Language:
English
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Social Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
10,2 (2004) 116-152
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jewish property
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
Postwar Switzerland invented a myth of "armed neutrality" during World War II, which, inter alia, denied the country's responsibility toward Holocaust victims. The end of the Cold War, and growing pressure by Jewish organizations on Swiss banks to uncover dormant accounts and heirless assets of Nazi victims, strengthened a trend to revise the nation's wartime record. Historians have shown that economic collaboration with the Nazis, and not "armed neutrality", spared the country, and that Switzerland was in fact a beneficiary of the Holocaust. In 1996-97 the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland-Second World War was established, which in 2002 published its final report as well as studies on specific issues. It showed, inter alia, that wartime Swiss neutrality was Germany-biased and that, by deterring Jewish refugees, Switzerland in fact helped the Nazi regime to achieve its goals. The conflict over the heirless bank assets and attempts to deconstruct national memory brought about an upsurge of antisemitism in Switzerland.
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