| The Holocaust |
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Part of: Jewish history
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Camps
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Remembrance
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Max Heiliger was a fictional name created during the Nazi era under authority of Reichsbank president Walther Funk in a secret arrangement with S.S. leader 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 et cetera flooded into the Max Heiliger accounts, completely filling several bank vaults by 1942.[2] Heiliger accounts were also sometimes used to fence valuables at Berlin's municipal pawn shops.[3]
Other code phrases associated with bank-processing of camp victims' property included Melmer, Besitz der umgesiedelten Juden (property of resettled Jews), and Reinhardtfonds.[4][5] The latter was a veiled reference to Action 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", or "holy".[6] 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.