Nazi Gold
Page 27
Meetings between bankers and government officials were rarely more than cordial. Despite their constitutional position, the civil servants understood that their status in the country was a purely servile one. Bindschedler nevertheless tried on this occasion to retain some dignity. “Before we can take the necessary legal measures,” announced the lawyer regarding the Polish agreement, “we must have a census to know the size of the heirless assets.” Instinctively, Max Oetterli, sitting beside Adolf Jann, sprang to attack the proposed breach of the banks’ secrets, but he soon relented, to allow Heinrich Daeniker, a director of the Kantonalbank, which had unilaterally ceased paying interest to the refugees, to explain the bankers’ new grievance. Besides all the familiar problems, said Daeniker, the bankers feared that any announcement of a census would arouse “unrealistic expectations of a large sum.” But worse, he continued, the bankers disliked the proposed involvement of the Compensation Office. Their unspoken anxiety was that Compensation Office officials were difficult to manage and understood the bankers’ ploys. “Don’t worry,” promised Bindschedler; “the Compensation Office will not be involved. The census will be handled by a trustee who will be appointed only after a discussion between ourselves.” With that reassurance, the atmosphere became relaxed. Any census would be conducted on the bankers’ terms. The lawyer’s dignity had been compromised.
Bolstered by the bankers’ success, the insurance companies also proclaimed their reluctance to become involved in a census. The sums, Bindschedler was informed, were minuscule. A limited inquiry by Swiss insurance companies had unearthed only eight policies worth SF29,000 that might be heirless and to continue the investigation posed a serious risk of fraud and worse. Masquerading as the protector of its clients, the insurance association told the Political Department, “In previous years we have successfully resisted the attempts of confiscation by foreign states and will not succumb now to any other direct or indirect measures of forced expropriation. Experience shows that to tolerate that would cause great damage—moral and financial—to Switzerland.” The hundreds of complaints by German Jews whose policies had been surrendered against their wishes by the insurance companies to the Nazis, or who had been offered repayment after the war in worthless Reichmarks although they had regularly paid their premiums in dollars, were self-servingly ignored. No one in Switzerland would champion the foreigners’ cause as victims of dishonesty. Yet the pressure did not lessen. Political groups, dismayed that in the midst of Stalinist oppression in Moscow Petitpierre should have made concessions to the communists, demanded more information about the Polish agreement.
Reluctantly, the minister was compelled on March 14 to return to parliament to explain the government’s trade policy with communist Europe. Naturally, he did not intend to offer a full confession. Instead, in a coarse display of legal evasion and bravado, he performed a remarkable somersault—finally admitting the existence of the secret clause, conceding that the secrecy had been “a wrong decision,” but declaring that “there is no question of secret diplomacy.” Toward the Allies and the Jews, however, Petitpierre betrayed not a hint of regret. His countrymen, he was convinced, despised any concessions to those groups. The Jewish issue, for the Swiss, was irrelevant. Subtly changing tack, the minister claimed insouciantly, “The declaration made in Washington contains only a promise to examine the question [of the heirless assets] and does not indicate a solution.” Stucki’s promise to examine the issue “sympathetically,” he continued, obliged Switzerland only to consider the heirless assets of German Jews; and on the question of the remaining Jews the Washington Accord was silent. Since Poland was not a party to the accord and Switzerland was not a party to the Paris Agreement on heirless assets, there was no reason why Switzerland was not justified in transferring the heirless assets to Poland under international law. None of Petitpierre’s audience contradicted his interpretation of history, which just happened to suit Swiss interests. The issue, so far as he was concerned, was once again closed. Even the sums involved were irrelevant. According to the Swiss banks, he declared, the amount of heirless assets was “probably less” than the estimated SF2 million. No one in his audience challenged that figure, although Petitpierre knew that the banks had not conducted a proper census.
