From Corpses to Commodities
In the extermination camps, the German Reich profited even from the corpses. Gold teeth were extracted from victims' jaws, rings were torn off, and women's long hair was shorn. The gold teeth were melted into bars and handed over to banks. The hair was woven into threads and used to make ropes and mattress stuffing. The bodies were sent to crematoria, their ashes used as fertilizer in fields and as insulation and construction material.
As SS personnel amassed significant amounts of money and valuables from the victims, none of them cared about the death penalty awaiting them under international law. Items suitable for immediate use were transferred to distribution centers. These were vast warehouses located in the heart of population centers, overseen by appointed officials. Nazi citizens throughout the Reich, in need of various goods during the war when normal commercial activity was disrupted, turned to these centers as one would to a department store. The officials assessed the legitimacy of the requests and provided the products accordingly, free of charge.
The Theft of Jewish Homes
Real estate, including houses, apartments, and land, constituted the primary asset plundered by the Nazis. Immediately upon conquering a city, they compiled a list of Jewish-owned properties. In the second phase, Jews were deported to makeshift ghettos. The real estate list was then handed over to a special office, which distributed the properties to Germans and local collaborators loyal to the Nazi regime. This amounted to hundreds of thousands of homes. After the war, the absence of property owners who had perished, population exchanges between countries, and the new communist regimes obscured original ownership in many places. These factors contributed to legitimizing the takeover of Jewish real estate, which largely consisted of residential apartments belonging to Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Even before the war, pro-Nazi locals openly coveted and divided Jewish buildings among themselves. They would tell the Jews, "Your streets! Our houses!" A black market also flourished, where Jews sold everything dear to them for pennies. This market created a vast economic system in the occupied countries, involving all segments of the population, operating alongside the official plunder.
