GOANS ARE LUCKY THAT THE PORTUGUESE RETURNED THEIR PAWNED GOAL.THANKS TO THE
EFFORTS OF THE MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS,REPUBLIC OF INDIA ,THAT IS BHARAT.
Nazi Gold and Portugal's Murky Role
By MARLISE SIMONS
As World War II raged across Europe, Portugal sold tungsten and other goods to
Nazi Germany, profiting handsomely from its neutral status in the conflict. The
Nazis paid with gold bullion looted from countries they conquered and, it is
suspected, from victims of the Holocaust.
After the Nazis lost the war, Portugal secretly sold off some of this gold to
Indonesia, the Philippines and above all China, working through Macao, its
colonial enclave near Hong Kong.
Those sales, disclosed for the first time by a former senior minister who
insisted on anonymity, were the final chapter in a story that has now come back
to haunt Portugal's central bank and some of the country's more prominent
business families.
Fifty years after the defeat of Germany, Europe has been stunned by a stream of
revelations about Nazi gold: who handled it, where it came from and who reaped
financial rewards from genocide.
The issue initially arose in Switzerland, where investigators are now examining
the Swiss financial transactions with the Nazis and the fate of lost Jewish
wealth in World War II.
In recent months, the focus has broadened to include Sweden, Spain and
Portugal, where newspapers and historians are raising a separate set of
questions about the role of local banks in financing trade and collaborating
with the Nazi regime.
At the same time, the Poles have ordered an investigation into the missing
wealth of Poland's victims. The Netherlands, too, plans an inquiry to find out
what happened to 75 tons of public and private gold, half of the total
plundered, which is still missing.
The story of the Nazis' gold has struck a particular nerve in Lisbon because,
after Switzerland, Portugal was the largest importer of the gold. The country
was officially neutral during the war but its regime had strong Nazi sympathies.
Like a dark, forgotten ghost, Lisbon's past has revived with tales of the city
as a pivotal center for spies and a place of unscrupulous deals, where weapons
and goods were transshipped to support the German war machine.
Older people here say they knew that the country's neutrality was a useful
cover for doing business with all sides. But few had heard of the enormous gold
trade with Germany.
According to Allied records, close to 100 tons of Nazi gold ended up in
Portugal after first passing through Swiss banks that were apparently helping
to disguise its origins. Almost half of this gold is believed to have been
stolen from the treasuries of European countries that fell to the Nazis.
Records of Portugal's wartime dealings have recently been revealed in the news
media here, astonishing today's generation of Portuguese. They also appear to
have embarrassed the establishment deeply. President Jorge Sampaio and Prime
Minister Antonio Guterres have discussed the issue in meetings of the Cabinet,
but have so far declined to comment publicly.
Until 1968, when the dictator Antonio Salazar retired, censorship was used to
keep secrets. When Portugal became a democracy in 1974, there were more
pressing matters like the leftist revolution and the independence of the
colonies.
Now, politicians, historians, students and news organizations are demanding
that the Government open its archives and give a full accounting of
collaboration with Hitler.
''It's a political and a moral issue,'' said Fernando Rosas, a professor of
contemporary history at New University in Lisbon. ''This Government should
speak out. It's not their doing.''
The Bank of Portugal, which occupies a somber building on the downtown Rua do
Comercio, has long had a venerable image, but recent celebrations of its 150th
anniversary were clouded by the public debate about its Nazi collaboration. It
declined to send representatives to recent round-table discussions on the gold
issue organized by the city of Lisbon, television stations and universities.
Because the bank had a monopoly over the gold trade until after the war, its
archives are considered vital. But it has spurned requests from historians and
journalists for access to wartime documents, saying it is bound by strict
secrecy laws. The bank has promised to study the matter.
Down in its vaults, the bank still has ''two or three'' gold bars stamped with
swastikas, according to Nuno Jonet, a bank official.
''We kept them as curiosities, Mr. Jonet said. ''We do not admit any
wrongdoing. The gold acquisition was the result of perfectly legal trade
operations. I'm sure people at the time did not know the gold coming here was
stolen.''
Portugal used the same arguments before the Allied Tripartite Commission, which
was in charge of recovering stolen gold after the war. American officials tried
to pressure Portugal to surrender 44 tons of gold by freezing its assets in the
United States and cutting back on wheat exports.