Unwillingly and unannounced, Petitpierre had in fact made one concession. Realizing that Switzerland could not risk another row with foreign governments, he had jettisoned in February a similar secret clause in the trade agreement with Czechoslovakia. To inquiries from the Israelis, the Americans and the local Jewish groups, Petitpierre could honestly promise that Switzerland had not offered any heirless assets to Prague. Since the inquiries did not ask about a secret undertaking to Hungary, he did not volunteer that Switzerland would on July 19, 1950, sign an agreement with the communist government in Budapest, trading the heirless assets of Hungarian Jews for compensation to those Swiss whose property had been confiscated. The only refinement was the requirement imposed on the Hungarians to produce evidence about the existence of heirless assets in Switzerland. That clause was not published, but to avoid future accusations of a “secret deal” Troendle dispatched a letter to the Hungarians stating, “The understanding concerning the heirless assets is not to be regarded as secret.” It was “confidential” but not to be published. Both sides understood that Troendle’s letter was a safeguard if the need for an alibi arose.
“A whitewash,” commented officials of the World Jewish Congress in New York, after reading Petitpierre’s statement about Poland, even though they were unaware of the hectic renegotiations with the Czechs and Hungarians. Rubin despaired of ever trouncing the “extremely stubborn man in control on the other side.” Even Dean Acheson, the acting secretary of state, unaware of the truth, was anxious that Petitpierre might have signed an heirless-assets agreement with Hungary, whose 600,000 Jews exterminated by the Nazis were “known to have substantial assets in Switzerland.” But Acheson’s passing interest vanished after South Korea was suddenly invaded by 175,000 communist troops on June 25.
The Jewish organizations seemed more bereft of Allied support than ever. Although the French government had complained that Switzerland was “guilty of a grave breach of diplomatic etiquette” in its secret diplomacy, the Quai’s renewed involvement was terminated. In the Foreign Office, Neal Goodchild was “more than content to leave such a delicate subject” in American hands. Reflecting with satisfaction that the Swiss and Swedish governments had privately assured British diplomats that “no such assets have yet come to light,” Goodchild concluded, “I am afraid that, whatever answer they give, there is unlikely to be any cash.” Without deliberate sarcasm, he commented, “We have achieved nothing, but we have done what we can.” He had, however, successfully suppressed the issue in Britain. Asked by the Jewish Chronicle for information because the Swiss government was ignoring its inquiries, he thought that if John Shaftesley, the editor, was “reliable” he could be privately briefed. Goodchild’s intention was “to keep him quiet and show that we are doing something.” After meeting the editor, Goodchild congratulated himself. Shaftesley had been persuaded “to drop the subject.” But other Jews were unwilling to be cajoled.
13
NEW HOPE
In March 1950, the government of Israel politely asked the State Department and the Foreign Office to allow the new Jewish state to approach Switzerland concerning the fate of the heirless assets. The initiative, encouraged by all the Jewish groups, was also supported by the International Refugee Organization, which was destined to receive the funds. Dean Acheson promptly welcomed the idea. But the news did not please the British. The initiative “needs watching,” complained a British official, suspicious of Israel’s “hunger for foreign exchange.” For the Foreign Office, the irritation of Israel’s meddling in an agreement to which it was not a signatory was compounded by its assumption of the right to represent the world’s Jews when only 117,000 had migrated there since 1947, as compared with 80,000 who had arrived in Britain. Give
n British policies over the years, cooler heads would have understood the illogicality of those complaints, but Britain’s exclusive concern was to recoup some of the £200 million spent supporting Germany after the war and to forestall any diminution of its share of reparations. That desire for money and Britain’s certainty that the Swiss would eventually pay had prompted Goodchild to dissuade the State Department from breaking off negotiations with Switzerland on the grounds that the accord had proved “unworkable.” One price for that perseverance, to Goodchild’s distaste, was the State Department’s past and occasional present references to the heirless assets. The Americans, Goodchild said bitterly, wanted to “fan the flames” of an “insignificant controversy” that should be dropped. Yet if Britain was to share in the reparations, Goodchild admitted, there was no alternative but to follow the U.S. lead, despite the “rather barren argument.”
