Nazi Gold: The Real Story of How the World Plundered Jewish Treasures

Thanks to recent public pressure on Swiss banks and the declassification of intelligence documents, researchers now have more information than ever on how the Nazis stole and hid Jewish wealth. Carpozi, a former New York Post reporter, presents his book as the definitive account of the Nazis' looting of Europe, but disorganization and bad writing ruin his attempt at an all-encompassing indictment. Carpozi's research is thorough: he not only shows how neutral countries such as Switzerland hoarded wealth stolen from Holocaust victims but also demonstrates that even the Allies stashed away Jewish money and refused to return it to survivors after the war. Yet he makes little attempt to integrate the pieces of the puzzle and offers almost no analysis of historical context. The choppy text (many paragraphs consist of only a sentence or two) shifts between countries and back and forth in time in an endeavor to establish narrative pace. While Carpozi lists 11 pages of references, many of those sources are newspaper articles he simply quotes verbatim. Anecdotes about Holocaust survivors are thrown into the preface and the second chapter, then forgotten, when they could have added a human element to the political developments discussed later in the book. Exclamations such as ""It is impossible to put the clock back!"" and references to the ""thieving Nazis"" give the whole work a sensational tone. A subject this complicated deserves better treatment. Photos. (Jan.)