Looting
Immediately after they arrived, the occupying forces began looting apartment buildings and art works, initially focusing heavily on the property of Parisian Jews. Passers-by noted these organized thefts, also witnessing the removal of statues to be melted by the Germans to recover the metal. Compared to the overall amount of economic and financial looting of France, the plundering of property belonging to victims of anti-Semitism was minimal. It remains unforgettable for what it signified, however. The "Möbel Aktion" saw nearly 38,000 apartments belonging to Jewish deportees or refugees emptied of their contents, which were shipped to Germany. In 1943, the Germans established three Jewish labor camps in Paris where the stolen property was sorted. Approximately 800 men and women transited through these camps, which named for the locations requisitioned for them: "Bassano," "Austerlitz" et "Lévitan."
