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The fiction that became fact

Steve Boggan · Saturday 07 September 1996 00:02 · Comments

In 1972 it all seemed so far-fetched - but it made a great film. A former

concentration camp commandant, the journalist who investigated him, a
meeting to decide on the movement of plundered Nazi gold and a
network of SS officers with access to Swiss bank accounts.

It was the plot of The Odessa File and it made Frederick Forsyth a small
fortune. At the time, however, few would believe him when he said the
book's villain, Eduard Roschmann, the Butcher of Riga, was a real
character.

Fewer still would believe the book's claim that a meeting of high-ranking
SS officers and industrialists took place at the Maison Rouge hotel in
Strasbourg in 1944 to discuss ways of moving Nazi gold out of Germany
and France with a view to building a Fourth Reich.

Yet he always insisted large elements of his book were true, based on
information gleaned from "friends in low places." The declassified
American intelligence report obtained by The Independent yesterday
Most popular
talks of a meeting at the Hotel Rotes Haus. This was the name given to
Matt Gaetz among lawmakers
the hotel after the German invasion of Strasbourg. who asked for pardon from
Trump after Jan 6
"I believe there were a number of meetings there at which the SS and
Couple kicked off Air Canada
industrialists carved up much of the proceeds of the Third Reich," said flight with 25 others ‘for no
Forsyth. "From that point on, the fanatics were looking for funds to create reason’

the Fourth Reich. The proceeds went to Switzerland and some were
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undoubtedly drawn out, but because of the convoluted way they set up while preparing for night out
the accounts, I believe much of it must still be there.
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"They would grab someone like their chauffeur and their cook and get ‘evolving to target lungs and
them to sign a document. Years later, when they were out of the army, the beat immunity’

chauffeur and cook would be contacted again and told to sign another
piece of paper. They wouldn't know it but they were signatories to a Swiss
bank account.

"It has always seemed scandalous to me that the Swiss banks are sitting Popular videos

on huge sums of money put there by the Nazis but also deposited by Jews
who were later murdered."

More about: Banking Hotels Prison Strasbourg

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