Par Soleil (Soleil) le lundi 09 décembre 2002 - 06h49:

HEIR TO THE HOLOCAUST

Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Capital Rotunda with holocaust
survivors, allied veterans, and their families. In a ceremony that
included Jewish prayers and songs sung by holocaust victims in the
camps, Benjamin Meed, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising,
movingly described to the gathering what he experienced on April 19,
1943.

"I stood outside a Catholic church, which faced the ghetto," Mr. Meed
said, "a young Jewish boy posing as a gentile. As I watched the
ghetto being bombarded by the German artillery, I could see many of
the Jews of my community jumping out of windows of burning buildings.
I stood long and mute."

The survivor concluded his reminiscence saying, "We tremble to think
what could happen if we allow a new generation to arise ignorant of
the tragedy which is still shaping the future."

President Bush, appearing almost uncomfortable, read a statement that
said that humanity was "bound by conscience to remember what
happened" and that "the record has been kept and preserved." The
record, Mr. Bush stated, was that one of the worst acts of genocide
in human history "came not from crude and uneducated men, but from
men who regarded themselves as cultured and well schooled, modern
men, forward looking. Their crime showed the world that evil can slip
in and blend in amid the most civilized surroundings. In the end only
conscience can stop it."

But while President Bush publicly embraced the community of holocaust
survivors in Washington last spring, he and his family have been
keeping a secret from them for over 50 years about Prescott Bush, the
president's grandfather. According to classified documents from Dutch
intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush's
grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz
slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these
profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980
by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.

Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American
press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact – that
through Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his
father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist
Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II.
It was first reported in 1994 by John Loftus and Mark Aarons in The
Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the
Jewish People.

The US government had known that many American companies were aiding
Hitler, like Standard Oil, General Motors and Chase Bank, all of
which was sanctioned after Pearl Harbor. But as The New York Times
reporter Charles Higham later discovered, and published in his 1983
groundbreaking book, Trading With The Enemy; The Nazi American Money
Plot 1933-1949, "the government smothered everything during and even
after the war." Why?

According to Higham, the US government believed "a public scandal ...
would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread
strikes and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services." Higham
claims the government thought "their trial and imprisonment would
have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American
war effort."

However, Prescott Bush's banks were not just financing Hitler as
previously reported. In fact, there was a distinct business link much
deeper than Mr. Higham or Mr. Loftus knew at the time their books
were published.

A classified Dutch intelligence file which was leaked by a courageous
Dutch intelligence officer, along with newly surfaced information
from U.S. government archives, "confirms absolutely," John Loftus
says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen and genocide profits
from Auschwitz.

The business connections between Prescott Bush and Fritz Thyssen were
more direct than what has been previously written. This new
information reveals how Prescott Bush and UBC, which he managed
directly, profited from the Holocaust. A case can be made that the
inheritors of the Prescott Bush estate could be sued by survivors of
the Holocaust and slave labor communities. To understand the complete
picture of how Prescott Bush profited from the Holocaust, it is
necessary to return to the year 1916, where it all began.

Post World War I: Thyssen Empire On The Ropes

By 1916, August Thyssen could see the writing on the wall. The "Great
War" was spinning out of control, grinding away at Germany's
resources and economy. The government was broke and his company,
Thyssen & Co., with 50,000 German workers and annual production of
1,000,000 tons of steel and iron, was buckling under the war's
pressure. As the main supplier of the German military, August Thyssen
knew Germany would be defeated once the US entered the war.

At 74, "King" August Thyssen knew he was also running out of time.
His first born "prince" Friedrich (Fritz) Thyssen, had been groomed
at the finest technical business schools in Europe and was destined
to inherit his father's estimated $100,000,000 fortune and an
industrial empire located at Muehhlheim on the Ruhr.

