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AMSTERDAM
Eli Lavon began with the basic facts of Kurt Voss's appalling biography.
Born into an upper-class trading family in Koln on October 23, 1906, Voss was sent to the capital for schooling, graduating from the University of Berlin in 1932 with degrees in law and history. In February 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power, he joined the Nazi Party and was assigned to the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the security and intelligence service of the SS. For the next several years, he worked at headquarters in Berlin compiling dossiers on enemies of the Party, both real and imagined. Ambitious in all things, Voss courted Frieda Schuler, the daughter of a prominent Gestapo officer, and the two were soon wed at a country estate outside Berlin. Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was in attendance, as was SD chief Reinhard Heydrich, who serenaded the happy couple on the violin. Eighteen months later, Frieda gave birth to a son. Hitler himself sent a note of congratulations.
Voss soon grew bored with his work at SD headquarters and made it clear to his powerful backers he was interested in a more challenging assignment. His opportunity came in March 1938, when German forces rolled unchallenged into Austria. By August, Voss was in Vie
"Adolf Eichma
Lavon nodded his head slowly. Eichma
The Zentralstelle was headquartered in an ornate Vie
"It was a giant fleecing operation. Jews entered at one end with money and possessions and came out the other with nothing but their lives. The Nazis would later refer to the process as the 'Vie
By the autumn of 1941, with the Continent engulfed in war, Hitler and his senior henchmen decided that the Jews were to be exterminated. Europe was to be scoured from west to east, with Eichma
"But not for Voss," said Lavon. "For Kurt Voss, it was the business opportunity of a lifetime."
As the lethal summer of 1942 commenced, Voss and the rest of Eichma
"Voss had an office just down the hall from Eichma
But Voss's most lucrative transaction would occur late in the war and in the last country to be ravaged by the fires of the Holocaust: Hungary. When Eichma
"The Bauer-Rubin industrial works," said Lavon. "The owners were a consortium of highly assimilated Jews, most of whom had either converted to Catholicism or were married to Catholic women. Within days of his arrival in Budapest, Voss summoned them and explained that their days were numbered. But as usual, he had a proposition. If the Bauer-Rubin industrial works were transferred to his control, Voss would make certain that the owners and their families would be granted safe passage to Portugal. As you might expect, the owners quickly agreed to Voss's demands. The following day, the managing partner, a man named Samuel Rubin, accompanied Voss on a trip to Zurich."
"Why Zurich?"
"Because that's where the vast majority of the firm's assets were held for safekeeping. Voss pulled the company apart piece by piece and moved its holdings to accounts under his control. When his greed was finally satisfied, he allowed Rubin to leave for Portugal and promised that everyone else would follow in short order. It never happened. Rubin was the only one to survive. The rest ended up in Auschwitz along with more than four hundred thousand other Hungarian Jews."
"And Voss?"
He returned to Berlin on Christmas Eve 1944. But with the war all but lost, Voss and the rest of Eichma
"Eichma
"And the money?"
"It was gone, too," said Lavon. "Just like the people it once belonged to."