SECRET bank accounts said to contain the royalties Adolf Hitler received from Mein Kampf have been found in Switzerland, according to the London-based Jewish Chronicle. The report says the existence of Hitler's hidden finances are revealed in declassified intelligence documents at the US National Archives.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, the accounts are held at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Bern, and were opened for Hitler by Max Ammann, head of the Nazi Party's publishing company.
The bank has refused to say if the accounts are still open or whether they contain anything.
Details of the intelligence documents, dated October, 1944, were uncovered by the World Jewish Congress and passed to the Jewish Chronicle.
The authors make it clear they believe the Swiss account held the "foreign exchange revenues of the
Nazi Party abroad". They add: "It is quite possible that Hitler's foreign exchange revenues from his book, and foreign exchange revenues of the Nazi Party abroad, are held at this Swiss bank in Ammann's name."
The World Jewish Congress on Thursday produced a British wartime report which claims that a 5th-century painting of Salome by Titian was deposited in a branch of the National Westminster Bank by an agent called Margarethe Duarte who is alleged to have smuggled the painting out of Germany via Portugal.