The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungary (Hardcover)

by Ronald W. Zweig (Author) "The Magyar-speaking people of the Habsburg Empire achieved inde in 1867, when Hungary and Austria were defined as equal but separate states under the Dual..." (more)
Key Phrases: train assets, victim loot, gold train, Jewish Agency, State Department, Hungarian Jewish (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The fabulous "gold train" of Budapest, filled with treasures stolen from Hungarian Jews, has long been a legend of WWII. More recently, it's been the subject of several lawsuits filed by concentration camp survivors. But the real history of the gold train has remained obscure, a situation Zweig corrects in this precise and sober-minded study. In late 1944, Zweig writes, as the Russian army was approaching Budapest, the Hungarian government (a puppet Nazi state) decided to evacuate the loot it had confiscated from its Jewish citizens. The treasure, worth approximately $50 million-$120 million in 1944 dollars, was secretly loaded onto a train and sent on a tortured four-month odyssey westward from the capital. At various points, the treasure was hidden in a castle, a bathhouse and in deep coal mines. In mid-1945, the train was captured by Allied troops, but the drama, Zweig shows, was only beginning. For years, the fate of the gold was subject to the political maneuverings and bickering of the Allies. Eventually, the U.S. gave its portion to Jewish relief organizations, which then transferred much of the funds to the Zionist movement in Palestine; the French returned its portion to the Hungarian government. Almost none of the surviving Jews who lost their property ever saw it returned. Zweig, a historian at Tel Aviv University, does an admirable job of untangling a complicated story and sorting fact from fiction in this fascinating subplot in the vast, tragic narrative of
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
At the onset of World War II, a large percentage of Hungarian Jews were fully assimilated and many were staunch Magyar nationalists. For the most part, they had been spared the rabid anti-Semitism so prevalent in Germany and Poland. Once hostilities began, the Hungarian strongman, Admiral Horthy, consistently resisted the efforts of his ostensible ally, Germany, to include Hungarian Jews in the Final Solution. In 1944, however, extreme right-wingers bowed to German pressure and ousted Horthy; Jews were stripped of their property and the deportation began. Zweig, a senior lecturer in Modern Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, recounts the Hungarian Jews' sad fate with eloquence and compassion, the slow but steady erosion of their security unfolding like a prolonged nightmare. The search for their stolen riches has the elements of a first-rate thriller. This work will be a fine addition to Holocaust collections. Jay Freeman
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• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066209560
• ISBN-13: 978-0066209562
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,428,709 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  
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