W–034 · Documentary photograph and sources

The Wedding Rings Taken from Holocaust Victims

Wedding rings became gold by weight. The Nazis took them from their victims, alongside watches, gemstones, spectacle frames and dental fillings. In the spring of 1945, American soldiers found thousands of such rings near Buchenwald.

A serviceman holds a handful of rings over a box filled with more rings. Photographed by T/4 Roberts on 5 May 1945; US National Archives.

Provenance and sources for frame 1

Photographed by US Army T/4 Roberts on 5 May 1945. The US National Archives holds the image as 111-SC-206406, identifier 531294. The source identifies it as a US federal-government work in the public domain in the United States. Displayed file: 1529 × 1200 pixels. The source record discusses public-domain status; check which jurisdiction it covers. Full image record in Russian.

archives.gov docsteach.org encyclopedia.ushmm.org nuremberg.law.harvard.edu commons.wikimedia.org View image file

The camp was liberated on 11 April. Less than a month later, on 5 May, a military photographer named Roberts photographed a handful of rings held over a box full of them. The archival caption says they were only a small part of what had been stolen.

The seized gold made its way to the Reichsbank. After the war, its vice-president Emil Puhl spoke about valuables the SS had taken from Jews and other concentration-camp prisoners. From August 1942, the bank accepted jewellery, watches, spectacle frames and dental gold. Proceeds from their sale were to go into the Reich treasury.

The caption does not name the people who wore these rings. No individual ring in the photograph can be linked from this record to the name or fate of the person from whom it was taken.

1. The rings