Bank manager swindles Holocaust survivor

The branch manager of a bank in Jerusalem was arrested on suspicions he stole NIS 25,000 from the account of a Holocaust survivor living in the capital.

Under police questioning the suspect confessed, saying he had fallen into financial straits. “I can’t believe he did this,” said 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor Matilda Schwartz from her Givat Shaul apartment. “He was like a family friend.”

Her daughter filed a complaint after her elderly woman noticed reparations payments were disappearing from her account. Fraud unit investigators discovered that withdrawals in the amount of NIS 3,000 were made regularly, apparently by a neighbor who had been authorized to withdraw money for the elderly woman, but the signatures on the withdrawal slips were found to be false.

“My mother told me someone was stealing money from her account, but it didn’t seem logical to me,” the daughter told Maariv. “One day we decided to look into the matter and discovered that something was amiss there at the bank.”

When first arrested for questioning the bank manager denied any wrongdoing, but soon broke down and confessed he had transferred funds to his own account after falling on financial hardship. He is now under home arrest and investigators are checking whether he withdrew money from other accounts as well.

Schwartz, who has four children, dozens of grandchildren and hundreds of great-grandchildren, arrived in Israel in 1949.

“He was so friendly with me,” she said, after learning she had fallen victim to her bank manager. “He even told me that he had gotten married a few months ago. I still can’t believe he did this.”

Tags: bank fraud, Holocaust survivor, Jerusalem