Nazi looting of Jews

The Banality of Robbing the Jews

I just saw this article on the New York Times website - about what happened when the Nazis deported Jews from western Europe to the death camps. Their apartments were completely emptied and their property was stolen for the benefit of German soldiers, German families, and to satisfy the avarice of top Nazi officials.

The recent discovery of more than 1,400 prized paintings in the Munich residence of Cornelius Gurlitt, an art collector whose father collaborated with the Nazis, has brought the pillage of the Jews back into the limelight. Yet the bulk of anti-Semitic looting during World War II was at once much more banal and more widespread. 

In Paris, the plunder of Jewish possessions began with the arrival of German troops in June 1940. At first, it applied only to art collections. But as soon as the Final Solution was devised in January 1942, the confiscations spread to the entire Jewish population, most of which comprised poor immigrants from Eastern Europe. Stripping Jews of their belongings was part and parcel of the effort to destroy them; pillage was an essential tool of extermination.