Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?
This story is almost too precious for words: The Nazis forced Jews in concentration camps to forge British pound notes, with which they hoped to undermine the British economy. After the war, where did some of that forged money wind up? It went to buy Holocaust survivors’ way into the British Mandate of Palestine, and to purchase weapons for the nascent Israeli army.
MORE than £130m worth of British banknotes forged by the Nazis was used by the Jewish underground to help establish the State of Israel.
Wads of notes, which the Germans had forged by concentration camp inmates, ended up being used after the Second World War to pay for the transport of Jews to then British-occupied Palestine, and to buy weapons for the embryonic Israeli armed forces.
[…] The notes were produced by a team of forgers and printing experts gathered from among Jewish concentration camp inmates. In the book, Krueger’s Men, Lawrence Malkin reveals how some of the cash ended up in the hands of the Jewish underground at the end of the Second World War.
The Nazis laundered millions of pounds through a series of schemes including using business figures in occupied Europe who had concealed their Jewish origins. One of these businessman was Yaakov Levy, a successful jeweller and art expert in pre-war Germany.
In the weeks following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Levy got supplies to Jewish refugees in Northern Italy who were fleeing south in hope of travelling to Israel. He also handed out large wads each containing about £50,000 of fake cash to organisers looking to help Jewish Holocaust survivors get from Europe to Israel.
In his book, which draws on new information from UK, US, German and Israeli archives, Malkin wrote: “The Jewish underground wanted van Harten’s [Levy’s] money and did not care whether it was counterfeit or real. They passed the bogus pounds to supply Holocaust survivors and help the Brichah [Jewish escape organisation] smuggle more refugees to Palestine. On the international arms market, they used the money to buy weapons for Jews arming themselves against the British and then the Arabs.”
That is absolutely effing hilarious. Forged British pounds—millions and millions of them—were used to found the state of Israel.
Now there’s a book I’d like to read.
The scale of it cannot be appreciated until one realizes that during WW2, the UK banned all currency notes larger than five pounds to combat the counterfeiting! 130 million pounds in quid notes is still 26 million pieces of paper to circulate.
chsw
Aneurin Bevan must be rolling in his grave! LOL
Sounds like an interesting book; I’ll put it on the list.
Also interesting is that The Scotsman seems to be saying that, of £132M the Germans forged, every penny was siphoned off and stashed by the Zionists to use when the war ended. No wonder Hitler shot himself, it must have been very frustrating.
Good for the Zionists. If it hadn’t been for them all that money (worth about £3 billion now) would have flooded the market and Germany might have won. Israel – before it was even born – saved the free world. A simple thank-you will suffice. You’re welcome.
A very realistic portrayal of the inconceivable evil of the concentration camps (and the Germans’ casual inhumanity)is Wouk’s “War and Remembrance.It is fascinating,but not an easy read because of its power.I recall when I first read the book,I’d have to skip a chapter of the chronicle of the camps and return later,because it was so horrifying.
On a lighter note,I did note a memorial to the Armenian Genocide somewhere in France(I believe) was destroyed last week.