WASHINGTON — Switzerland’s decision to refund some money stolen from Holocaust victims may mean the embattled nation is coming to grips with its once-secret role in aiding the Nazis.
After months of pressure from world Jewish leaders, the Swiss government said last week it would work with banks and insurance companies in Switzerland to set up a fund to help compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs whose assets vanished into the Swiss system half a century ago.
Switzerland’s critics welcomed the move, which came six weeks after Edgar Bronfman, the World Jewish Congress president, publicly called on the country to make a “good faith financial gesture” to Holocaust survivors and the world Jewish community — or face economic sanctions.
The move “means they’re willing to address the two demands the Jewish world has placed before them: the demand for moral restitution and material restitution,” said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the WJC.
“By moral, we mean honestly addressing their history so that we may deal with each other in an honest fashion and face each other with dignity.
“By material, we mean returning to those victims who were deprived of their possessions the assets that clearly belong to them.”
Jewish officials see the Swiss decision as a breakthrough — a sign that Switzerland may finally be willing to offer a financial and moral accounting of its dealings with the Nazis and its handling of stolen Jewish assets that found their way into Swiss banks and aided the Nazi war effort.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, characterized the Swiss fund as an important “psychological breakthrough.”
Rather than “being angry and defensive, they’re coming to grips and moving forward,” said Foxman, who met with top political and banking officials earlier this month in Switzerland.
Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, called the Swiss plan a “step in the right direction,” and State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns agreed. The fund, Burns said, constitutes an important move for the Swiss “in the process of coming to terms with the past.”
But angry comments this week by a key Swiss official show the Swiss are not altogether happy about their position.
Carlo Jagmetti, Switzerland’s ambassador to the United States, resigned Monday after the publication of a confidential diplomatic cable he authored last month calling for a public relations “war” against “adversaries,” such as the WJC and D’Amato.
Jewish and U.S. officials lambasted him and called his resignation appropriate.
Another sticking point is just how much money the Swiss should return to Jews.
Jewish organizations claim Swiss banks hold up to $7 billion in assets belonging to Jews killed in the Holocaust. But the Swiss banks say initial searches of their archives have found only $32 million in unclaimed assets.
Tensions between Switzerland and the country’s critics reached their highest level early this year when the outgoing Swiss president, Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, dismissed Jewish demands for a compensation fund as “extortion and blackmail.”
Delamuraz later apologized in the face of an international outcry. But the fallout from his remarks, coupled with the recent discovery by a night security guard that Switzerland’s largest bank was shredding archival material, began to “push the world’s patience to a limit,” as one Jewish official put it.
Trying to gain control of a situation rapidly spinning out of control, Thomas Borer, Switzerland’s point man for all issues concerning his country’s wartime financial role, announced that the Swiss government would work with banks to establish a Holocaust memorial fund.
“We certainly hope that this [fund] will be understood as a sign of our good will,” Borer told reporters in Zurich last week.
He said the government and Swiss banks had yet to arrive on a fixed amount, adding, “it would be premature to bring numbers into play.”
However, one of Switzerland’s top bankers, Credit Suisse Chairman Rainer Gut, last week called for a “well-endowed” Holocaust memorial fund in excess of $70 million.
The WJC declined to specify an amount it would deem appropriate, saying only that “it should be sufficient to cover the immediate needs” of Holocaust survivors.
A $250 million figure surfaced in a discussion late last year between Bronfman and Borer, but those negotiations — which were supposed to have remained confidential — later became a source of considerable rancor between Swiss and Jewish officials.
WJC officials, for their part, said they will be in close contact with Swiss officials in coming weeks as they work out the specifics concerning the fund.
The WJC has campaigned over the past year to recover missing Jewish wealth and disclose the truth about Switzerland’s role as a financial center during World War II.
Researchers for the WJC, along with researchers on D’Amato’s staff, have combed through thousands of documents in the archives of the United States and European countries, releasing historical findings each week in a way that has consistently kept Switzerland in the news.
Asked whether WJC’s strategy will now change after Switzerland’s “goodwill gesture,” Steinberg indicated that his organization might turn down the heat a bit on Switzerland.
“Our activities have involved a political struggle, and a political struggle requires a strategy or tactics that change with circumstances,” Steinberg said.
“If all parties are working in a cooperative manner for the benefit of Holocaust survivors, by definition, the situation will change.”
But the WJC still intends to make documents available, and more embarrassing revelations about Switzerland may be in the offing as the Clinton administration prepares to release a report on Switzerland’s wartime transactions.
Swiss officials now appear determined to avoid more of the public relations nightmares that have dogged them in recent weeks.
This week got off to a bad start, however, when Switzerland had to quickly defuse the controversy stemming from publication of the Swiss ambassador’s private strategy paper.
“This is a war that Switzerland must wage and win on the foreign and domestic front,” Jagmetti was quoted as saying in the Dec. 19 document, which was leaked to the media. “You cannot trust most of the adversaries.”
Swiss Jewish leaders immediately called for the ouster of Jagmetti, who was set to retire in July. The Swiss Cabinet on Monday accepted his resignation, in which he contended that the published excerpts were taking out of context. He also expressed regret for having offended Jews.
Switzerland’s critics see encouraging signs in the way that country has begun to show accountability and exercise damage control. But officials caution that a long road lies ahead.
As Foxman of the ADL said, the Swiss are still in need of making a “quantum leap to moral accountability.”
“They’re coming to a realization but they’re going to have to deal with the issue in a more dramatic and forceful way,” he said. “They’re going to have to confront the past in both a legal manner, factual manner and a moral manner, and I think that’s where they’re heading.”
While falling short of any such quantum leap, Switzerland’s critics agree the country has now at least taken a few running steps in the right direction.
Despite several anti-Semitic letters to Swiss newspapers, and an anonymous Swiss death threat to Avraham Burg, head of the Jewish Agency in Israel, which is also pushing for Swiss action, a group of high-school students in the Swiss capital of Bern has launched an immediate fund-raising drive for Holocaust victims.
“With intense shock and agitation, we’ve learned that even today, 50 years after the end of World War II, there are still victims of the Holocaust that live in distress and have never received any form of reparations for the suffering they endured,” the students said in a statement to the Swiss press over the weekend.
“We maintain that we must no longer delay this, and that now is the time to express our solidarity with these people. It seems patently unfair that the victims should be forced to wait until the members of [the Swiss government commission discussing the issue] complete their investigation.”
The pupils have decided to devote any funds they are able to raise to Amcha, the Israeli organization for psychosocial support for Holocaust survivors, the Amcha director, John Lemberger, said Tuesday. The news about the establishment of the fund was given wide coverage in the Swiss media, he said.