The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Second World War's Most Terrible Robbery. By Ronald Zweig. Penguin, 336pp. £20 sterling