BiblioVault - Books about Confiscations and contributions

Dispossession

Plundering German Jewry, 1933-1953

Christoph Kreutzmüller and Jonathan R. Zatlin, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2020

This collection of essays by a range of international, multidisciplinary scholars explores the financial history, social significance, and cultural meanings of the theft, starting in 1933, of assets owned by German Jews. Despite the fraught topic and the ongoing legal discussions, the subject has not received much scholarly attention until now. This volume offers a much needed contribution to our understanding of the history of the period and the acts. The essays examine the confiscatory taxation of Jewish property, the looting of art and confiscation of gold, the role of German freight forwarders in property theft, salesmen and dispossession in the retail world, theft from the elderly, and the complicity of the banking industry, as well as the reach of the practice beyond German borders.

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The Limits of Sovereignty

Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

Daniel W. Hamilton

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Americans take for granted that government does not have the right to permanently seize private property without just compensation. Yet for much of American history, such a view constituted the weaker side of an ongoing argument about government sovereignty and individual rights. What brought about this drastic shift in legal and political thought?

Daniel W. Hamilton locates that change in the crucible of the Civil War. In the early days of the war, Congress passed the First and Second Confiscation Acts, authorizing the Union to seize private property in the rebellious states of the Confederacy, and the Confederate Congress responded with the broader Sequestration Act. The competing acts fueled a fierce, sustained debate among legislators and lawyers about the principles underlying alternative ideas of private property and state power, a debate which by 1870 was increasingly dominated by today’s view of more limited government power.

Through its exploration of this little-studied consequence of the debates over confiscation during the Civil War, The Limits of Sovereignty will be essential to an understanding of the place of private property in American law and legal history.

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Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow

A Guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive

Edited by David E. Fishman, Mark Kupovetsky, and Vladimir Kuzelenkov

University of Scranton Press, 2010

During their ascendency and subsequent occupation of much of Europe, the Nazis plundered the documents and cultural treasures of Jewish organizations as well as other groups and individuals they deemed to be enemies of the Reich. When the Nazis were crushed, many of these looted collections, as well as records of Nazi state agencies that persecuted and murdered Jews, were discovered by the Soviet Army, then transferred to Moscow and held for decades in closed, secret archives. This catalog and guide supplies the first comprehensive, collection-by-collection English-language description of this historical and cultural documentation, which the Nazis meant to be among the only vestiges of the millions of victims they annihilated. Scholars and lay researchers will find this reference a unique and indispensable guide to the invaluable remains of a rich world brutally destroyed.

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