During the 1938 Berlin negotiations, Rothmund visited the concentration camp in Oranienburg, where he found “incorrigible criminals, Jews, political offenders, anti-militarist bible students, foreigners subject to labor service who have evaded it—all jumbled together.”44 At lunch in the camp, Rothmund declared to the German negotiators that in Switzerland “Jews are useful members of the community” and that “I have found outstanding persons among the Jews who had fled to Switzerland from Germany.” He admonished: “The Jewish race has been tempered by the ordeal of history, made strong and stubborn against all persecutions. Thus far it has resisted all attempts at extermination and always comes out of persecution stronger than ever before.” Rothmund told the Germans point-blank that “the present German method is wrong and dangerous.”45
The Swiss delegation’s report of those negotiations concluded with the following:
In his previous reports to you on the control of the entry of refugees from Germany, the first undersigned (the Director of the police Division [Rothmund]) has many times expressed his misgivings about a measure directed only against the Jews. The present report only deals with the technical side of such control. The Federal Council will have to determine whether the said misgivings will permit its approval of the steps proposed in Berlin.46
As adopted, the protocol provided that Germany would stamp the passports of German Jews with a symbol identifying them as Jews. Switzerland would authorize entry to such German Jews provided that the passport was endorsed with a Swiss assurance of permission to reside in or travel through Switzerland. Germany reserved the right, in agreement with Switzerland, to require a similar assurance for Swiss Jews—a dead letter, in that Switzerland would not agree to such treatment of her citizens.
The Federal Council acceded to the protocol, but kept the negotiations secret from the Swiss parliament and people.47 A circular letter informing the Swiss legations and consulates about the new rules noted that 3,000–4,000 Austrian Jews entered Switzerland before April 1 without visas, in addition to over 2,000 penniless refugees and several thousand more with visas. They became trapped in Switzerland “because all other countries have also introduced very strict controls over emigrants.” While illegal entrants should be returned to Germany, such measures should be “confined to exceptional cases.”48
The policy was fully enforced only at major checkpoints, and often not even there. At that time as well as throughout the war, many border guards bent the rules and allowed illegal refugees to slip into Switzerland. It was easy for soldiers and guards charged with enforcing the rules to keep refugees hidden until the path was clear. When Swiss border guards felt compelled to reject illegal entrants, they frequently did so when the German border guards were out of sight.49
The SIG, Switzerland’s Jewish organization, expressed reservations about Germany’s “J” stamp, but the SIG executive committee agreed that “something had to be done to avoid an invasion similar to that of August 1938….” “We do not dispute that for financial reasons and because of the proportionately large size of the Jewish population compared to that of the country and given the thousands of refugees present, the desire to prevent more Jews from entering is understandable.” VSIA, the Jewish relief association, with the support of Switzerland’s Jewish population of about 19,000, was caring for 3,000 destitute refugees. SIG president Saly Mayer expressed the dilemma: “Even if one is personally inclined to take in more refugees, this inclination is counteracted by financial concerns, concerns over the workload, the danger of growing anti-Semitism and the number of refugees who will refuse to leave.”50
The Nazi government continued to enforce discriminatory regulations against German Jews and encouraged them to leave their country. Systematic deportations to extermination camps would not begin for several years. No one foresaw the Holocaust—the Nazis would not adopt their top-secret Wannsee protocol for the “final solution of the Jewish question” until early 1942, and even then would keep a veil of secrecy over their crimes.51 Meanwhile, Switzerland did what it could, which was more than most.
Nonetheless, long after the above events, Switzerland would become subject to criticism regarding refugee policy. In 1954, the Swiss periodical Beobachter (Observer) published the untrue assertion that Rothmund originated the “J” stamp.52 The author misidentified German minister Köcher’s earlier cited mention on September 2, 1938, of marking the passports of German Jews as being that of Rothmund, who instead had strongly rejected the idea.53 The uproar from the accusation prompted the Swiss parliament to order a full report on refugee policy during the war. The subsequent report by professor Carl Ludwig—which remains the primary source on the subject—provided all of the relevant documents and established Rothmund’s repeated rejection of the “J” stamp. This scholarly report attracted little media attention at the time and remains obscure even today.
The myth that the Swiss originated the “J” stamp has persisted. In 1995, Swiss Federal president Villiger apologized for “our too cautious policy on persecuted Jews,” such as “the stamp in the passports of Jews.”54 However, the facts were set straight in a 1998 exposé when the author of the 1954 Beobachter article conceded that he had reversed the roles of the German and Swiss representatives.55 Nonetheless, the allegation continued to be widely circulated.
