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(P1683)
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"When Theodor Frank and Oscar Wassermann, two prominent Jewish members of the bank's board, were forced to resign in 1933 - the start of a long string of such resignations - people in the bank "were morally and humanly indignant but also had purely pragmatic worries," Mr. James wrote. The bank sought to squelch the relevance of religion to the resignations, fearing that the news would be bad for business.But Georg Solmssen, successor to Mr. Wassermann, in a prophetic letter to the chairman of the bank's supervisory board, wrote: "I fear we are embarking on an explicit, well- planned path toward the annihilation of all Jews in Germany." Mr. Solmssen lambasted the "passivity" and "complete lack of solidarity" of the country's elite, most of whom had not yet become members of the Nazi Party.Editors’ PicksJames Comey’s View of Justice — and How It Differs From Donald Trump’sWith ‘I Hate Men,’ a French Feminist Touches a NerveWhat We Found in Robert Caro’s Yellowed FilesContinue reading the main storyWhile few of the bank's personnel joined the Nazi Party before 1933, many "opportunists" did so after Hitler assumed power, Mr. James noted. At the end of the war in 1945, 44 of the bank's 84 branch officers were party members. All of them had joined after 1933." (language: en)
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