Nazi Gold [Hardcover]

George Carpozi Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1999

Recent news about Switzerland's part in helping finance the Nazi war machine has sent shock waves through Europe. Now, prizewinning investigative journalist George Carpozi, Jr. unveils a mammoth work--part detective thriller, part authoritative analysis which exposes the rest of the story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thanks to recent public pressure on Swiss banks and the declassification of intelligence documents, researchers now have more information than ever on how the Nazis stole and hid Jewish wealth. Carpozi, a former New York Post reporter, presents his book as the definitive account of the Nazis' looting of Europe, but disorganization and bad writing ruin his attempt at an all-encompassing indictment. Carpozi's research is thorough: he not only shows how neutral countries such as Switzerland hoarded wealth stolen from Holocaust victims but also demonstrates that even the Allies stashed away Jewish money and refused to return it to survivors after the war. Yet he makes little attempt to integrate the pieces of the puzzle and offers almost no analysis of historical context. The choppy text (many paragraphs consist of only a sentence or two) shifts between countries and back and forth in time in an endeavor to establish narrative pace. While Carpozi lists 11 pages of references, many of those sources are newspaper articles he simply quotes verbatim. Anecdotes about Holocaust survivors are thrown into the preface and the second chapter, then forgotten, when they could have added a human element to the political developments discussed later in the book. Exclamations such as "It is impossible to put the clock back!" and references to the "thieving Nazis" give the whole work a sensational tone. A subject this complicated deserves better treatment. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Carpozi here attempts to tie together threads of the financial victimization of the Jews around the world during and after the Holocaust. His book is not to be confused with Tom Bower's superior Nazi Gold (LJ 5/15/97), which helped blow the lid off the Swiss bankers' swindle of Holocaust survivors. The first part of Carpozi's book reconstructs the Swiss banking scandal that Jean Ziegler told more compellingly in The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead (LJ 3/1/98). Worse, in a chapter entitled "Well-Known Facts," Carpozi has the United States declaring war on Germany in 1941 instead of the other way around. He also writes that Hitler committed suicide in 1944 instead of 1945. Factual mistakes make it hard to take seriously Carpozi's more original material in the second half. In one of the shortest chapters ever written, he introduces the interesting allegation that Ford's European operation used slave labor but devotes less than a page to it. In addition, Carpozi's tortured writing ("...Ribbentrop, who was glomming loot...in case he'd have to go on the lam") is more at home at the New York Post and Star magazine, to which he contributes, than in a serious book. Not recommended.?Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, IA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: New Horizon Press (January 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882821679
• ISBN-13: 978-0882821672
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,832,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is loaded with egregious errors, August 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nazi Gold (Hardcover)

I was only able to get to page 22 of this book because it had so many errors in it I determined that I could not trust the history.

Just as examples, the author states that Joe Kennedy had 4 boys and 3 girls--seven children. Since his children were-Joe, Jr., Jack, Bobby, Ted, Rosemary, Jean, Pat, Eunice, and Kathleen- it is easy to see that Joe Kennedy had nine children and I would think that anyone writing a history of World War II would know this. I would also think that anyone writing about this era would know that Harry Truman did not have a period after his middle initial, as "S" was his midde name--but this author did not.

I stopped reading when, on page 21, he stated that the UN released a "brief but eloquent statment on the mass slaughter of the Jews in 1942." On page 22 he states that the UN did not know what to do with Jewish refugees to it turned its back on them. Since the UN was not chartered until after World War II, I find these statements to be not credible.

He starts the book by stating that people do not know about the plunder of Jewish property by the Nazis--that it has been kept secret for lo these many years. Since I have been reading about it since the late 1950s and early 1960s, this is also a little hard to swallow.

I have protested to the publisher about the release of a book that puports to be history but is simply made up out of whole cloth.

I would not recommend this book unless you wish to read fiction.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars addition to earlier review, August 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nazi Gold (Hardcover)

Earlier, I submitted a review of this book--In looking at your on-line excerpt, I noted another error. John Kennedy did not become President in 1962--he was elected in 1960 so took office in January, 1961. I am appalled at this man's lack of research.