Reichsbank Gold Poem by Paul Hartal

'Think of it! ' Hjalmar Schacht exclaimed.
The former Nazi minister of economics
appeared to be excited and outraged:
'To break teeth out of a dead body!
Think of it! '

Although Schacht helped Hitler to rise to power
at the Nuremberg Trials he indignantly refused
to accept responsibility for Nazi war crimes.
He also claimed that he was not aware that gold
deposits in the Reichsbank came from Jewish
victims murdered in the death camps.

Schacht was the president of the Reichsbank
until 1939 and minister without portfolio for
a few more years. Then in 1943 Hitler had
dismissed him from the government
but not before his minister introduced
discriminatory laws, which prevented Jews
from working in the German civil service
and limited the number of Jews in business.

During an interview in a Nuremberg prison cell
Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a US Army psychiatrist,
told Schacht that it was SS obergruppenfuehrer
Oswald Pohl, chief administrator
of the concentration camps, who delivered
the gold to the Reichsbank.
Pohl insists, the doctor said,
that he is innocent because he did not order
the executions.

'Ach! Think of it! ' Schacht said.'
To break teeth out of a dead body! Think of it!
Obviously that dog Pohl knew everything
about it. After all he was in charge of feeding
and housing the inmates of the lagers'.

When the doctor asked why Schacht served
in Hitler's criminal government,
the former minister replied:
'Because I felt that at least one honest man in
that government might serve as a check on Hitler.'

At this the doctor could not help and smiled.
Schacht became puzzled and asked him
why he was smiling. Well, the psychiatrist
explained, he was quite sure that it was just
a coincidence but the odious SS general
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
said the same thing. He claimed that it was
for the best that 'decent fellows', like him,
'became influential in the SS
and thus staved off bad things'.