Finding adequate shelter was not an easy task for many. Arthur Oberle, who was born in 1921, described living conditions during the Depression. “Our family lived in a block of six apartments, each consisting of 3 rooms. Two of the three rooms had a heating stove for wood and coal. In order to save money we used to collect fir cones. Each apartment had one WC (water closet or toilet), and there was one cold-water faucet in the kitchen. The basement of each block was equipped with two laundry rooms and a bathtub. Each person in the block was entitled to a full bathevery third week. The water had to be heated in a wood-fired stove. My father was a pattern maker at the Brown Boveri Company. There was insufficient work, so he worked two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off for many years, earning just half a normal wage. The majority of people living in these workers’ quarters (a total of 100 families) were on the Left politically, but one thing was clear: there was not a single Nazi among them.19
“We moved to a two-family house shortly before World War II broke out in 1939. This meant exceptional comfort for us: a full bathroom and central heating with a boiler right in the apartment!
“I was a machinist apprentice at Brown Boveri, did my basic military training in 1941, and completed vocational education withexams during a three-day break from military service. I spent the remaining war years either in the army or at college and later at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), where I graduated in 1946.
“During all these years I never came in close contact with a Nazi. They did not exist in the social environment where I grew up. We knew they were there, but Nazi sympathizers amounted to only a small percentage of the population.
“There were many who were scared, believing that too vigorous and open opposition to Germany could provoke Hitler to attack. For very good reasons, many Jews in Switzerland belonged to this group, since they would have had to suffer most under German occupation.”
Hedi köppel was born in 1922 and lived at rorschach on Lake Constance, the north shore of which is part of Germany. She remembers: “In 1935 we heard about the concentration camps. From then on I had refugee classmates in every grade in school right through upper-level. Refugee children went to school like any Swiss. My graduating class in 1941 had six Jewish girls, one of whom was the daughter of a well-known German conductor, klaiber. These girls received their diplomas with us, and several of them stayed in Switzerland to take jobs.20
“In 1938, we heard about the Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) on the radio. My father was horrified. I didn’t associate Jewish names with being Jewish then; it never occurred to me. Jews did not segregate themselves. They participated in community life like everyone else. They served in the army and became officers if they chose. They might be lawyers, doctors, teachers or workers. They were Swiss first, then Jewish, just as the rest of us were Swiss first, then Catholic or protestant.”
In the years after Hitler came to power in 1933, “we Swiss worked hard to develop fortifications and beef up our infantry, artillery and even our little air force. This put an enormous strain on the national treasury.” The continuing Depression made it difficult. “We tried to keep our sense of humor, and there were jokes about the Swiss military. A story goes that when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935, he called our Defense Min ister, demanding to borrow Swiss tanks. The councilor replied, ‘Did you want one, or both?’
“In 1937 I joined a girl scout program which trained us to help neighbors in the event of a disaster. We were encouraged to join the red Cross as junior members. We worked with kids, served in soup kitchens for the very poor, and practiced first aid. We knew that if there were a German attack, all kinds of community services would be desperately needed.
“When the war started in 1939, our red Cross group was integrated into the army with the first mobilization. I was still 16 years old when I suddenly found myself, with my best friend Susi, a member of the army’s Women’s Auxiliary Service, the FHD (Frauenhilfsdienst). We were packed off to a military hospital in the interior. When it was discovered after a couple of weeks that we were underage, we were sent back to school, much to our disappointment. But we were not out of the army. Once we had our diplomas, we were called up every year for 3–4 months’ duty.
“We took the oath and they read us the Articles of War. You could be executed for so many acts of assisting the enemy—passing messages, giving information, providing material help, and on and on. Susi asked me, ‘Are you sure you want to stay?’
“In uniform, we wore the FHD armband. Other auxiliary services were also organized to free male soldiers for the hard part—fighting an invading enemy. The red Cross had many nurses on duty in field hospitals. I did clerical work.