Toward the end of 1938, the refugee situation deteriorated even further. In October of that year, the Nazis rounded up polish Jews living in Germany and dumped a mass transport of them on the polish border. Poland would not accept those without proper polish passports, and 7,000 were left stranded in wretched conditions between the borders at Zbonszyn. Among them was the family of a 17-year-old polish Jew, who shortly thereafter took revenge by shooting an official of the German embassy in Paris. This incident gave the Nazis the excuse for the pogrom known as Kristallnacht (night of broken Glass) on November 8–10, in which Jewish homes and businesses were attacked and twenty to thirty thousand Jews were detained by the Nazi government.56
One of the American consulates reported to U.S. Ambassador Hugh r. Wilson in Berlin that his office was flooded with Jews begging for visas or immigration assistance for themselves and their families. He described them as “a mass of seething, panic-stricken humanity.”57 The large democracies recoiled in horror, but did virtually nothing to open their borders.
The flow of refugees into Switzerland placed increasing burdens on the Swiss Jewish community. Minutes of a SIG executive committee and VSIA meeting in mid-December 1938 even recorded criticism of Swiss authorities, who “should show more resistance to Germany regarding illegal entries.” The leaders of the SIG noted that “it was not enough to emphasize humanitarian issues; rather the entire situation had to be taken into account,” and chastised the machinations of refugee smugglers.58
A year later, on September 1, 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, launching World War II. The Swiss Federal Council ordered an immediate mobilization of the military and finally imposed a universal visa requirement for all foreigners seeking to enter the country. Reflecting security concerns, it also ordered that illegal entrants be expelled, although this policy would be carried out only on a selective basis at the local level. Reflecting centuries of tradition, military refugees and political fugitives were exempt from expulsion even if they had entered unlawfully. There were two categories of lawful entrants, based on whether they had become permanent residents or were recent arrivals. The first, “emigrants,” were foreigners who had entered Switzerland since 1929, lost their Nationalities, or could not return to their home countries. Emigrants were officially accepted by specific cantons. The second category, “refugees,” were persons who fled into Switzerland since the outbreak of the war, and who were the direct responsibility of the Confederation.59
Although the border policies and legal distinctions would continue to have practical significance, the coming tumultuous years saw official restrictions more often than not outweighed by humanitarian impulses. There were seemingly heartless expu
lsions of innocent people, but there was also much good-samaritan nullification of formal requirements by ordinary Swiss and some officials. There were rules on paper, and there were the realities of how much at any given period the besieged democracy could do consistent with its security and survival.
With the outbreak of the war in 1939, National borders everywhere were either sealed or subjected to strict monitoring. Indeed, during the last months of peace Nazi officials themselves concluded that expulsion of the Jews from the Reich would not solve their “problem.” The Western powers had suggested various African colonies as a homeland for the Jews, but concrete decisions never materialized. The Nazis established the Reich-vereinigung (Reich Association of the Jews in Germany) to promote Jewish emigration, but it became instead a network to control the Jews domestically. If they could not emigrate, Jews needed to be organized for compulsory labor.60 By early 1942, the Final Solution was formulated, under which Jews would either be used for slave labor or killed. In any event, expulsions of Jews from Germany ceased to be a policy issue with the beginning of the war.
When France fell to the Wehrmacht’s onslaught in May–June 1940, it was the French-Swiss border that became the new refugee “front.” In mid-June, the Federal Justice and police Department instructed the cantonal police departments that military personnel crossing into Switzerland were to be disarmed and interned by the Swiss army. Civilian fugitives—with the exception of women, children up to the age of sixteen, men over the age of sixty, and invalids—were to be turned back.61 These exceptions, which would exist in one form or another throughout the war, meant that the only civilian refugees who would not be automatically allowed into Switzerland were able-bodied men, i.e., those most likely to be able to fend for themselves and, if they were so inclined, to join or continue the struggle against Nazi occupation.
The effects of the war were soon felt. The Hague Convention of 1907 authorized a neutral country to permit troops of a belligerent to enter its territory.62 On June 19–20, 1940, 28,000 soldiers of the French 45th Army Corps, including a polish division, crossed the border into Switzerland to escape annihilation or capture. The total quickly climbed to 42,600 soldiers being admitted from France, as were 7,500 French civilians.63
With the armistice, many of the French civilians could return home. When France withdrew from the war, conditions were set for the repatriation of French soldiers to Vichy France in 1941. However, Poland stayed in the Allied camp, and the polish internees consequently remained in Switzerland for the entire war. They were housed in schools, restaurants, farms, and work camps. A fair number eventually attended Swiss high schools and universities. Had Germany attacked, the poles would have fought side-by-side with the Swiss.64
In the coming years, Switzerland would first stiffen and then eventually liberalize her policies on refugees. While military requirements, security and scarce resources were always important factors, humanitarianism was also a strong consideration, particularly after the second half of the war when reports about the fate of the Jews became known. Switzerland always expected that larger nations would help by accepting refugees. Such help did not materialize. Had the great democracies stepped in, Switzerland could no doubt have accepted far larger numbers of refugees in transit. While greater France was occupied by German forces in 1940, for a time Vichy France remained a possible escape route. Then it too was occupied in late 1942. Refugees could be smuggled out of, as well as into, Switzerland, but where could they run after that?
