I thought I’d share an email from Evan that resulted from a conversation he and I had about the gold teeth found at Billi’s house, and their worth …
From: Evan Stone
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 12:13 PM
To: Chere Thomas
Subject: RE: Gold Teeth – $7,500
So let’s assume that [$7,500] represents gold teeth from 100 patients.
Let’s also assume Nazis killed in their death camps (excluding battle deaths – teeth weren’t harvested in most battlefields but were in the death camps) 10,000,000 people, although all estimates are higher.
10,000,000 divided by 100 = 100,000… multiplied by $7,500 = $750,000,000. Discount it back to 1940, and you’re probably around $200,000,000 – a fifth of a billion dollars, just for teeth.
How about wedding bands, rings, earrings, family jewels for gold content?
How about all their real property investments? (not all victims were peasants, ya know)
How about all their personal property, like stocks, bonds, silver, china, fine art collections and even mundane things like furniture and furnishings?
How about all their bank accounts?
Forget the peasants and poor people, but if you assume that only 1,000,000 of the ten million victims were people of some degree of wealth and had total assets of $500,000 today (not a huge amount, as I’m sure you’ll agree), the number is $500,000,000,000. Discount that by the same %age for 1940 dollars, and you’re at $133,000,000,000. Think the Holocaust (including Jews and all others killed in camps, including liberals, communists, gays, physically/mentally disabled, political opponents, professors, intelligentsia, etc.) was a good money deal?
– Evan
It’s always interesting – our conversations. This is just a peek at how one small discussion can lead to an enormous topic in the little world where I work.
