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KOSOVAN Albanians who thought they had lost everything are, in many cases, regaining their life savings thanks to a team of German bankers.
A ten-strong unit of the Bundesbank has been sifting through ravaged banknotes of the Kosovans, which they bring or post to Frankfurt as proof of the savings they once had. Marks have long been the dollars of the Balkans.
Consequently, it was the marks - hidden in house walls, in farm buildings and even in tractor cabs - that went up in smoke when Slobodan Milosevic sent in his "ethnic cleansing" teams. The money detectives, led by Wolfgang Rumpf at the Bundesbank, have skills gained from years of grandmothers burning family savings in bakers' ovens and farmyard swine scoffing the buried inheritance.
In one case, a man from Pristina had returned to find the DM80,000 (£26,700) in DM100 notes hidden in the wall of his house charred to a crisp. Herr Rumpf said: "We examined the remains for three hours, after which he walked out of here with new notes, every pfennig he lost."
The merest hint of a serial number can identify a bank note. This year DM10 million has been reissued, a large proportion to people in Kosovo.