“I never had official firearms training, but I had gone often with my father to the shooting range where every male was required to practice. Father would occasionally have me shoot. I still remember the kick of the gun on my shoulder. No bulls-eyes! The army instructed us only how to handle a loaded gun. We were not to be treated as combatants.
“Living on the border we knew that if there was a German invasion, our whole region would be sacrificed. Our retreating army would blow up every bridge (they were all mined), every rail terminal, main roads—everything that would help the enemy move.
“My father, a schoolteacher, went on active duty for four months at a time. My mother didn’t handle this well—she got panicky and depressed; with five dependent children (aside from me) she could never take her situation calmly.
“In 1940, the Germans sealed the border and amassed huge numbers of men and equipment facing Switzerland. We mounted our second total mobilization. Everything inside the country was under military control—railways, roads, bridges, power plants. We quickly learned that the German threat to us was a feint—they invaded France through Belgium. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t have taken Switzerland rather quickly, but they must have known we would put up a savage fight and leave them only ruins.
“Once the air war started in earnest, the British and the Americans flew high-altitude bombers over Switzerland, knowing they were safe from our guns. The German Embassy complained repeatedly, but we told them we could not stop Allied planes flying over our territory. If a German plane crossed our border, our fighters attacked instantly. In my hometown I saw two German fighters pursued by four Swiss fighters which were firing in earnest. One of the German planes was hit and crashed in Lake Constance.
“For a time during the war, I worked in a machine tool factory in rorschach belonging to an old Jewish family named Levy. The company bore their name. The Germans still placed huge orders with us to replace equipment lost in the bombings. Our company needed permission from the Swiss government for these exports, which they issued only with long delays and dragging of feet. German representatives came to do business. We hated them; they greeted us with “Heil Hitler” in the halls. If we replied with a reluctant “grüezi” (Swiss German dialect for “hello”), we really wanted to slug them in their faces. Behind their backs we called them ‘Sauschwabe’ (Swabian pigs), our name for all Germans.”
Hedi köppel told an interesting anecdote that well illustrates the curious ways of Swiss democracy. In Switzerland the Federal president and other officials are treated like anyone else. Many people would not even know the name of the president or recognize him on the street. Marcel pilet-Golaz was Federal president in 1940 and thereafter became the Foreign Minister. In 1943, Hedi went to work for the Foreign Office in Bern. “One evening I was waiting to sign out of the building when pilet-Golaz arrived. He swept past the sentry, who sternly called him back. He protested, ‘I am pilet-Golaz!’ The sentry said only, ‘Anyone can say that!’ pilet-Golaz was required to sign in. No one knew who he was because he did not arrive in a limousine with flags—he took the streetcar to work.
“We had a fairly large German population living in Switzerland. During the war there seemed to be more of them. It was known that German residents were organized by the German embassy into a fifth column. They he
ld open rallies wearing green pants and white socks, sang Nazi songs, and raised their arms to ‘Heil Hitler.’ A fifteen-year-old German boy I knew told me that one day his father would be the boss of rorschach.” Hedi anticipated a full-scale war: “If the Germans came, the Swiss would have no way to make prisoner camps, so they would just have to get rid of them.” She continues: “Willi Wohlgennant, a Swiss Jewish businessman and soldier colleague who became a lifelong friend, told me that Jews in Switzerland got a lot of moral support, and they in turn made great efforts to help refugees, both Jewish and others. He also told me of the fear Swiss Jews felt—his sister had already fled to America.
“My father was stationed right on the border when he was on active duty. Often he told us of the refugees who tried to enter Switzerland. They would first have to pass the German border guards. If they had the right documents, they were allowed through. Those who didn’t pass were almost certainly Jewish. They were sent back. This enraged my father. He saw it happen day after day. As the war went on, the German guards became more brutal. But once a refugee reached the Swiss border, he usually made it.
