Customer Reviews

Pack of Thieves: How Hitler and Europe Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I literally shuddered from a combination of amazement, disgust, and anger after reading this well-written and quite readable overview of the plundering of the European Jews by Hitler and others starting in the 1930s and continuing to the present day. This book by Richard Chesnoff carefully details the scope and depth of the continuing final financial insult to those who suffered the "Final Solution" at Hitler's hand in the Second World War. Even after fifty years, the lies, dissembling, vile deceptions and equivocations continue, for literally tens of billions of dollars of gold, valuables, and money plundered as a result of the so-called "Final Solution" are still unaccounted for. For anyone old enough to have fifty such years of conscious experience in the world, it's difficult to actually be moved to disgust, to be amazed by anything people do, but the bold, shameless ways in which Europe's thugs, slugs and other lowlife cowards came slithering out of their damp and furtive hiding places to take full and open advantage of the Jews' persecution before, during and even after WWII is enough to wrench the most strong-stomached among us.

Although this line of investigation is by its very nature disturbing stuff, it is well handled by the author, and his even, professional journalistic tone is solid, seldom bitter or vengeful. Instead, his forte is his ability to systematically describe, detail, and document the multifarious ways in which the Jews were ritually stripped of anything of value by their friends, neighbors, and countrymen, and how so many of those of whom so much better should have been expected used their positions of relative advantage to exploit, extort, and even help to exterminate them. From outright expropriation of rugs, art, and valuables by the Nazis to a plethora of scams, false promises, and ultimate betrayals, the bottom line in case after case is personal enrichment at the extraordinary expense of the victims. Were I not also aware of countless stories of so many others who risked and often sacrificed themselves to save Jews, I would be ashamed to be a human being. It is difficult to understand how so many fellows human beings could continue be so cravenly covetous and so heartless as to perpetrate such a campaign of dispossession against those who were so helpless, impotent, and so needing of compassion.

The number of ways in which the Jews were exploited and extorted is numbing; from life insurance scams to funds transfer to numbered Swiss accounts to offers to help individual Jews escape to offers to hide them and spirit them to safety, the various permutations seem endless, and often quite ingenious. Yet one cannot help but be appalled by neighbors calmly expropriating clothing, cars, furniture, apartments, homes, and farms from Jews who were being systematically displaced. There are accounts of individuals coming home from the camps to find neighbors firmly ensconced in the homes, using their home goods, and totally oblivious to the possibility they would have to give it all up to the returning survivors. Many Jews returning to their former homes were threatened, scared away, beaten, or even murdered upon their return.

Of course, the most systematic exploitation was by social institutions; governments, banks, insurance companies, art museums. The degree to which these organized interests have systematically delayed, stonewalled, and denied any access to their records for all these decades is scandalous and disheartening to learn about. While the original impetus was to "Aryanize" the wealth of Germany's Jews to help finance the goals of the Third Reich, the explosion of avarice and greed soon spread throughout the Reich and beyond. What is truly disheartening is the widespread degree to which economic, social and political institutions we would otherwise consider respectable and honorable have participated in the plunder taking. This book is a most provocative reading experience, and one anyone interested in the curiosities and unintended ironies of history can play out their games should read. I highly recommend it, and hope it will be widely read and appreciated.

Chilling, captivating, terrifying express some of the emotional responses one will feel when one reads this book. The author has thoroughly researched his topic. In addition he has presented his findings in a very organized and readable fashion. The writing style makes for easy reading. The author has transformed what could have been a very mundane presentation of facts and figures into a captivating story that is impossible to put down once started. A must read for students of the Holocaust.

I highly recommend this book. Mr. Chesnoff presents a picture of pure and blatant robbery of the Jews by all Europeans during the Holocaust. Anybody interested in Jewish History, gross injustice and understanding an awful aspect of human nature will find this book a must read.

"Pack of Thieves" is a riveting account of man's greed coupled with a recounting of the worst crime in modern history - the Holocaust. I commend Richard Chesnoff for an insightful and beautifully written book. A must for every family library!

Chilling, captivating, terrifying express some of the emotional responses one will feel when one reads this book. The author has thoroughly researched his topic. In addition he has presented his findings in a very organized and readable fashion. The writing style makes for easy reading. The author has transformed what could have been a very mundane presentation of facts and figures into a captivating story that is impossible to put down once started. A must read for students of the Holocaust.

Chesnoff's Pack of Thieves shows us how a world of people can be brainwashed into forgetting the difference between good and evil. It shopws the contageous nature of the influence of evil over good that has no bounds when scape goats are identified. Hitler may have started the plunder and genocide of the Jews of Europe, but he was not alone. It took too few incentives for whole countries to step by step degrade, debase, rob and kill people for no other reason than they were Jewish.

It is difficult for a Jewish person in today's world to read this book without feeling the gamit of emotions for their forefathers suffering, and great animosity for people who consider themselves to be doing good while committing systematic terror against humanity, with little or no regret..

"Pack of Thieves" should be required reading in world history classes.

I have read about two-thirds of this book, and have been stunned by the information. I have also read The Abandonment of the Jews, which details how the free world found a wide variety of excuses for not intervening to rescue the Jewish people from Hitler's barbaric genocidal program. What really amazed me it that the survivors found so little cooperation or help when they tried to return home and collect some of what had been taken from them. This book should be required reading in every history class in every country in the world. The most frightening aspect of the story is that all of these horrible things can very well happen again, on an ever larger scale. This worlds' values are wrong for it to survive much longer if there is any justice anywhere in the universe.

I recommend this book be read in as many schools as possible, for information and as a witness to the fact that man's human nature is still greed, avarice, and self-serving. God help us.

Pack of thieves is probably the most detailed book I have ever read about the plundering of the Jews in Europe. Throughout the book the crimes committed against the Jews is explained in horrifying detail. In my opinion, I would not suggest this book to the weak hearted as it has many awful pictures and stories of people being destroyed by the Nazis. Although it is a horrible subject to read about, the holocaust is not talked about enough. I think that people should be educated about world history so that atrocities like the mass murder of the Jews never happen again.

This factual account clears up a lot of myths about European 'help' for the Jews during WW2. Especially the Swiss, the French, the Dutch and others.

The were ALL a 'Pack of Thieves!!'