[Documentation of expropriation of Jewish property]

The two files contain various documents regarding the expropriation of Jewish property in the Eastern Territories occupied by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1945. The documents mainly include copies of letters and circulars which originally stem from the Nazi administration and have been copied for the Office of US Chief of Counsel for War Crimes. Among these documents are detailed lists of valuable objects (watches, gold, jewelry) originally belonging to Jewish people and confiscated by the German administration of the Occupied Territories, as well as circulars and regulations regarding the confiscation and the handling of Jewish property, especially within the framework of the so-called “Operation Reinhard” in German-occupied Poland. Furthermore, the file contains a typewritten copy of an agreement between the Wehrmacht and the NSDAP signed by Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Rosenberg regarding the ideological education of the soldiers. Besides the documents dating mainly from the war period and dealing with organizational questions of confiscated goods, the file also contains postwar documents: first, a decision by the Superior Court of Justice under judge Annaliese Krackhardt-Schönau in Berlin from 1961 on a claim for restitution related to the expropriation of Jewish people under the German occupation of Poland; second, the testimony given by Albert Thoms, the former head of the Reichsbank’s Precious Metals department, to representatives of the US Army in May 1946.