In addition to Fritz, plans were also made for the second son
Heinrich. At the outbreak of the war, Heinrich Thyssen discreetly
changed his citizenship from German to Hungarian and married the
Hungarian aristocrat Baroness Margrit Bornemisza de Kaszon. Soon
Heinrich Thyssen switched his name to Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de
Kaszon.

Near the end of World War I, August Thyssen opened the Bank voor
Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam. The neutral Holland was the
perfect location outside of Germany to launder assets from the August
Thyssen Bank in Berlin when the financial demands of the Allied
forces surfaced. But the war ended much sooner than even Thyssen
calculated and what developed caught the "Rockefeller of the Ruhr"
off guard.
On November 10, 1918, German socialists took over Berlin. The
following morning at 5 a.m., what was left of Germany surrendered to
the Allies, officially ending World War I. "At the time of the
Armistice and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, my Father and
I were deeply saddened by the spectacle of Germany's abject
humiliation," Thyssen recalled later in his autobiography, I Paid
Hitler.

After the war, chaos descended on Germany as food ran short. Winter
was looming over a starving nation when on Dec. 7, 1918, the
socialist Spartacists League came knocking on the Thyssen Villa with
armed militia. August and Fritz were arrested and dragged from jail
to jail across Germany for four days. Along the way, they were lined
up in staged executions designed to terrorize them.

It worked. When released, the two Thyssens were horrified at the new
political climate in their beloved Germany. They could not accept
that Germany was responsible for its own demise. All Germany's
problems, the Thyssens felt, "have almost always been due to
foreigners." It was the Jews, he and many others believed, who were
secretly behind the socialist movement across the globe.

Meanwhile Fritz's younger brother Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon
moved to Rotterdam and became the principal owner of the Bank voor
Handel en Scheepvaart. All the Thyssens needed now was an American
branch.

1920s: The Business Ties That Bind

Railroad baron E.H. Harriman's son Averell wanted nothing to do with
railroads, so his father gave him an investment firm, W.A. Harriman &
Company in New York City. E.H. hired the most qualified person in the
country to run the operation, George Herbert Walker. Averell hired
his little brother Edward Roland "Bunny" Harriman as a vice president.

By 1920, George Herbert Walker had already built a fortune in
Missouri. Walker, a charismatic former heavyweight boxing champion,
was a human pit bull. He lived life to the fullest, owning mansions
around the east coast and one of the most extravagant apartments in
Manhattan. His hobbies were golf, hunting, drinking scotch and
beating his sons to a pulp. Elsie Walker, one of Walker's
grandchildren described Walker as a "tough old bastard" whose
children had no love "for their father." He was also a religious
bigot who hated Catholics, although his parents raised him to be one.
According to other sources, he also did not like Jews.

In 1922, Averell Harriman traveled to Germany to set up a W.A.
Harriman & Co. branch in Berlin. The Berlin branch was also run by
Walker. While in Germany, he met with the Thyssen family for the
first time. Harriman agreed to help the Thyssens with their plan for
an American bank.

The following year, a wounded Germany was growing sicker. The
government had no solution and froze while Germany rotted from
within. With widespread strikes and production at a near standstill,
Fritz Thyssen later recalled, "We were at the worst time of the
inflation. In Berlin the government was in distress. It was ruined
financially. Authority was crumbling. In Saxony a communist
government had been formed and the Red terror, organized by Max
Hoelz, reigned through the countryside. The German Reich ... was now
about to crumble."

In October, 1923, an emotionally desperate Fritz Thyssen went to
visit one of his and Germany's great military heroes, General Erich
Ludendorff. During the 1918 socialist rule in Berlin, Ludendorff
organized a military resistance against the socialists and the
industrialists were in great debt to him. When Thyssen met with
Ludendorff, they discussed Germany's economic collapse. Thyssen was
apocalyptic, fearing the worst was yet to come. Ludendorff
disagreed. "There is but one hope," Ludendorff said, "Adolph Hitler
and the National Socialist party." Ludendorff respected Hitler
immensely. "He is the only man who has any political sense."
Ludendorff encouraged Thyssen to join the Nazi movement. "Go listen
to him one day" he said to Thyssen.