Legal transit through Spain and Portugal, which temporary refugees in Switzerland might reach, was restricted to holders of visas for “states outside Europe.” Immigration regulations in the United States remained restrictive.65 The Close relatives Edict of June 1941, which passed when the United States was still neutral, expressly prohibited the immigration of persons with relatives in German-occupied Europe—the status of virtually all refugees.
As an example, Dr. E.M. Landau was a German Jew whose Berlin company published a book criticizing National Socialism in 1934. He eventually fled to France but was arrested in Paris in 1940. Through the intervention of the Thomas Mann Committee in New York, Landau was approved for a “danger visa” for the United States, but it could not be issued because he had close relatives in occupied Europe. Thousands of younger people in the same situation perished. Landau was released in 1941 but remained in danger because he was Jewish and had published an anti-Nazi book. In 1942, on his third attempt to enter, he was admitted into Switzerland as a political refugee. An officer of the Swiss Intelligence Service picked him up at the border. The next day the Gestapo came looking for him in France.66
The United States and the other democracies had been extremely cautious in taking in refugees before the war, in large part due to Depression-era measures to protect the domestic labor market. Once these countries entered the war and were fighting for their lives, even less incentive existed to focus on refugees, entry of which could also bring spies and subversives. Winning the war was the paramount objective. Some attribute the Allies’ disinterest to open or latent anti-Semitism.67 Whatever the reasons, Switzerland—herself isolated and encircled by the Axis—had no way to influence the Allies to open their doors to large numbers of refugees.
In 1941, Jews residing in Switzerland numbered 19,429, which was 0.46% of the population, and of that number 10,279 were listed as Swiss and 9,150 foreign.68 Most of these foreign Jews would have been refugees from countries adjacent to Switzerland, as crossing over the Reich itself or more remote countries would have been difficult with wartime controls.
As the war progressed, the cooperation between the Swiss Jewish organizations and the authorities increased. The head of VSIA was in almost daily contact with the Department for Justice and police.69
This was hardly surprising in that VSIA needed to make arrangements to care for newly admitted Jewish refugees and was able to influence the admission process somewhat.
Consistent with this cooperation, in August 1941, Rothmund argued that National Socialism and anti-Semitism were inconsistent with Swiss democracy. He advocated the integration of Jews into the larger society, just as Switzerland’s other faiths now coexisted in reasonable harmony. However, he said “a distinction would have to be made between eastern Jews and those who have lived for a long time in western European countries”—the former being more difficult to assimilate. Rothmund continued: “Swiss Jews had understood this and also made considerable effort to explain the Swiss view of the emigrant problem to foreign circles. In these circumstances there was certainly no reason for Switzerland to allow the entry of German anti-Semitism in any form.”70
The Swiss press continuously campaigned to liberalize standards for entry into Switzerland and attacked the authorities for the restrictions they imposed. However, in April 1942, Zurich delegate Max Sandberg, who was Jewish, denounced attacks on the Swiss police for Foreigners “by members of the press who have no idea how much this authority has done to help us.”71
The Geneva office of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) received the first reports of mass murders of deported western European Jews in the summer of 1942. Dr. G.M. Riegner, the director of the WJC office, found the details so dreadful that at first the reports were dismissed as unbelievable even in Jewish circles.72 Swiss newspapers, however, quickly published credible accounts of the deportation and extermination of Jews.73 Hundreds of Jewish refugees entered Switzerland during this period.74
In Germany and the occupied countries, Nazi policy had changed from expelling Jews to using such Jews as were fit for slave labor and sending the rest to death camps. It was now the Gestapo which rounded up persons who failed to report to labor camps as well as Jews who refused to assemble for deportation.
By July 1942, Dr. R. Jezler, Rothmund’s deputy, reported to the EJPD that Swiss police would no longer send any refugees back to France, even though they met none of the criteria for entry. “The unanimous and authentic reports on the methods by which the deportations
are being carried out and the conditions in Jewish areas in the East are so ghastly, that it is impossible not to understand the refugees’ desperate attempts to escape such a fate and equally impossible to assume any further responsibility for sending them back.”75 However, he foresaw an ever-increasing flow of refugees. Switzerland’s food shortages, the lack of any other countries willing to accept refugees, German economic retaliation and internal security still counseled against the admission of “too many” refugees.76
Nonetheless, in August 1942 the Federal Council suddenly ordered that foreigners who entered illegally were subject to being sent back “even if the foreigners who fall within this legislation may have reason to anticipate the most serious consequences (danger to life and limb).”77 Rothmund ordered the borders hermetically sealed. “political refugees, that is, foreigners who declare themselves as such when first questioned and can also provide evidence of such status, are not to be expelled. Those who seek refuge on racial grounds, as for example, Jews, are not considered political refugees.”78 political refugees—dissident writers, politicians, and religious leaders—had long found sanctuary in Switzerland; no tradition existed of accepting refugees based on ethnicity. However, Rothmund forbade the expulsion of refugees at specific places where German border guards would catch them.79
Almost immediately Rothmund’s order to turn back civilian refugees became public knowledge and encountered fierce opposition by the Swiss people and the press.80 The official policy was universally derided and as a result was withdrawn in a matter of days.
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