| Original caption: “Wedding Rings Removed by the Germans from Holocaust Victims.” Nazi officials and individual private owners used castles, private homes, air raid bunkers, and underground mines to shield public and private collections of art, cultural property, gold, jewelry and other valuables, many of which were later found to contain the property of Holocaust victims. In their final offensive against the Reich, American forces found enormous quantities of valuables scattered across southwestern Germany and Austria in large numbers of emergency repositories. The majority of these caches, which held anywhere from 1 to thousands of objects, had been created in response to the Allied bombing campaign that concentrated on German and Austrian urban areas. The threat of damage from aerial attacks had led Nazi officials to remove valuable assets from cities and store them in remote areas less likely to be targeted by Allied bombs. Although the exact number of caches falling under United States control remains unknown, in September 1948, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), the occupational authority, estimated that American forces had found approximately 1,500 repositories of art and cultural objects in Germany. These repositories contained approximately 10.7 1,000,000 objects worth an estimated 5,000,000,000 dollars. The discovery of loot and other valuables began almost immediately as the United States 9th, 1st, 3rd, and 7th Armies moved into Germany in the spring of 1945. On April 8, 1945, American forces discovered a massive stash of valuables hidden in a complex of interconnected potassium mines near Merkers, Germany. Deep within the mine, in a secret cavern behind a well-fortified masonry wall, the Americans unearthed a treasure trove containing tons of artworks and large quantities of gold, silver, and currency. At the time, they estimated that the gold found in the Merkers mine represented approximately 80 percent of the total gold held by the Reichsbank. By far the richest single stash uncovered, the Merkers mine yielded an immense quantity of assets, including an estimated 2.76 1,000,000,000 Reichsmark notes and containers brimming with foreign currency. The most gruesome find, however, was a section of the cavern devoted to Schutzstaffel (SS) loot containing 207 bags and suitcases filled with jewelry, silverware, teeth, watches, cigarette cases, and razors clearly taken from persecutees, including murdered inmates of concentration camps. Although Reichsbank accounting books revealed that much of the Merkers gold and currency had been seized from banks in occupied countries, the suitcases bearing loot were unmistakably taken from victims under duress. United States forces quickly secured the stash, and, on April 15, 1945, escorted the contraband deep into the American zone, where experts could organize, inventory, and appraise the assets in the new Foreign Exchange Depository in Frankfurt.90 The financial assets found in the Merkers mine stash included 3,682 bags and cartons of German currency, 80 bags of foreign currency, 63 bags of silver bars, 6 platinum bars, 8 bags of gold rings, 190 parcels containing engraving plates and dies, and 207 containers containing SS loot of jewelry, silverware, coins, stamps, dental fillings and miscellany. The combined weight of the precious and semi-precious stones and novelty jewelry alone was an estimated 2,527 pounds. United States Treasury experts, sent to evaluate the Merkers stash in June 1945, estimated that its value exceeded 500,000,000 dollars. Of this amount, they determined, gold and precious metals, mainly gold bullion and gold coins, alone comprised 300,000,000 dollars. On April 29, 1945, Major Howard M. McBee (December 7, 1919 – March 23, 2010), an officer on the 1st United States Army Judge Advocate General staff, made a similar discovery in a quarry on the outskirts of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buried deep beneath a bunker, McBee uncovered 313 suitcases, wooden boxes and barrels, filled with gold bars, United States currency, gold coins, diamonds, various precious stones, boxes of silver spoons, watches, clocks, and other items weighing an estimated 21 tons. A random sampling of the loot determined that the stash contained more than 600 pounds of fountain pens, watchstraps, and novelty jewelry, more than 17,000 pounds of silver tableware, and hundreds of wedding bands and thousands of gold teeth. Using 11-ton trucks, the 12th Army Group shipped 7 truckloads under tight security to Frankfurt on May 16, 1945, retaining 2 truckloads for War Crimes Section of the 12th Army Group pending further war crimes investigations. Although the Merkers and Buchenwald caches were unique because of their size and the prevalence of obvious loot, they exemplified a general pattern repeated throughout Germany, as private owners, branch banks, and local museums took drastic steps to protect their accumulated valuables. Reichsbank branch offices proved to be a major source of gold and currency caches, with finds at Halle (gold allegedly from France), Nuremberg (gold bars allegedly from the Netherlands), Plauen (gold currency from Himmler’s account), Eschwege (82 gold bars), Magdeburg (silver bars allegedly from Hungary, bank records, and foreign securities), and others. By September 1945, General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) reported that his forces had recovered 300 pounds of precious and semi-precious stones, 700 pounds of rings, 3,000 pounds of novelty jewelry, 3,500 pounds of watches, 650 pounds of gold and silver tooth fillings, 4,500 pounds of scrap metal, and 18,000 pounds of tableware and eyeglass frames — items clearly looted from Holocaust victims. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0556.jpg |
| Image Size | 939.81 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2908 x 2320 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 4, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-206406 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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