‘Deutsche Bank made Trump president’

This 2015 Associated Press video says about itself:

USA: DEUTSCHE BANK HOLOCAUST FUNDING LATEST

An American centre for Holocaust studies says an admission by Germany’s Deutsche Bank that it helped finance the construction of Auschwitz is just the “tip of the iceberg.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre says US government studies dating back decades prove that the bank collaborated closely with the Nazi government. Lawyers for the centre are to meet in Washington D-C next week with lawyers for the German bank, now in the process of taking over the American Banker’s Trust Corporation.

More problems for Deutsche Bank as it continues its takeover bid in the United States. The bank has confessed to funding construction of the notorious concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. But in a news conference on Friday, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the bank’s involvement in the Holocaust went much further.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the centre, showed key pages from a 1946 US government report that he says document Deutsche Bank‘s extensive collaboration with the Nazis.

SOUNDBITE: (English) “Once you have this report, then you know that what the bank cited yesterday is just the tip of the iceberg.”

SUPERCAPTION: Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Centre

Most specifically, Hier claims that Deutsche Bank lent the German company I-G Farben 250 (m) million US dollars to build a rubber factory in Auschwitz that used Jews as slave labourers. A top official of Deutsche Bank named Hermann Abs supposedly lent Farben this money on behalf of the bank.

Hier claims that 300-thousand workers were used in this plant and many of them died on the job.

SOUNDBITE: (English) “Hermann J Abs reported to the Deutsche Bank and the rest of the bank officials, ‘This is how our bank loan of 250 (m) million dollars is going. We are going to build a synthetic rubber plant. They are using concentration camp slave labour. The loan seems to be going just fine.’

That’s the first thing you need to know about the bank’s involvement, knowing the use of slave labour, 300-thousand people, 25-thousand died on the job.”

SUPERCAPTION: Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Centre

Hier cast doubt on claims by bank officials that they only realised the role their forbearers played from files found just recently in Eastern Europe. He insists the report documenting the bank’s collusion with the Nazis has been in the hands of western governments, including Germany and the U-S, for decades.

Despite the fact that thousands of Jews perished here at Auschwitz, Hier argues that the U-S government suppressed the report as part of a post-war effort to prevent West Germany from going Communist.

SOUNDBITE: (English) “We recommend that if the Deutsche Bank wants to the honourable thing, they should tell their complete record and say we want to now face the music which is we want to make a fair global settlement so that those who were employed in slave labour as a result of our involvement are duly compensated.”

SUPERCAPTION: Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Centre

Hier says lawyers from the Wiesenthal Centre are hoping to make a global settlement with Deutsche Bank on behalf of the slave labourers and victims from the rubber factory in Auschwitz. Lawyers from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre will be meeting in Washington next week with lawyers for Deutsche Bank.

Translated from Belgian daily De Standaard, 8 June 2019:

Interview

David Enrich, financial editor at “The New York Times”

Donald Trump was such a risky customer in the late 1990s that no bank wanted to lend him any more money. Except for Deutsche Bank.

“Afterwards, Trump even claimed there had been a “natural disaster” in order not to have to pay back.”

“Without Deutsche Bank, Trump would probably not have been president“

The journalist who revealed the secrets of Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank. The New York Times’s David Enrich has uncovered many details about the president’s long history with one of the most scandal-prone banks on Wall Street. He tells us what he knows: here.

New David Enrich book on Deutsche Bank, and Trump: here.

On July 7 the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank gave its blessing to the “most far-reaching restructuring in decades,” according to Chief Executive Christian Sewing. Around one in five jobs worldwide, that is, 18,000 posts, will fall victim to the jobs massacre. Employees are paying the price for the bank’s criminal activities over the last thirty years. Deutsche Bank entered investment banking in 1989 with the purchase of the British bank Morgan Grenfell. This became its main activity 10 years later with the takeover of US investment house Bankers Trust. By 2000, Deutsche Bank was the largest financial institution in the world, with CEO Josef Ackermann promising a return on equity of 25 percent: here.