Reichsbank

In the 1990s, Switzerland’s first Jewish and woman president, Ruth Dreifuss, called for national introspection on the issue, and a government report said Switzerland had taken part in over three-fourths of worldwide gold transactions by Nazi Germany’s Reichsbank — both as a buyer and an intermediary.

The collection included far more than just Reichsbank deposits and also contained a large quantity of gold fillings wrenched from the jaws of Holocaust victims and bank reserves plundered from Nazi-occupied European nations.

When American forces captured the mining town of Merkers on April 4, 1945, locals tipped them off that the Reichsbank used the old salt tunnels to shelter sensitive assets from aerial attack.

The historians will study the Reichsbank’s role in economic exploitation of occupied countries during the Nazi regime, which was marked by “indescribable cruelty and cynicism,” Mr. Ritschl said.

Central bank archives have long been accessible to researchers and there have been numerous studies of the Reichsbank, as the central bank was known before Germany’s defeat in World War II. But, Mr. Ritschl said, “some unpleasant questions were not asked.”