Thyssen followed General Ludendorff's advice and went to a number of
meetings to hear Hitler speak. He became mesmerized by Hitler. "I
realized his orator gifts and his ability to lead the masses. What
impressed me most however was the order that reigned over his
meetings, the almost military discipline of his follo
wers."

Thyssen arranged to meet privately with Hitler and Ludendorff in
Munich. Hitler told Thyssen the Nazi movement was in financial
trouble, it was not growing fast enough and was nationally
irrelevant. Hitler needed as much money as possible to fight off the
Communists/Jewish conspiracy against Europe. Hitler envisioned a
fascist German monarchy with a nonunion, antilock national work force.

Thyssen was overjoyed with the Nazi platform. He gave Hitler and
Ludendorff 100,000 gold marks ($25,000) for the infant Nazi party.
Others in the steel and coal industries soon followed Thyssen's lead,
although none came close to matching him. Many business leaders in
Germany supported Hitler's secret union-hating agenda. However, some
donated because they feared they would be left out in the cold if he
actually ever seized power.

Most industry leaders gave up on Hitler after his failed coup in
1923. While Hitler spent a brief time in jail, the Thyssens, through
the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, opened the Union Banking
Corporation in 1924.

Union Banking Corporation

Early in 1924, Hendrick J. Kouwenhoven, the managing director of Bank
voor Handel en Scheepvaart, traveled to New York to meet with Walker
and the Harriman brothers. Together, they established The Union
Banking Corporation. The UBC's headquarters was located at the same
39 Broadway address as Harriman & Co.

As the German economy recovered through the mid to late `20s, Walker
and Harriman's firm sold over $50,000,000 worth of German bonds to
American investors, who profited enormously from the economic boom in
Germany. In 1926, August Thyssen died at the age of 84. Fritz was now
in control of one of the largest industrial families in Europe. He
quickly created the United Steel Works (USW), the biggest industrial
conglomerate in German history. Thyssen hired Albert Volger, one of
the Ruhr's most influential industrial directors, as director General
of USW.

Thyssen also brought Fredich Flick, another German family juggernaut,
on board. Flick owned coal and steel industries throughout Germany
and Poland and desperately wanted to invest into the Thyssen empire.
One of the primary motivations for the Thyssen/Flick massive steel
and coal merger was suppressing the new labor and socialist movements.

That year in New York, George Walker decided to give his new son in
law, Prescott Bush, a big break. Walker made Bush a vice president of
Harriman & Co. Prescott's new office employed many of his classmates
from his Yale class of 1917, including Roland Harriman and Knight
Woolley. The three had been close friends at Yale and were all
members of Skull and Bones, the mysterious on-campus secret society.
Despite the upbeat fraternity atmosphere at Harriman & Co., it was
also a place of hard work, and no one worked harder than Prescott
Bush.

In fact, Walker hired Bush to help him supervise the new
Thyssen/Flick United Steel Works. One section of the USW empire was
the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation and the Upper Silesian
Coal and Steel Company located in the Silesian section of Poland.
Thyssen and Flick paid Bush and Walker generously, but it was worth
every dime. Their new business arrangement pleased them all
financially, and the collective talents of all four men and their
rapid success astonished the business world.

In the meantime Hitler and the Nazi party were broke. Since the
German economic recovery, members and donations had dried up, leaving
the Nazi movement withering on the vine. In 1927, Hitler was
desperate for cash; his party was slipping into debt. Hitler told his
private secretary Rudolf Hess to shake down wealthy coal tycoon and
Nazi sympathizer Emil Kirdorf. Kirdorf paid off Hitler's debt that
year but the following year, he too had no money left to contribute.