Swiss officials were bemused by the notion of dealing with Jews on equal terms. Only a few years earlier, the very officials who received the formal letter from the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv had rejected hysterical pleas by the same kind of people to enter their country or had thrown them wailing across the frontier into the hands of the Gestapo. It was not easy to accept that ghetto inhabitants had been transformed into diplomats who had to be treated with respect. It was especially difficult for Paul Ritter, the first Swiss consul in Tel Aviv. Ritter had been summoned at the end of December 1949 to the Israeli Foreign Ministry to receive an “angry” protest about the Polish agreement. In his report to Petitpierre, Ritter, a sharp critic in 1944 of Carl Lutz’s issue of letters of protection to the Hungarian Jews, could not resist sneering that the head of the Ministry’s West European division, Herr Avner, was “formerly called Hirsch.”
Since Israel was a signatory of neither the Washington nor the Paris agreement, a protest from Tel Aviv could have only limited impact. But the Swiss could not reject the Israeli government’s right to represent its citizens in their bid to find their families’ assets in Switzerland. Long letters naming murdered fathers, brothers and uncles who had lived in Eastern Europe and had regularly traveled before the war to Switzerland to deposit money there had accumulated in the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Impoverished and isolated from Europe, the survivors relied upon Moshe Sharett, the foreign minister, to seek assistance from the Swiss government.
In July 1950, Gershon Meron, who was the Israeli representative in Bern and a former banker, met Alfred Zehnder to find out what help the Jews might expect. Appreciating that Switzerland’s lawyers could create loopholes within loopholes, Meron adopted a placatory approach that surprised the Swiss official. To Zehnder’s delight, Meron refrained from criticizing the Polish agreement and said that most Israeli claims involved money entrusted to friends and business associates in Switzerland, not to banks. Meron’s admission was as encouraging as his unexpected acceptance that any estimate by the Swiss banks of the Polish heirless assets would be honest. The Israeli was unaware that the banks had progressively reduced their estimate of SF2 million in 1949 to “less than SF1 million” in April 1950 and were proposing to “reveal” the figure as SF598,000 in their bid to persuade the government that a formal census was unnecessary. Meron’s only request was that the Swiss approve a public appeal to find the heirless assets. Since this scheme posed no danger, Ritter was ordered to place an advertisement in Israeli newspapers asking claimants to send information to the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
In Washington, the “argument” had become the responsibility of Roswell McClelland, the State Department’s Swiss desk officer, who had been the representative of the War Refugee Board in Bern in 1945. As the latest official to read through the old departmental files, and recalling the frustration caused by Switzerland’s endless stalling tactics and the Swiss newspaper commentaries vilifying Stucki as a traitor, McClelland was inclined to join his predecessors and damn the whole business, until he realized that Switzerland’s protection of German interests had assumed a new dimension. The government of the new West German republic, McClelland appreciated, was covertly influencing Switzerland’s attitude toward the fate of the German and heirless property in Switzerland. The cause of the intrigue masterminded by industrialists and bankers was the indisputable risk that over $1 billion of German property might be confiscated under the Washington Accord. Quietly, German diplomats were warning not only the Swiss government, but also the Portuguese and Spanish governments, that the seizure of German property for reparations would be regarded as unfriendly and would be contested. Even the return of property identified as Nazi loot was forbidden by Bonn.
