# Max Heiliger

Part of a series on :
The Holocaust :
Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944 :
Responsibility
Nazi Germany
People
Major perpetrators
Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Joseph Goebbels
Heinrich Müller
Reinhard Heydrich
Adolf Eichmann
Odilo Globocnik
Theodor Eicke
Richard Glücks
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Rudolf Höss
Christian Wirth
Organizations
Nazi Party
Gestapo
Schutzstaffel (SS)
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
Einsatzgruppen
Sturmabteilung (SA)
Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT)
Wehrmacht
Trawniki men
Collaborators during World War II
Nazi ideologues :
Early policies
Racial policy
Nazi eugenics
Nuremberg Laws
Haavara Agreement
Madagascar Plan
Forced euthanasia :
Victims
Jews
Romani people (Gypsies)
Poles
Soviet POWs
Slavs in Eastern Europe
Homosexuals
People with disabilities :
Ghettos
Będzin
Białystok
Budapest
Kaunas
Kraków
Łódź
Lublin
Lwów
Minsk
Riga
Sosnowiec
Warsaw
Vilnius
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
List of selected ghettos :
Camps
Nazi extermination camps
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Bełżec
Chełmno
Jasenovac
Majdanek
Sajmište
Sobibor
Treblinka
Nazi concentration camps
Auschwitz I
Bergen-Belsen
Bogdanovka
Buchenwald
Dachau
Dora
Gonars (Italy)
Gross-Rosen
Herzogenbusch
Janowska
Kaiserwald
Mauthausen-Gusen
Neuengamme
Rab
Ravensbrück
Sachsenhausen
Salaspils
Stutthof
Transnistria (Romania)
Theresienstadt
Uckermark
Warsaw
Transit and collection camps
Belgium
Breendonk
Mechelen
France
Gurs
Drancy
Italy
Bolzano
Netherlands
Amersfoort
Westerbork
Slovakia
Sereď
Divisions
SS-Totenkopfverbände
Concentration Camps Inspectorate
Politische Abteilung
Sanitätswesen
Extermination methods
Gas van
Gas chamber
Extermination through labour
Einsatzgruppen
Human medical experimentation :
Atrocities
Pogroms
Kristallnacht
Bucharest
Dorohoi
Iași
Izieu
Szczuczyn
Jedwabne
Plungė
Radziłów pogrom
Kaunas
Lviv (Lvov)
Marseille
Tykocin
Vel' d'Hiv
Wąsosz
Einsatzgruppen
Babi Yar
Bydgoszcz
Częstochowa
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Ninth Fort
Odessa
Piaśnica
Ponary
Rumbula
Erntefest
"Final Solution"
Wannsee Conference
Mogilev Conference
Operation "Reinhard"
Holocaust trains
Extermination camps
End of World War II
Wola massacre
Death marches :
Resistance
Auschwitz Protocols
Vrba–Wetzler report
Czesław Mordowicz
Jerzy Tabeau
Rudolf Vrba
Alfréd Wetzler
Bricha
Jewish partisans
Sonderkommando photographs
Witold Pilecki
Resistance movement in Auschwitz
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej
Witold's Report
Ghetto uprisings
Warsaw
Białystok
Łachwa
Częstochowa :
International responseJoint Declaration by Members of the United Nations
Auschwitz bombing debate
MS St. Louis
Nuremberg trials
Denazification :
Aftermath
Bricha
Displaced persons
Survivors
Central Committee of the Liberated Jews
Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany :
Lists
Holocaust survivors
Deportations of French Jews to death camps
Survivors of Sobibor
Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp
Victims of Nazism
Rescuers of Jews
Memorials and museums :
Resources
Bibliography
List of books about Nazi Germany
The Destruction of the European Jews
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos
Functionalism versus intentionalism :
Remembrance
Days of remembrance
Memorials and museums
Righteous Among the Nations :
vte :
Max Heiliger was a false identity created during the Nazi era to establish bank accounts for laundering and fencing valuables stolen from those murdered in the Holocaust. Additionally, stolen artwork and furniture from vacated homes of Holocaust victims was collected separately and auctioned; the resulting funds were then funneled into the same accounts. Its creation was authorized by Reichsbank president Walther Funk in a secret arrangement with Schutzstaffel leader Heinrich Himmler.

## Stolen property

Along with banknotes, items such as dental gold, wedding rings, jewelry, and even scrap gold melted down from eyeglasses flooded into the Max Heiliger accounts, completely filling several vaults by 1942. The valuables were stolen from Holocaust victims before and after transportation by train to Nazi concentration camps. The items were carefully weighed, evaluated, and inventoried by SS accountants before transfer to the Reichsbank accounts in Berlin. Furniture and artwork left in vacated apartments and houses were collected in a separate operation and auctioned to the German population, after which the generated funds were transferred to the accounts. What the Nazis considered "degenerate art" was often sent to Geneva for auction, although some art was retained by Hitler's art dealers, including Hildebrand Gurlitt. Stocks, bonds, and shares were transferred to the state in the same way, and companies were purchased for less than their true worth through Aryanization. The potential for corruption of such assets was substantial and an unknown amount of stolen wealth ended up in private pockets, notably with the Gurlitt Collection. Heiliger accounts were also sometimes used to fence valuables at Berlin's municipal pawn shops.

## Other code names

Other code phrases associated with bank-processing of camp victims' property included Melmer, Besitz der umgesiedelten Juden (property of resettled Jews), and Reinhardtfonds. The latter was a veiled reference to Operation Reinhardt. The word umgesiedelten cloaked the true nature of the goods, since victims were usually "resettled" to an extermination camp.

## Nazi cynicism

Using the name "Heiliger" was a cynical Nazi joke, since the word means saint, from the word heilig (holy). Such "humor" was not unusual in Nazi circles; for example, the one-way paths to the gas chambers at Sobibor and Treblinka death camps were called Himmelstrasse, meaning "Heaven Street" –the road to Heaven.