“Two to three hundred refugees—Jews, gypsies, political fugitives—were staying in my hometown. Nobody asked them why they were there; we knew only too well. Many had a chance to work at regular jobs—in wartime, everyone is needed. The hardships they faced were the hardships every Swiss had to bear. Housing was difficult and scarce. We all had poor food. The whole army slept on straw mattresses or just plain straw.
“As an industrial country, Switzerland was not self-sufficient in food. We imported alot. During the war our devil’s bargain with the enemy allowed some food in (never enough) in exchange for manufactures. Every bit of land that could be spared was planted with potatoes, grain and vegetables. No geraniums in Swiss parks! We even had our own fleet of chartered freighters bring food from South America—the ‘Swiss Navy.’ I later came to America on one of these.
“Cooking gas was rationed. Cooking became a nightmare for many housewives. Often two or three families in a building would cook one joint meal for everybody—a soup or a stew to make one warm meal a day. My family, with five young children, often went to the soup kitchen for a hot meal.
“Everybody in Switzerland was cold. Coal, too, came from Germany. For every briquette there were conditions—all repugnant. In winter I could see my breath when I woke up in my room. In school, we wore mittens to avoid frostbite. When we were at home in the evening, a small stove heated a single room. We went to the public bath because there wasn’t gas to heat enough water at home.
“Of course, we were not unique. The Swiss knew quite well that nearly all the rest of Europe suffered these hardships routinely and, in countries at war, much worse ones. We were grateful we were not under the bombs or the tanks. We were still, uneasily, free.
“When Germany surrendered in 1945, there were huge celebrations in Switzerland just as in all liberated Europe. Church bells rang, and thanksgiving services were held in every church and every synagogue.
“Switzerland officially represented both Allied and German interests in negotiations between the two sides. After the surrender, I was sent to the German embassy in Bern with a Swiss foreign office team to conduct an inventory. The embassy chimneys had been pouring out smoke for days. German domestic workers were still there, keeping the premises tidy. They couldn’t help themselves—they still clicked their heels and almost bowed when they announced, ‘Coffee is ready.’ But they did not say, ‘Heil Hitler.’
“I was next assigned to work for the Swiss Foreign Service in the United States. Off to my first foreign post aboard a ship of the ‘Swiss Navy,’ I landed in philadelphia in June, in time to see American troops—and a crowd of their anxious dependents—at the time of their massive movement by rail to the pacific coast. I reported to the Swiss consulate in Los Angeles. Fortunately, the passengers on those trains had only a few weeks to wait for a second mammoth celebration, the surrender of Japan.”
These recollections of Hedi köppel and others represent only a small part of experiences in wartime Switzerland. The individuals this author interviewed were young when the war started. Hopefully more oral history from that heroic generation will be recorded before these memories are lost forever in the passage of time.
CHAPTER 9
THE “J” STAMP, THE LIFEBOAT, AND REFUGEES
The Goldstein family was among the group of nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees who sailed across the Atlantic on the ill-fated S.S. St. Louis in May of 1939. Denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and elsewhere in the Americas, the ship was finally forced to return to Europe. The Goldsteins managed to disembark in France, where they lived until 1942, when Herr Goldstein was seized and deported to Auschwitz. Frau Goldstein and young Heinz hid in an attic until they were able to acquire false papers and a guide to the Swiss border. They walked over pastures to Geneva. Although they entered Switzerland illegally, they were not turned back.
