Geneva – A Swiss government commission is drawing to a close after clearing the names of 137 people judged to be criminals because they helped Jews escape Nazi persecution during World War II.
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The commission was set up at the start of 2004 to use a new law on “rehabilitation.”
The law allowed for posthumous recognition of people unfairly criminalized under Swiss laws on neutrality because they smuggled Jewish refugees across borders between 1938 and 1945.
Some were jailed or fined, and many lost jobs.
The commission, mandated to end in 2011, said its aim was to repair the damage caused by a “grave injustice” of history.
Only one person, Aimee Stitelman of Geneva, lived long enough to see her name cleared in 2004, and died months later.
Well… better late than never I suppose! (:-D
Note that they could only find 137 people to prosecute for the crime of helping Jews.
It only took 71 years to clear these criminals?? I thought the Swiss were more efficient .
The Swiss are no friends of Yidden. Although some Jews managed to flee across the border into Switzerland during World War Two, many were turned away. Also, the Swiss helped finance the Nazi war machine. In the late 1990’s, it was found out that the Swiss were involved with a scheme which defrauded thousands of Holocaust victims and survivors, whereby its banks and insurance companies refused to pay claims to beneficiaries of life insurance policies, because the Swiss stated that “they couldn’t prove when and where a person died”. Also, it was found that Swiss banks were still illegally holding thousands of bank accounts, whose proceeds belonged to Holocaust victims. The World Jewish Congress filed a lawsuit amounting to billions of dollars against the Swiss Government, as well as individual Swiss banks. This created a large backlash of anti-semitism on the part of the Swiss. However, the Swiss Government eventually settled, and paid out millions in reparations to Holocaust survivors, and their families.
Switzerland was and is anti-semitic. They were the ones to tell the nazi to mark Jewish passports with a J so they would not let them into Switzerland; that is how anti-semitic they are. Another thing if you were born and raised in Switzerland and you have children born and raised there they will not give them passports they would need to live on their grandparents country’s passports.
it took them this long……..will yad vashem recognize them too now?