Swiss Review 1/2020

Swiss Review / January 2020 / No.1 6 Focus SUSANNE WENGER Young mother Marcelle Giudici-Foks was transported by rail to Auschwitz on 10 February 1944. The Gestapo in occupied France packed her and over a thousand other Jews into cattle cars. Marcelle, a fun-loving dance teacher fromRoyan on the Atlantic coast, was married to the Swiss Abroad Jean Guidici, which gave her Swiss citizen- ship. Jean’s parents had fled a life of abject poverty in Ticino andwere try- ing their luck as waffle bakers in France. When life became dangerous for the Jews in France from1942 onwards with the onset of mass deportation, Marcelle and Jean considered leaving the country for the safety of Switzer- land. However, due to Marcelle’s ad- vanced pregnancy, they made a last-minute decision not to join the rescue train convoy deployed by the Swiss authorities. At the end of Janu- ary 1943, the Confederation finally brought home the Swiss Jews living in France. Before this, Berne had hesi- tated to act for a long time, despite the Head of the Swiss Consulate in Paris, René Naville, warning several times that Swiss citizens were under threat. However, repatriation came too late for Marcelle Giudici, and she died in Auschwitz. “Worthy of our attention” The Swiss Abroad René Pilloud was also interned in a concentration camp. He was born in Fribourg and emi- grated to French Bellegarde, near the Swiss border, with his parents. His fa- ther worked in a factory; René com- pleted an apprenticeship as a tool maker. In February 1944, while on the way to a sports competition, the 17-year-oldwas unwittingly caught up in aWehrmacht operation against the French resistance. He was mistreated and taken to the Mauthausen concen- tration camp via a circuitous route. The Swiss authorities went to great lengths to free him. According to the records, he was “particularly worthy of our attention”. On one occasion, a prisoner ex- change was tabled, but Switzerland refused to cooperate. It did not want to swap innocent Swiss citizens for le- gally convicted German criminals. These noble constitutional principles extended Pilloud’s ordeal. At the be- ginning of 1945, he was seconded to the camp crematorium and made to burn hundreds of corpses every day. The RedCrosswas only able to get him home to Switzerland just before the war ended. He was emaciated, trau- matised and had tuberculosis. Swit- zerland paid him 35,000 francs in compensation as a Nazi victim. He died in Geneva in 1985. Putting faces to the numbers René Pilloud and Marcelle Giudici: two names; two horrific stories. They are outlined in detail in the bookwrit- Swiss citizens in Hitler’s death camps At least 391 Swiss citizens, many of whom were Swiss Abroad, were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. This is the finding of a historical textbook in which three journalists shed light on the fate of Swiss internees in the concentration camps for the first time. Gino Pezzani’s prisoner number in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. “Sch.” stands for Swiss, the red trian- gle for political prisoners. The Nazis deported Pezzani from occupied France in 1944. He barely managed to survive. Die Schweizer KZ-Häftlinge. Vergessene Opfer des Dritten Reichs (Swiss concentration camp prisoners. Forgotten victims of the Third Reich) Balz Spörri, René Staubli, Benno Tuchschmid NZZ Libro; 320 pages, 147 images. CHF 48.– Only available in German.