At first, both mother and son were taken to a reception camp in the countryside. It was Spartan but certainly adequate. Heinz spent Christmas with the family of a Swiss staff sergeant who welcomed the young German boy into his home. Heinz eventually was able to move in with a Swiss Jewish family. He enrolled in the local high school and joined the Swiss boy scouts. His mother was moved to a more permanent internment facility in a former resort hotel in Luzern which had been converted to house refugees. Later in the war, she was reunited with her son, who by that time was attending a school near Zurich. In 1947, both Goldsteins immigrated to the United States. Heinz—now Henry—would recall: “I never encountered any act of anti-Semitism in six years living in Switzerland!”1
Despite hundreds of personal recollections like these, in recent years persistent allegations have arisen that Swiss refugee policy was anti-Semitic. The charge is made that in 1938 it was the Swiss who suggested to German officials that passports of German Jews be stamped with a “J” so they could be readily identified—and denied access. It was certainly true that some Swiss officials asked whether “the Swiss lifeboat was full,” in view of the fact that Switzerland, with its limited food supplies, resources, high unemployment and fragile social order, could not absorb every refugee who came to her borders. As was typical of the lively Swiss democracy, such officials were sharply criticized by Swiss who wanted to do more for refugees.
In fact, Switzerland, with a 1940 population of 4.2 million, accepted a proportionately larger number of refugees—particularly Jews—than did the great democracies, including the United States. The border rules changed again and again as the war progressed, and were in any case made by a handful of assigned bureaucrats. Due to the wartime empowerment of the executive branch of government, they were not subject to the local or National referenda that frequently established Swiss policy as per the practice of direct democracy. The general Swiss population neither participated in—nor was in many cases aware of—ongoing decisions about refugee policy. Segments of Swiss society that were more aware—the press, religious bodies, and many other concerned individuals and groups—openly denounced certain of these policies. Moreover, “official” rules about refugees were widely ignored—effectively nullified—by many border guards, local officials, and whole communities in the border areas.
During the wartime period, the senior bureaucrat who made and enforced controversial immigration decisions was Heinrich Rothmund, Director of the police Division of the Federal Department of Justice and police (Eidgenössisches Justiz- und Polizeidepartement, EJPD). He had headed the Federal police for Foreigners since 1919.2 During critical wartime years, Federal Councilor Eduard von Steiger was head of the EJPD and politically responsible for refugee policy.
Wartime decisions on the subject of refugees were exhaustively reviewed in a 1957 report commissioned by the Federal Council and authored by professor Carl Ludwig.3 The Ludwig report included the full text of most of the important documents that became the basis for Alfred Häsler’s The Lifeboat Is Full, a
n excellent, albeit critical, account.4
Numerous firsthand accounts written by Jewish refugees are readily available. Ken Newman, himself a refugee, has produced a compilation of eyewitness testimony of refugees in Swiss wartime work camps.5 In addition, Swiss author Meir Wagner has assembled moving accounts of Swiss who saved the lives of Jewish refugees and who were later named by Yad Vashem as “righteous Among the nations.”6
Before and during the war, virtually all countries followed extremely restrictive immigration policies, and enforced special restrictions concerning the classification of refugee. Widespread poverty, shifting geopolitical boundaries following World War I, the russian revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and the flotsam and jetsam of European empires created waves of people seeking to escape, cross borders and resettle. With the advent of the Depression in the 1930s, social orders were hard-pressed to deal with their own restless unemployed. Amidst factory strikes, pitched battles in the streets, and the collapse of currencies and public order, few countries were eager to take on more “huddled masses yearning to be free.” There was great fear of social chaos.
As the situation in Europe deteriorated, Switzerland, a small country surrounded by the political and social disruption in Germany, France, Italy and Austria, feared being overrun and losing its identity through “inundation by foreigners” (Überfremdung in German). Also, during the Depression the Swiss, like most others, wanted to protect the country’s dwindling number of jobs for Swiss citizens. Fear of massive unemployment was a constant theme.7 The traditional role of Switzerland as a refugee haven was not forgotten, however. The Swiss were reluctant to refuse refugees, and initially adopted a compromise based on residency. After Hitler seized power in Germany in early 1933, the EJPD issued regulations, approved by the Federal Council (the head of the Swiss executive branch), under which the borders were to be kept open, but refugees in most cases were to be granted only temporary residence. They had to move on in due course. Political refugees, a definition which evolved over time, were given special consideration.8
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