Stucki, perpetually under pressure from the Swiss-German interests, was powerless in the face of the sudden and unexpected demands from Bonn. At risk was not only Switzerland’s own property in Germany, worth between SF5 and SF6 billion, but also its 50 percent share of the German property in Switzerland, marked to repay the wartime loans to the Nazis. McClelland’s uncertainty about Switzerland’s new predicament as a victim or perhaps a puppet of Bonn contrasted with the Foreign Office’s wry amusement: it was an “embarrassing” position, commented an official. Neal Goodchild had received an unexpected confession from Victor Umbricht, a first secretary in the Swiss embassy, who, fuming about West Germany’s latest moves, recounted events that had taken place since 1946. After negotiating the best deal in Washington, revealed Umbricht, Stucki had devoted himself to discovering or inventing any reason not to sell German property. Now the Swiss were aggrieved by the Germans’ ingratitude. “It has for some time been obvious,” summarized Goodchild, “that Switzerland is torn between two conflicting instincts: on the one hand political fear of Germany; on the other, native financial greed whetted by the knowledge that only the [Washington] Accord gives them any hope of salvaging any part of this milliard credit. The Swiss are sufficiently hardheaded to contrive to serve both these (not too admirable) instincts simultaneously, and sufficiently hypocritical to believe that by doing so they will emerge with flying moral (and financial) colors.” Switzerland’s “German experts,” formerly pro-Nazi, were victorious. “I find the action of the Swiss depressing,” agreed a weary colleague.
Max Schwab also found his position depressing. His secret had emerged. Under attack from bankers and lawyers for tapping telephones as if he were the Gestapo, he lamented that the Compensation Office had dealt with dishonest bankers and lawyers who, despite falsifying documents and lying, had escaped any punishment by the courts. Stucki acknowledged the dishonesty but was reconciled to the new realities in Bern. “Gangsters” was the epithet being used in Zurich and Bern by the pro-Germans against the Americans. Offered renewed reason to swagger by the resurrection of a German state and the rout in South Korea, where communist troops had occupied practically the whole country, the former Nazi sympathizers were challenging Washington to listen to some straight talk from Swiss “cowboys.” Retreating, Stucki resorted to his standard defense: “We’re not defending the Germans but fighting for a just solution. That’s the strength of our position.”
Rubin detected something worse. The Germans, he suspected, were reckoning that the Allies would tolerate the evasion of their moral and legal obligations. The U.S. government’s release of major Nazi war criminals, including famous incriminated industrialists and bankers, and the commutation of death sentences on mass murderers as calculated gestures to win German support in the cold war, had encouraged the regeneration of the familiar brazenness. “Now that they have Korea on their hands, the Americans are a lot more friendly,” quipped a German industrialist as he prematurely emerged from prison despite his conviction for participating in atrocities. The Germans, enjoying increasing prosperity as a result of the Marshall Plan, showed every intention of taking the profits, recouping their foreign and looted property and giving nothing in return. Included in Bonn’s shopping list were the heirless assets of the German Jews in Switzerland, a request that Petitpierre was sympathetically considering.
Repaying the assets of the Nazis
’ victims to Germany was increasingly troubling Stucki as much as Switzerland’s policy of returning the heirless assets to East European countries. His signature was on the letter signed in Washington in 1946, and Petitpierre’s self-interested ambiguities about Switzerland’s commitment offended his sense of honor. “It’s a question of interpretation whether non-German victims were included,” Stucki told Zehnder, “and since nothing was mentioned during the Washington negotiations, I’ll leave the decision to you so that you can pursue what is in Switzerland’s best interest.” Stucki’s withdrawal from involvement with the heirless assets coincided with the Compensation Office’s establishing that at least SF16.5 million of the frozen German property in Switzerland was heirless. Considering how limited that classified survey must have been, Stucki grasped that the repeated assertions by the banks and Petitpierre that the amounts were “small” were simply untrue. But any fear among the secret trustees that their illegal inheritance would be exposed seemed to have no basis after the Congress in Washington rejected legislation transferring to refugee organizations the heirless assets found in the United States. Bill 603, introduced by Senator Taft, to authorize the transfer of heirless assets to Jewish organizations had been approved by the Senate, only to be rejected by the House of Representatives. That decision, the work of a vocal pro-German lobby in Congress, persuaded Max Oetterli, the secretary of the Bankers Association, that governments and individuals could be ignored. But his relief was short-lived. To his irritation, a serious challenge arose in Switzerland itself.