61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

7 Conclusion: Insights and Unanswered Questions
When on 13 December 1996 the ICE was commissioned to investigate
unanswered questions concerning Switzerland’s role in the Holocaust era, fifty
years had elapsed since the signing of the Washington Agreement between the
Allies and Switzerland. 1 In 1946, this Agreement supposedly resolved once and
for all the controversial issue of Swiss relations with the Axis Powers. In 1946
it also appeared to provide an adequate resolution of the problem of the assets
which had been deposited for safekeeping in Switzerland by both the victims of
the Nazi persecution and its perpetrators.
Although after the 1940s the subject by no means disappeared from view as a
result, it scarcely figured in the public’s awareness any longer. Historians who
were busily writing about the subject were aware that their books would not
sell in great numbers. Despite their continued efforts, victims and their organisations
were not in a position to make their voices heard to any great extent.
The unresolved questions therefore largely remained pending in just the same
way as the bank balances which became a focus of interest in the mid-1990s.
This time, however, it was not possible to proceed as if nothing had happened.
The enduring silence about a past, that beggared the imagination – this
weighty burden of the post-war years – was finally broken. After more than half
a century, but particularly during the previous two decades, new ground-rules
had evolved. A younger generation began to ask critical questions and wanted
to know about a past which was, after all, also its own. Whilst human rights
began to play an ever more important role in international relations, the end of
the Cold War brought a relaxation of firmly entrenched ideological fronts. And
thus came about the fundamental change of attitude which has enabled old
questions to take on a fresh topicality, giving rise to a broad, public debate in
recent years. This has resulted in the virtually worldwide investigations which
are going on even now into how the assets dating from the Holocaust era were
handled, and where they came to rest.
The fact that Switzerland was the starting point for these international investigations
caused many Swiss people – unsurprisingly – to ask why it was that their
country, in particular, became a focus of criticism, as it had not been subject to
any dictatorship, nor party to violent anti-Semitism, nor involved in deportations.
In actual fact, an obvious, but incomplete answer to the question «Why
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