61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

Willstätter to emigrate to Switzerland, the relationship between the two men
was permanently affected by the Sandoz Board manoeuvres. It was only too clear
that the firm’s immediate accommodation was based purely on commercial
interests and that humanitarian considerations and the political implications of
the company’s personnel policy were not of great importance. 27 After a trip to
Berlin to discuss the consequences for the firm of the persecution of Jews and
what measures should be taken in personnel policy, Emil Barell, then director
general and later chairman of the Board of the pharmaceutical company
Hoffmann-La Roche, declared in June 1933 that:
«Before a decision can be taken concerning individual people, the undersigned
would like to stress the serious humanitarian responsibility
involved in such a decision». 28
At Hoffmann-La Roche too, areas of responsibility were redefined and posts
were filled with new people. It is to the firm’s credit, however, that it did its
utmost to find solutions for its own staff that combined commercial interests
within the given political framework with social responsibility towards its
Jewish employees. When from the end of 1937 on, accusations that Roche was
a «Jewish» firm became more frequent, while anti-Jewish legal measures were
simultaneously being intensified, the two Jewish members of the supervisory
board of the Roche subsidiary in Berlin were urged to resign, which they did in
April 1938. During this period most of the Jewish Board members of the major
German companies resigned from their posts. When, according to the Third
Ordinance of the German Law on Citizenship (Dritte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz)
dated 14 June 1938, all Jewish firms had to be registered, Roche
Berlin claimed «non-Jewish» status. 29
Such declarations had to be made by all subsidiaries of Swiss companies in
Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by that time. Some firms,
including Maggi GmbH in Singen for example, had in fact already done so
earlier. As early as spring 1933, Maggi declared, «Not a single share of our
company capital is in Jewish hands». 30 In 1935, a statutory declaration was
made concerning the «Aryan» character of the firm and in 1936 the Board
assured the authorities that only 3 people out of a total staff of 3200 were not
«Aryans». This step was prompted by, on the one hand, the economic difficulties
that the firm was having at the time, difficulties which it thought it
could overcome by claiming «Aryan status», and, on the other, the public
stigmatisation of being a «Jewish» enterprise. 31 This stigmatisation was in fact
a popular strategy adopted by jealous competitors, in particular among
medium-size firms and in those branches that were finding it difficult to recover
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