61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

group of companies was not a traditional case of the camouflaging of German
interests, it was still «German-tainted» on the whole. The 1963 compromise
marked the end of the matter; however, rumours persisted to the effect that the
whole affair had not been entirely above board. Suspicions were aimed at IG
Chemie and Interhandel, the Union Bank of Switzerland, and the compromise
of 1963. Moreover, the fact that a liquidation company called IG Farben
managed the legacy of the former chemical group in Germany and since 1958
had come forward with claims of its own in the dispute (and is still doing so
today), gave free reign to speculation. However, lengthy legal proceedings
brought before German courts in the 1980s did not produce any new evidence
for the plaintiff’s conspiracy theory that this was yet another case of camouflaged
German property.
6.8 Concluding Remarks
Summing up, it can be said that numerous questions relating to property rights
that had arisen as a result of the extraordinary and catastrophic events in the
1930s and 1940s remained unresolved after 1945. Immediately after the end of
the war and in the early 1960s, some individual attempts (Registration Decree)
were made to clarify them. Belated, they were conducted only because of
external pressure, and were either incomplete or omitted important aspects. The
Swiss authorities and business circles were convinced that they were under no
obligation to make «reparations» of any kind. The investigations of the ICE
were also unable to satisfactorily clarify all problems resulting from this
attitude. One question that remained unanswered was whether, in addition to
bank accounts, other assets of later victims of the Nazi regime – real estate, for
example – were also being managed in a fiduciary capacity in Switzerland. The
ICHEIC’s research on the issue of insurance policies has not yet been concluded.
With the results of its research, a framework will be available for a more detailed
analysis of how these events unfolded. The fate of Swiss victims of Nazism who
had been denied diplomatic protection by their own government has been
traced only partially. This also holds true in regard to any claims for restitution,
although it was precisely in such cases where the government had failed to
protect its own citizens that the term «Wiedergutmachung» would have been
appropriate. Above all, however, the conduit function of Switzerland as a
financial centre for forwarding assets to third countries has only been insufficiently
explained.
In the immediate post-war period, the first reaction concerned the looted assets
that had been brought into Switzerland. However, the corresponding Federal
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