Blood From a Stone

In 1999, after an 11-year-long search, Svoray succeeded in finding a cache of 40 rough diamonds which had been lost by the retreating SS in the fall of 1944 and found by two American soldiers, who buried them in a foxhole in Alsace in 1945. Pp. 45-77 discuss the history of these diamonds. In the death camps, the SS eagerly collected and stored valuables, including diamonds, brought by their Jewish victims. In 1943 the Nazis set up a diamond factory in the detention camp of Vught, to which they brought Jewish skilled diamond cutters, appraisers, etc., from Amsterdam and Antwerp. Most of the precious stones stolen by the Nazis in the death camps were never processed in Vught, but divided among the SS guards before they fled from the camp in fall 1944; most of the Jewish diamond workers were killed.