Max Heiliger

Wedding rings stolen from Holocaust victims (like these found during Buchenwald's liberation) were among valuables typically laundered through Max Heilinger accounts.

Eyeglasses of victims from Auschwitz

Max Heiliger was a fictional name created during the Nazi era under authority of Reichsbank president Walther Funk in a secret arrangement with leader of the Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler. It was a false identity used to establish bank accounts to launder valuables stolen from those killed in the Nazi system of concentration camps and extermination camps.^[1] Stolen banknotes and jewelry along with Holocaust victims' dental gold, wedding rings, and even scrap gold melted down from spectacles-frames flooded into the Max Heiliger accounts, completely filling several bank vaults by 1942.^[1] Heiliger accounts were also sometimes used to fence valuables at Berlin's municipal pawn shops.^[2]

Other code phrases associated with bank-processing of camp victims' property included Melmer, Besitz der umgesiedelten Juden ("property of resettled Jews"), and Reinhardtfonds.^[2][3] The latter was a veiled reference to Aktion Reinhardt. The word umgesiedelten cloaked the true nature of the goods, since victims were usually "resettled" to a Nazi concentration camp or an early grave.

Using the name "Heiliger" was a cynical Nazi joke, since the word means saint, from the word heilig (holy).^[2] Such "humor" was not unusual in Nazi circles. For example, the one-way path to the gas chamber at Sobibor extermination camp was called Himmelstrasse, meaning "Heaven Street" –the road to Heaven.

References

1. William L. Shirer (1990) [1960]. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (pg.973). Retrieved Nov 22, 2011.
2. Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági (2004). Self-Financing Genocide (pg.118). Retrieved Nov 22, 2011.
3. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (1998). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (pg.255). Retrieved Nov 22, 2011.