In 1928, Hitler had his eyes on the enormous Barlow Palace located in
Briennerstrasse, the most aristocratic section of Munich. Hitler
wanted to convert the palace into the Nazi national headquarters and
change its name to the Brown House but it was out of his price range.
Hitler told Hess to contact Thyssen. After hearing the Hess appeal,
Thyssen felt it was time to give Hitler a second chance. Through the
Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, Thyssen said he "placed Hess in
possession of the required funds" to purchase and redesign the
Palace. Thyssen later said the amount was about 250,000 marks but
leading Nazis later claimed that just the re-molding cost over
800,000 marks (equivalent to $2 million today).

Regardless of the cost, Hitler and Thyssen became close friends after
the purchase of the Brown House. At the time, neither knew how
influential that house was to become the following year when, in
1929, the great depression spread around the world. With the German
economic recovery up in flames, Hitler knew there was going to be a
line out the door of industrialists waiting to give him cash.

1930s: Hitler Rises – Thyssen/Bush Cash In

Thyssen would later try to claim that his weekends with Hitler and
Hess at his Rhineland castles were not personal but strictly business
and that he did not approve of most of Hitler's ideas, but the well-
known journalist R.G Waldeck, who spent time with Thyssen at a spa in
the Black Forest, remembered quite differently. Waldeck said when he
and Thyssen would walk through the cool Black Forest in 1929-30,
Thyssen would tell Waldeck that he believed in Hitler. He spoke of
Hitler "with warmth" and said the Nazis were "new men" that would
make Germany strong again. With the depression bleeding Europe,
Thyssen's financial support made Hitler's rise to power almost
inevitable.

The great depression also rocked Harriman & Co. The following year,
Harriman & Co. merged with the London firm Brown/Shipley.
Brown/Shipley kept its name, but Harriman & Co. changed its name to
Brown Brothers, Harriman. The new firm moved to 59 Wall St. while UBC
stayed at 39 Broadway. Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush
reestablished a holding company called The Harriman 15 Corporation.
One of the companies Harriman had held stock in was the Consolidated
Silesian Steel Company. Two thirds of the company was owned by
Friedrich Flick. The rest was owned by Harriman.

In December 1931, Fritz Thyssen officially joined the Nazi party.
When Thyssen joined the movement, the Nazi party was gaining critical
mass around Germany. The charismatic speeches and persona of Hitler,
the depression and the Thyssen's Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart all
contributed to Hitler's sudden rise in popularity with the German
people.

In September 1932, Thyssen invited a group of elite German industrial
tycoons to his castle to meet with Hitler. They spent hours
questioning Hitler, who answered all their questions with the'"utmost
satisfaction," Thyssen remembered. The money poured in from the
industrial circles mostly due to Hitler's "monarchistic attitude"
towards labor and issues of class.

But by November, German voters grew weary of Hitler's antidemocratic
tendencies and turned to the Communist party, which gained the most
seats in the fall election. The Nazis lost a sweeping 35 seats in the
Reichstag, but since the Nazis were already secretly negotiating a
power sharing alliance with Hindenberg that would ultimately lead to
Hitler declaring himself dictator, the outcry of German voters was
politically insignificant.

By 1934, Hindenberg was dead and Hitler completely controlled
Germany. In March, Hitler announced his plans for a vast new highway
system. He wanted to connect the entire Reich with an unprecedented
wide road design, especially around major ports. Hitler wanted to
bring down unemployment but, more importantly, needed the new roads
for speedy military maneuvers.

Hitler also wanted to seriously upgrade Germany's military machine.
Hitler ordered a'"rebirth of the German army" and contracted Thyssen
and United Steel Works for the overhaul. Thyssen's steel empire was
the cold steel heart of the new Nazi war machine that led the way to
World War II, killing millions across Europe.

Thyssen's and Flick's profits soared into the hundreds of millions in
1934 and the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and UBC in New York were
overflowing with money. Prescott Bush became managing director of UBC
and handled the day-to-day operations of the new German economic
plan. Bush's shares in UBC peaked with Hitler's new German order. But
while production rose, cronyism did as well.

