Wednesday, July 22, 2015


Swiss shame  




Prior to and during the Second World War, Switzerland gave refuge to about 23,000 Jewish refugees although the government decided that Switzerland would serve only as a country of transit. These Jews were protected during the Holocaust due to Swiss neutrality. The Jewish refugees, however, did not receive the financial support from the government that non-Jewish refugees received. Many more Jews were prevented from entering, effectively shutting the border. 

 The Swiss government persuaded Germany to stamp "J" on the passport of Jews, making it easier to refuse Jewish refugees. 

 The end of the war had delivered many thousands of Jews into the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. In 1942, the Swiss police issued a regulation that denied refugee status to "refugees only on racial grounds, e.g., Jews." By the end of the war, less then 25,000 Jews were permitted to take refuge. Most of the refugees left Switzerland at the end of the war. More then 30,000 Jews were turned away according to a 25-volume study on Switzerland's role during World War II completed in 2002.

In the past few years, Switzerland has had to owe up to its behavior during the
Holocaust. In 1996, Swiss President Kastar Villiger formally apologized to world Jewry for their 1938 accord with the Nazis and its wartime actions against the Jews. At the same time, however, he downplayed economic cooperation between Switzerland and Nazi Germany. It transpired that numerous documents relating to Jewish property in Swiss banks disappeared during the 1940s and 1950s and there was significant pressure in the 1990s and early-21st century to rectify and compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs who were denied their assets in Swiss banks.

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