My Mother's Diamonds: In Search of Holocaust Assets

By James Kirby and James Kirby

For 40 years, Swiss banks denied the existence of thousands of accounts opened by Jewish families during World War II as a haven for their savings, until forced into admission in July 1997. Told in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 072481129X
• ISBN13: 9780724811298
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Longman Pub Group
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

interesting coverage from australian point of view

As a U.S. reader, I had heard a lot in the media about the attempts to recover assets taken by the Nazis, particularly Swiss bank accounts. This book is not the most comprehensive work on the subject. However, it focuses on Australian Holocaust survivors, and discusses their efforts to regain all types of property from all over Europe. It makes the important point that it was not just the Swiss and not just bankers who profited from the Nazi atrocities. The narrative is interspersed with stories from people who lived through the war and managed to get to Australia. Any personal account makes history much more compelling, and the stories are well told. The author also makes the point that it isn't always easy to get property back, even with documentary proof--what may have been a factory during the war might now be a housing development with a lot of people living in it, who had nothing to do with the Nazis' seizure of the original property in the 1930s or 1940s. The author certainly makes the case that some compensation is due and maybe long overdue. The reason i did not give this a five is that the writing/editing is very sloppy, misspelled words (in English and other languages), grammatical errors, and missing words in the text on almost every page. This, however should not deter anyone from reading the book. Everyone can learn something here.