On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush handed Averell Harriman a copy of
that day's New York Times. The Polish government was applying to take
over Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation and Upper Silesian Coal
and Steel Company from'"German and American interests" because of
rampant "mismanagement, excessive borrowing, fictitious bookkeeping
and gambling in securities." The Polish government required the
owners of the company, which accounted for over 45% of Poland's steel
production, to pay at least its full share of back taxes. Bush and
Harriman would eventually hire attorney John Foster Dulles to help
cover up any improprieties that might arise under investigative
scrutiny.

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 ended the debate about
Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation and Upper Silesian Coal and
Steel Company. The Nazis knocked the Polish Government off Thyssen,
Flick and Harriman's steel company and were planning to replace the
paid workers. Originally Hitler promised Stalin they would share
Poland and use Soviet prisoners as slaves in Polish factories.
Hitler's promise never actually materialized and he eventually
invaded Russia.

1940s: Business As Usual

Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation was located near the Polish
town of Oswiecim, one of Poland's richest mineral regions. That was
where Hitler set up the Auschwitz concentration camp. When the plan
to work Soviet prisoners fell through, the Nazis transferred Jews,
communists, gypsies and other minority populations to the camp. The
prisoners of Auschwitz who were able to work were shipped to 30
different companies. One of the companies was the vast Consolidated
Silesian Steel Corporation.

"Nobody's made the connection before between Consolidated Silesian
Steel Corporation, Auschwitz and Prescott Bush," John Loftus told
Clamor.

"That was the reason why Auschwitz was built there. The coal deposits
could be processed into either coal or additives for aviation
gasoline."

Even though Thyssen and Flick's Consolidated Steel was in their
possession, Hitler's invasions across Europe spooked them, bringing
back memories of World War I. Thyssen and Flick sold Consolidated
Steel to UBC. Under the complete control of Harriman and management
of Bush, the company became Silesian American Corporation which
became part of UBC and Harriman's portfolio of 15 corporations.
Thyssen quickly moved to Switzerland and later France to hide from
the terror about to be unleashed by the Nazi war machine he had
helped build.

A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was "managed by Prescott
Bush," according to a Dutch intelligence agent. In 1941, slave labor
had become the lifeblood of the Nazi war machine. The resources of
Poland's rich steel and coal field played an essential part in
Hitler's invasion of Europe.

According to Higham, Hitler and the Fraternity of American
businessmen "not only sought a continuing alliance of interests for
the duration of World War II, but supported the idea of a negotiated
peace with Germany that would bar any reorganization of Europe along
liberal lines. It would leave as its residue a police state that
would place the Fraternity in postwar possession of financial,
industrial, and political autonomy."

Six days after Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war at the end
of 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Morgenthau and US Attorney General Francis Biddle signed the
Trading With the Enemy Act, which banned any business interests with
US enemies of war. Prescott Bush continued with business as usual,
aiding the Nazi invasion of Europe and supplying resources for
weaponry that would eventually be turned on American solders in
combat against Germany.

On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government had had enough of Prescott
Bush and his Nazi business arrangements with Thyssen. Over the
summer, The New York Tribune had exposed Bush and Thyssen, whom the
Tribune dubbed "Hitler's Angel." When the US government saw UBC's
books, they found out that Bush's bank and its shareholders "are held
for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is
property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country." The list of
seven UBC share holders was:

E. Roland Harriman – 3991 shares
Cornelis Lievense – 4 shares
Harold D.Pennington – 1 share
Ray Morris–– 1 share
Prescott S. Bush – 1 share
H.J. Kouwenhoven – 1 share
Johann G. Groeninger – 1 share.

The UBC books also revealed the myriad of money and holding companies
funneled from the Thyssens and the government realized UBC was just
the tip of the iceberg. On November 17, 1942, The US government also
took over the Silesian American Corporation, but did not prosecute
Bush for the reasons Higham noted earlier. The companies were allowed
to operate within the Government Alien Property custodian office with
a catch – no aiding the Nazis. In 1943, while still owning his stock,
Prescott Bush resigned from UBC and even helped raise money for
dozens of war-related causes as chairman of the National War Fund.