But the Salazar regime did not budge. In 1953 the Allies finally gave up,
accepting the four tons Lisbon offered to return and letting it keep the rest.
''By then the cold war was under way and the Americans wanted to keep the
Azores as a strategic base,'' said Jose Freire Antunes, who has written a
history of the Azores.
Both Portugal and Switzerland insist that they were not aware that the Nazi
gold they used for trade had been looted.
Antonio Louca, a historian at New University who is writing a doctoral thesis
on Portugal's dealings in Nazi gold, dismisses these claims.
He said that as early as 1942 the Allies officially notified Western countries
that Nazis were disposing of stolen gold through Swiss banks. Mr. Louca said he
has recently obtained documents from Portugal's Foreign Ministry archives that
cite the warning.
Old trade records tell part of the story: in 1940, less than 2 percent of
Portugal's exports went to Germany; by 1942, that figure had reached 24.4
percent. Portugal sent Germany textiles, boots and food, but it earned most
from tungsten, an alloy used in steel, which was indispensable to the Nazi war
machine.
''At the height of the tungsten fever, prices in Lisbon increased by up to
1,700 percent,'' one history book reports.
Lisbon was also a crucial intermediary for Berlin, bringing insulin and
industrial diamonds from Latin America and food from its African colonies and
selling Nazi gold in South America. A businessman whose foreign company had a
long presence here said: ''Salazar, the President, was the master of wartime
neutrality. He charged extortionary prices.''
The full story of Portugal's Nazi gold may not be hidden in bank ledgers. There
were other, secret channels.
Mr. Louca, the historian, said he has obtained German documents, recently
declassified, that show that in 1944 couriers were secretly running large gold
shipments from Germany to its embassy in Lisbon. The couriers bypassed the
Portuguese central bank and sold the gold locally.
The documents raise several disturbing questions and touch briefly on the fate
of one large and wealthy Jewish family.
By the summer of 1944, Europe was in chaos. German forces had occupied Hungary,
an ally, when it took steps to withdraw from the war, and the Nazis had
captured several members of the Weiss-Chorin family, owners of the country's
largest industrial empire.
Under duress, the family made a deal with the SS, according to postwar American
intelligence reports: the Nazis would get a large part of the Weiss empire and
the family could leave Hungary. At least 44 family members left, of whom 32
arrived in Portugal in June 1944.
In July, the German Embassy in Lisbon began complaining in telegrams to Berlin
that the gold price in Lisbon was dropping. Berlin responded by asking if this
was a result of the sales by the couriers or sales by the Weiss family, which
it suspected of bringing valuables from Hungary. Members of the Weiss family
have said they brought no gold to Lisbon.
''Why was this gold coming here and why did the couriers not sell the German
gold to the central bank?'' Mr. Louca said. ''The chances are that the gold
included coins and jewelry, which had been stolen from individuals.''
Buyers reportedly included Portuguese businessmen and bankers, some of whom
still own large establishments today.
After the war, the Allies demanded that Portugal give back at least 44 tons of
looted Nazi gold. But Lisbon instead began to sell off its Nazi bullion
secretly through Macao, with much of it going to China in the 1950's and 60's.
According to a government official who was himself involved in supervising
numerous shipments, the China-bound gold was flown from Portugal to Macao, and
from there moved across the Chinese border. The former official said some
ingots sent to Macao were still embossed with the sealof the Dutch Treasury,
which had been plundered by the Nazis; others were marked with swastikas. A
number of bars were carried from Macao to the Philippines and Indonesia,
strapped on people's bodies, the official said.
Historians, politicians and journalists are demanding that the Lisbon
Government tell all. Fernando Rosas, the professor who is also editor of the
prestigious magazine Historia, said the Government must allow free research and
clarify the whole issue. ''The country needs to know the truth,'' he said.
Mr. Louca wonders if the gold story will ever be fully unraveled.
''Looting monetary gold was one thing -- stealing it from individuals, from
victims, is another,'' he said. ''There is evidence that both types of gold
came to Portugal.'' But, he added, even if new details spill out of official
archives, it may be too difficult to separate the different sources of gold.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Protect Goa's natural beauty
Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve
Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
