"Jewish Accounts" and a Conveniently Bombed Archive: A German Bank's Holocaust Problem

There is an obsession for banks in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia: "Jewish accounts." The phrase refers to dormant bank accounts belonging to Jewish customers who were persecuted, deported, or murdered during the Holocaust. Decades later, the question of what happened to their assets remains unresolved. And one bank, the Sparkasse in Hagen, is still acting as if it never profited from the Nazi era at all.

Last year, a Jewish Swiss man inquired about the whereabouts of his grandfather's money, which had been held at the Sparkasse in Hagen. The bank's response was simple: they had no idea what he was talking about. Unfortunately, the institution's archive was destroyed during the Second World War – a victim of a bombing raid. Or so the bank claimed.

There is a problem with that story. In a previous anniversary publication, the same Sparkasse had proudly stated that while the archive building had suffered hits, the archive itself had remained intact. That is a rather significant detail to forget. But the inconsistencies did not end there.

A journalist later discovered an article in the "Hagener Rundschau" from 1995. The article featured a photograph of the Sparkasse's archivist, proudly holding several folders labelled "Jewish Accounts." The image suggests that the bank not only had such records but was actively maintaining them – at least until the mid-1990s. The existence of those folders contradicts the bank's claim that all relevant documents were lost in the war.

Now the question is: when will there finally be honesty and transparency? Jewish descendants are still forced to sue. Banks are still trying to stonewall. The year is 2026. The next step is for Germany's Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) to decide whether the Sparkasse in Hagen must finally disclose where its wealth came from.

For decades, German banks have faced allegations that they profited from the persecution of Jewish customers – seizing assets, closing accounts, and destroying records. The Sparkasse in Hagen is not the only institution to have offered the "archive destroyed in the war" defence. But it may be one of the few to have published a photograph proving the opposite. The court will now have to weigh the evidence: a bank's convenient claim of destruction versus a 1995 photo of an archivist holding folders that were supposedly never there. The Holocaust ended 80 years ago. Some accounts, it seems, are still being settled.