During the War, Switzerland Turned Away Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany – It Even Insisted that the Nazis Put ‘J’ on the Passports of German Jews
The kidnapping of Ali Abunimah on the streets of Zurich by the Swiss Gestapo is no surprise. Switzerland has a history of authoritarianism. In Europe today freedom of speech is under attack in a way not seen since before World War II.
Ali described what happened in an article he wrote on the plane to Istanbul:
I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it.
As Ali says:
Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime! Say it with me ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free!’
It is a little known fact that even the Nazis hesitated to mark the passports of German Jews. It was Heinrich Rothmund, the Head of the Swiss Police, who insisted that the Nazis mark the passports of Jews with a ‘J’. After all how could the Swiss immigration authorities tell who was a Jew and who wasn’t when it came to turning back refugees from Germany? What the good burghers of the Alpine country didn’t want was an influx of German Jewish refugees.
Switzerland was an ostensibly neutral country, the only one apart from Sweden that wasn’t invaded, but in practice it was pro-Nazi and performed many valuable financial tasks for the Nazi state. Swiss banks were happy to accept the deposits of German Jewish citizens as well as much of the loot that the Nazis stole from their victims, but they were less keen to disgorge their ill-gotten gains after the war.
In the ‘Sinister Face of Neutrality’ subtitled ‘The Role of Swiss Financial Institutions in the Plunder of European Jewry’ the role of Switzerland in acting as a safe haven for stolen Jewish and other assets is described:
Switzerland served as a repository for Jewish capital smuggled out of Nazi Germany and the states threatened by it, and also for vast quantities of gold and other valuables plundered from Jews and others all over Europe. Right up until the end of the war, Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe. At the war’s end Switzerland successfully resisted Allied calls to restitute these funds, and in the Washington Agreement of 1946 the Allies contented themselves with acceptance of a mere 12% of the stolen gold. Holocaust survivors and the heirs of those who perished met an implacable wall of bureaucracy and only a handful managed to reclaim their assets.
https://twitter.com/intifada/status/1883951506203766846
In Swiss found culpable of ‘helping Nazis we learn that
A report by an independent inquiry into Switzerland’s second world war history concludes that Swiss officials “helped the Nazi regime achieve its goals” by closing the country’s borders to thousands of Jewish refugees, effectively sending them back to near certain death.
The findings of the multinational Independent Commission of Experts, led by a Swiss historian, Jean-François Bergier, and established by the Swiss parliament three years ago, have shaken Switzerland’s prim view of itself as an unsullied, neutral, safe-haven that resisted Nazi oppression.
The report concludes that the authorities knew by the summer of 1942 that Jewish refugees arriving at the country’s borders faced almost certain death when they were turned back.
“Even after they were informed about the unbelievable and unimaginable events taking place, the federal authorities – like the governments of most other states – made few changes in their policies regarding refugees. Most frequently, neutral states demonstrated indifference and passivity or attempted to accommodate the Nazi system.”
Raul Hilberg’s description in Destruction of the European Jews of the Swiss role in German Jews Having Their Passports Stamped with a ‘J’
I wrote in my book about how the International Committee of the Red Cross refused to provide any protection for Jews since they had accepted the Nazi designation of them as stateless and common criminals. The official history of the War Refugee Board noted that;
The Board also appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross time and again to take direct and aggressive action to obtain humanitarian treatment for the helpless minorities being persecuted so viciously by the Germans. For many months, however, request after request from the Board met with the answer that the Germans would not permit the proposed action.
According to ICRC President Max Huber they could not be seen to be ‘intruding into the domestic policy’ of the Nazis.’
There were discussions throughout August 1942 about the murder of Jewish civilians yet at the ICRC executive of 14 October 1942 the pro-Nazi former foreign minister of Switzerland, Philip Etter, ‘opposed even the anodyne Huber draft’ calling for the humane treatment of civilians, not even Jews, ‘arguing that it could be interpreted as a violation of neutrality.’ Etter’s view prevailed.
In the Netherlands the Dutch Red Cross made no effort to communicate with deported Jews ‘although it did send a fully equipped ambulance to the Eastern front ‘to comfort the Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers fighting there.’
The Dutch historian, Louis de Jong, condemned the ICRC for its ‘almost total lack of concern for the Jews’ disasters.’
Tony Greenstein
