Daily Mail: A Jewish man who was ‘essential for the Nazi war effort’ has been revealed as the most prolific smuggler in wartime Europe.
Michel Szkolnikoff smuggled looted art and jewellery from France, making a fortune for himself and the Nazis.
Szkolnikoff escaped the genocide and amassed a fortune worth six billion French francs in 1945 – 491million euros (£377million) in today’s money – and died mysteriously at the end of the war, with some conspiracy theorists believing he fled to South America.
French journalist and historian Pierre Abramovici has written a book about Szolnikoff, which explains how he managed to avoid the fate suffered by millions of other Jews and set himself up in a life of luxury.
Abramovici said: ‘The Nazis needed specialists, Jews or not. Szkolnikoff’s situation was complex. He was considered a Jew by the French and Aryan by the Nazis.
‘He was arrested twice by the (Vichy) French and released each time by the Nazis.’
The US Embassy in Madrid pointed to Szkolnikoff as a major smuggler of works of art.
A confidential report from August 1944 said Szkolnikoff also smuggled jewellery, gold and gems from France ‘on behalf of the Gestapo’.
Szolnikoff was born in 1895 in Tsarist Russia but fled after the revolution and became a German citizen, before moving on to France in the 1930s.
He changed his first name to Michel, to disguise his Jewish origins, and began trading in textiles, which he sold to Paris department stores.
But he was still struggling to make a living when war broke out but was soon to make his fortune producing military uniforms for the German Army, the Navy and even the SS.
Abramovici said: ‘He was a poor man before the war but then he met his mistress, a German woman named Hélène Samson. She introduced him to the members of the KriegsMarine (German Navy) and then the SS.
‘This man was a textile merchant without any religious, political or moral ideals. He just wanted to make money and in three years he became the richest man in France.’
Abramovici said: ‘Eventually he owned the main part of the luxury hotels of France and Monaco and dozens of expensive buildings in the centre of Paris around the Champs Elysées, a castle and other properties.’
He said Szolnikoff became ‘essential for the Nazi war effort’.
Abramovici’s book, Szkolnikoff: Hitler’s Jewish Smuggler, tells how Szolnikoff’s origins as a Karaite Jew enabled him to avoid being defined as Jewish and therefore avoid the concentration camps.
The author said: ‘Members of a little Baltic Jewish community named Karaites were considered as non-Jewish and pure Aryan, first by the Italians then by the Nazis in 1938.’
Abramovici said: ‘Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels declared ‘I decide who is Jewish or not’.’
France was looted economically by the Nazis, especially Hermann Göring, who used Szolnikoff as an intermediary.
Szkolnikoff based his business empire in Monaco and invested most of his profits into property, especially hotels.
After Hitler’s death and the German surrender in May 1945, prominent Nazis fled for their lives and those who had collaborated in France were hunted down.
