Switzerland knew of Holocaust in 1942: report
Swiss officials knew in May 1942 that Jews were being exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, Swiss television reported.
By David Lev and AFP - Arutz Sheva 7
First Publish: 1/28/2013, 5:30 PM
Holocaust memorial
Flash 90
"As of May 1942, we can prove that
information about the killings of Jews reached Bern," Sascha Zala, the
head of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (DDS) research project,
told Swiss public broadcaster SRF. Swiss diplomats gathered hundreds of
letters, telegrams, pictures and detailed reports during World War II documenting the Nazi atrocities and passed them on to Swiss officials in Bern.
DDS has for the first time published a
number of the documents showing that the Swiss government knew what was
going on no later than May 1942, three years before the end of World War II.
Despite the reports it was receiving, the
Swiss government decided in August of that year to carry out a mass
return of civilian refugees to their home countries, SRF reported late Sunday, as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The revelations add more evidence to the
conclusions of a damning official report in 2002 on Switzerland's record
before and during World War II. The Bergier report showed that Swiss
officials had at the time turned away thousands of people, most of them Jews, who were trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe, sending them to certain death.
Yet Swiss historian Hans-Ulrich Jost told
Swiss radio on Monday that there seemed to be in Switzerland "a sort of
resistance to accepting (what happened) during this troubling period".
Swiss President Ueli Maurer for instance
marked Sunday's Holocaust Remembrance Day by hailing neutral
Switzerland's role during World War II as a "refuge" for those fleeing
"during this dark period for the European continent.” Several Swiss
Jewish organizations blasted him on Monday for not mentioning the
"refugees who were pushed towards certain death. It is regrettable that
the president of the confederation did not deem it useful to broaden
indispensable Swiss self-criticism of its own past, especially its
refugee policy," they said in a statement.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Europe, Holocaust, Judaism
<< Home