61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

The Cold War and agreements with Poland and Hungary
With the start of the Cold War and the sealing of the borders between the power
blocs, the last recorded home address of many presumed Holocaust victims now
lay behind the so-called Iron Curtain. It was reasonable to assume that neither
the victims nor their heirs, if they were still living there, would have appreciated
investigations by Swiss banks. If the authorities in these countries had known
of the accounts, their owners would quickly have been faced with difficulties
and confiscation. However, in the case of banks with a large clientele in Eastern
European countries, unwillingness and inability now entered into a perfect
symbiosis. In particular, the anti-Communist feelings of the banking
community should not be underestimated. Many banks suffered heavy losses in
their loan business after the Second World War in the course of the expropriation
policy practised by these states. Where banks had already had to
undertake major write-offs, they were unwilling to make any concessions when
it came to accounts, deposits, and safe-deposit boxes. The reticence of the banks
was made possible thanks mainly to banking secrecy, under which they were not
allowed to provide generous amounts of information. The banks’ lawyers were
actually quite happy to have their hands tied as this meant that legal issues
could be circumvented, categorised as inherent political necessity, and expressed
in anti-Communist rhetoric.
A few years after the war, however, something had to be done in relation to
customers living in Poland or Hungary. An international agreement required
the banks to proceed to expropriation, which created a prerequisite for transferring
assets whose owners no longer had any contact with the bank to the
political authorities in their former country of residence. Surprisingly, it was
now apparently possible to conduct an internal investigation so that a list of
dormant accounts relating to these countries could be drawn up. Subsequently,
a political deal was concluded, the primary aim of which was to favour Swiss
interests in the wake of nationalisation of assets in Poland and Hungary. 75 The
agreement with Poland was concluded in 1949 and came into force on 17 May
1950. It dealt with assets
«of Polish nationals who had been domiciled in Poland on 1 September
1939, had given no signs of life since 9 May 1945 and concerning whom
the bank had no evidence to suppose that they had survived the war or, if
not, had left heirs.» 76
Some representatives of Jewish organisations in the US described the text of the
agreement as «immoral» and the prominent Swiss international law expert and
lawyer Paul Guggenheim suggested using such assets to set up a general
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