After the war, the Dutch government began investigating the
whereabouts of some jewelry of the Dutch royal family that was stolen
by the Nazis. They started looking into books of the Bank voor Handel
en Scheepvaart. When they discovered the transaction papers of the
Silesian American Corporation, they began asking the bank manager
H.J. Kounhoven a lot of questions. Kouwenhoven was shocked at the
discovery and soon traveled to New York to inform Prescott Bush.
According to Dutch intelligence, Kouwenhoven met with Prescott soon
after Christmas, 1947. Two weeks later, Kouwenhoven apparently died
of a heart attack.

1950s: Bush Sells UBC Stock

By 1948, Fritz Thyssen's life was in ruins. After being jailed by the
Nazis, he was jailed by the Allies and interrogated extensively, but
not completely, by US investigators. Thyssen and Flick were ordered
to pay reparations and served time in prison for their atrocious
crimes against humanity.

On February 8, 1951, Fritz Thyssen died bitterly in Argentina at the
age of 78. Thyssen was angry at the way he was treated by Europe
after the war and how history would remember him as Hitler's most
important and prominent financier.

When Thyssen died, the Alien Property Custodian released the assets
of the Union Banking Corporation to Brown Brothers Harriman. The
remaining stockholders cashed in their stocks and quietly liquidated
the rest of UBC's blood money.

Prescott Bush received $1.5 million for his share in UBC. That money
enabled Bush to help his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, to set up
his first royalty firm, Overby Development Company, that same year.
It was also helpful when Prescott Bush left the business world to
enter the public arena in 1952 with a successful senatorial campaign
in Connecticut. On October 8th, 1972, Prescott Bush died of cancer
and his will was enacted soon after.

In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elected vice president, he placed
his father's family inherence in a blind trust. The trust was managed
by his old friend and quail hunting partner, William "Stamps" Farish
III. Bush's choice of Farish to manage the family wealth is quite
revealing in that it demonstrates that the former president might
know exactly where some of his inheritance originated. Farish's
grandfather, William Farish Jr., on March 25th, 1942, pleaded "no
contest" to conspiring with Nazi Germany while president of Standard
Oil in New Jersey. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public
of approaching "treason" for profiting off the Nazi war machine.
Standard Oil, invested millions in IG Farben, who opened a gasoline
factory within Auschwitz in 1940. The billions "Stamps" inherited had
more blood on it then Bush, so the paper trail of UBC stock would be
safe during his 12 years in presidential politics.

It has been 60 years since one of the great money laundering scandals
of the 20th century ended and only now are we beginning to see the
true historical aspects of this important period of world history, a
history that the remaining Holocaust survivors beg humanity to "never
forget."
Loftus believes history will view Prescott Bush as harshly as
Thyssen. "It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the
money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920s, but giving
aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush bank
helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed Allied solders.
As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and
abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen's coal mines used Jewish
slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million
skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and
historical questions to be answered about the Bush family's
complicity."

There is no question that the Bush family needs to donate at least
$1.5 million to the proper holocaust reparation fund. Since Prescott
Bush is dead, the only way to compensate is for the main inheritors
of his estate to make amends with surviving slaves and the families
of slaves who died in Bush and Thyssen's coal mines. If the Bush
family refuses to contribute the money to compensate for Prescott
Bush's involvement in the Holocaust, it is like denying the Holocaust
itself and their role in one of the darkest moments in world history.

Special thanks to John Loftus, Emmy winning journalist, author and
current president of the Florida Holocaust Museum.

Article by Toby Rogers originally appeared in Clamor Magazine

Source quoted from:
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/archivebushclan.html

Par Admin (Admin) le jeudi 30 août 2007 - 03h17: