Continuity mistake: In Uruguay, when the woman puts Christian Szell's folded shirts in the drawer, the camera pans toward the photographs on the dresser. There's an unframed photo of his brother Klaus in the closeup, but it's a different photo in the next wide shot. (00:38:25)
Answer: The diamonds were "blood money" that were stolen at the expense of many Jewish lives during the holocaust and also resulted in Babe's brother, "Doc" being murdered. For that reason, Babe would not want them, nor would he allow others to profit from them. Szell needed to risk being recognized in New York in order to retrieve the entire cache of diamonds from the bank safe deposit box after his brother, Klaus, was killed. Klaus would retrieve as many diamonds as Szell needed to sell to support himself in South America. Once Klaus was dead, no-one else could gain access to them for Szell, or if they could, probably would have stolen them.
raywest ★