61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

3.2 Awareness and Action
The assumption that the Swiss authorities were inadequately informed and
would have acted differently «if one had known what was happening in the
Third Reich» is false. 41 Up until 1939, the Jews were publicly discriminated
against, persecuted and driven out. The Swiss authorities and the population
were well informed about the excesses that occurred in Austria after its annexation
by Germany in March 1938 and about the nation-wide pogroms in
November 1938. The Nazi regime of course tried to conceal the «final
solution», introduced at the end of 1941, whose aim was the complete annihilation
of the Jews. Nevertheless, the authorities knew at the beginning of
August 1942 that the Jewish refugees were in extreme danger. Although at the
time they did not have precise details about the industrially organised extermination
camps, information about the mass killings had been reaching
Switzerland through various channels since the end of 1941.
1. An important source of information was the Swiss diplomatic corps abroad.
As early as the end of 1941, Swiss diplomats – in particular in Cologne,
Rome and Bucharest – were sending reports about the deportation of Jews
from Germany and occupied territories under terrible conditions and sent
quite detailed information concerning the mass killings. 42 In May 1942,
Franz-Rudolph von Weiss, the Swiss Consul in Cologne, sent photographs
to Colonel Roger Masson, the head of the Military Information Service,
which showed the bodies of suffocated Jews being unloaded from German
goods wagons. 43
2. The Swiss military authorities, who were keen to obtain as much information
as possible concerning events across the border, gained information
by the questioning of refugees. In February 1942, the Swiss Intelligence
Service obtained detailed reports and sketches of mass shootings, through
the interrogation of German deserters interned in Switzerland. 44
3. At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, members of the Swiss
medical missions on the Eastern front witnessed so-called hostage
shootings. In addition, they obtained reliable information concerning the
mass slaughter of Jews. In the 1950s, Dr. Rudolf Bucher explained that he
had informed Federal Councillor Karl Kobelt in March 1942 of what he had
seen. Kobelt denied this. It was in May 1942 that Dr. Bucher first reported
these events to the Swiss Medical Council and held additional speeches even
though forbidden to do so by the highest authorities. 45
4. Throughout the whole war, Switzerland maintained close economic,
cultural and political relations with many other countries, so that a good
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