Swiss Review 1/2020

Swiss Review / January 2020 / No.1 7 ten by the journalists Balz Spörri, René Staubli and Benno Tuchschmid. Other fates were also reconstructed. For four long years, the authors con- ducted painstaking, in-depth re- search in archives and databanks, and spokewith descendants of the victims. As a result, they now have the first proven list of victims containing the details of 391 women and men with Swiss citizenshipwho suffered inNazi concentration camps; 201 of themdied there. The book also contains infor- mation on 328 inmateswhowere born in Switzerland but never held citizen- ship: 255 of them did not survive the concentration camps. All the victims were arrested in Germany or in occu- pied areas and then deported. This oc- curred most often in France, where the majority of Swiss Abroad were liv- ing. Some of the Swiss concentration camp victims were Jewish, but resist- ance fighters andmarginalised groups were also persecuted. The authors list all 391 in the book as a “memorial”, from Frieda Abegg to Maurice Zum- bach. Where possible, they give the victims a facewith photos. “Theywere numbers in the concentration camps; they are compensation cases in the Swiss Federal Archive,” write the au- thors, “this book restores their dignity as human beings”. Spineless authorities It is quite remarkable that it has taken 75 years for there to be public aware- ness in Switzerland of the fact that Swiss citizens were interned in the concentration camps. Although survi- vors such as René Pilloud spoke openly of their experiences after the war and parliament approved compensation, the Swiss public showed little interest. These biographies are missing in sem- inal academicworks. Bywriting about the fates of these people, the journal- ists are not just expressing sorrow at what occurred, something that any- one can do by uttering trite platitudes. They are also posing the tough ques- tion of the role of Switzerland’s offi- cials. Their conclusion: “Switzerland could have saved dozens of lives if it had actedmore courageously and put more pressure on the German author- ities.” It is “always easier” to make such an assessment decades later, says co-author Balz Spörri in a conversa- tion with the “Swiss Review”. If you want to judge the strategies of the time objectively, you need to con- sider the knowledge and leeway pos- sessed by those involved throughout the various phases. The book out- lines in depth how politicians and the media in Switzerland reacted to the development of the concentra- tion camps by the Nazi regime. Al- though there was evidence, the con- centration camps were not truly perceived as death camps in this country for a long time. Second-class citizens In 1942, the Head of the Swiss Aliens’ Police, Heinrich Rothmund, deliv- ered an innocuous report on his visit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The Federal Council was eager to believe his story. The authors found no evidence “that the Federal Coun- cil as a whole addressed the topic of concentration camps or Swiss con- centration camp prisoners before 1944”. It was fearless diplomats such as the Swiss ambassador to Berlin, Paul Dinichert, whomanaged to gain the release of several incarcerated Swiss. However, after Germany occu- pied France, Berne called for re- straint. Dinichert’s successor, Hans Frölicher, spent his time doing noth- ing. If Switzerland provoked Hitler, he feared that Hitler would order his armies to march into the neutral country. But Frölicher was viewed in Switzerland as an opportunist and a Nazi sympathiser. Mina Epstein, born and raised in Zurich, murdered in Auschwitz, with her husband in Antwerp, Belgium. She sought refuge as a Jew in Switzerland, but the border guards turned her away as she did not have Swiss citizenship. The Zurich hairdresser Nelly Hug was arrested by the Gestapo together with her lover in Berlin in 1942. She survived the tortures of the Ravensbrück concentration camp – the photo shows her in ironed prison clothing. The fun-loving Swiss dance teacher Marcelle Giudici-Foks on a beach in Royan on the French Atlantic coast. In 1944, the new mother was deported to Auschwitz and murdered for being Jewish.