Tribal Report
(1 August, 2021; 23 Av, 5781)
Contents:
A. Notes from Switzerland
1. Impressions:
2. More Impressions
3. Swiss and Jews
4. Switzerland in WW2
5. Switzerland and the Jews after WW2
6. The Persecution by Switzerland of a Swiss Hero Because he Helped Save Jews?
B. Britain
7. Why were people so proud of the British Empire?
^^^^^^^^^^
A. Notes from Switzerland
^^^^^^^^^^
1. Impressions:
Switzerland's name for itself is Helvatia after a Celtic Tribe once recorded from the region.
The country's abbreviation is CH and means Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin.
Switzerland - High degree of public participation, as a peoples democracy, direct voting on multiple issues.
service for the people, communication, transport, protection of animals, high quality of food, milk, etc.
Dialogue and cooperation between different political parties.
Cleaner than Germany. Water from rivers and lakes is drinkable.
4 different language and 4 different cultures within a small area.Cultural and geographical diversity.
accept collective discipline and willingness to work harder than their neighbours.
# Decisions on all levels may be appealed to the people which expresses itself through a referendum. This is far from just a formality : on two occasions the population rejected the entrance into the European Union, although most opinion leaders and businesses strongly favoured it. #
^^^^^^^^^^
2. More Impressions
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-dark-side-of-Switzerland/answer/Tsuk-J%C3%A1nos
Many foreigners are allowed to visit, work, live in Switzerland, but to be accepted as a Swiss citizen that person must behave just like a Swiss, so the film depicts what information is gathered about a candidate who after a stay of several years wants to achieve this honourable status. Clean home? Must be checked! Opinion of the neighbours? They must be interrogated. Making noise? Very un-Swiss! Switzerland being a small country it wants to keep its identity by accepting only perfectly integrated people!
I have had a personal experience of this 'police-minded' instinct of the Swiss.
A country where police force is available to worry about a scratch on a car is also a country that has voted that all foreigners guilty of a crime or a serious misdemeanor should be expelled after their stay in jail. So their crime statistics are ridiculously low !
Wealth (assets of $ 500.000 for every Swiss) spread in such a way that it allowed to maintain a middle-class
Similar to Scandinavian countries.
^^^^^^^^^^
3. Swiss and Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Switzerland
In 1798, the French under Napoleon I invaded Switzerland and established the Helvetic Republic. The Republic attempted to modernize and centralize the Swiss Confederation which was not a unified country, but rather an alliance of sovereign states. As part of this new, liberal state, Swiss reformers attempted to emancipate the Jews in the new Helvetic Parliament in Aarau. When those efforts failed, they attempted to get the French to force this change on the new Swiss government. The changes of the Republic were not embraced by many of the Swiss and the issue of emancipation for the Jews became another contentious issue between the old order and the new government.
In 1802 a portion of the population revolted and turned against the Jews. The mob looted the Jewish villages of Endingen and Lengnau in the so-called Zwetschgenkrieg ("Plum war"). At the same time other revolts, such as the Stecklikrieg, stretched the French Army too thin for French authorities to guarantee the Jews' safety. Napoleon lacked the troops to bring peace to Switzerland, and needed the Swiss regiments for his campaigns. Seeking a peaceful resolution to the uprising, in 1803 he issued the Act of Mediation. The Act of Mediation was a compromise between the Ancien Regime and a Republic. One of the compromises in the Act was that no further rights were granted to the Jews..
In 1876, the Jews were granted full equality in civil rights and allowed to travel. ... During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Jews from Alsace, Germany and Eastern Europe joined this core group. In 1920, the Jewish population had reached its peak at 21,000 people (0.5% of the total population), a figure that has remained almost constant ever since.
In 1999 Ruth Dreifuss became the first Jewish president of the Swiss Federal Council.
^^^^^^^^^^
4. Switzerland in WW2
Was Switzerland neutral or a Nazi ally in World War Two?
http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2016/2/14/was-switzerland-neutral-or-a-nazi-ally-in-world-war-two#.YQDy-70zapo=
In fear of angering Hitler and prompting an invasion, Swiss border regulations were tightened. They did establish internment camps which housed 200,000 refugees, of which 20,000 were Jewish. Importantly though, the Swiss government taxed the Swiss Jewish community for any Jewish refugees they allowed to enter the country.
In 1942 alone, over 30,000 Jews were denied entrance into Switzerland, leaving them under the control of the Nazis. In an infamous speech, a Swiss government official stated 'our little life boat is full.' Although the prospect of leaving Jewish civilians to certain death under the Nazis is unthinkable, there are arguments in Switzerland's defense. Switzerland was a small country (with a population of roughly 4 million) which was completely surrounded by Nazi troops and nations under Hitler's control. In comparison, the USA (arguably the safest nation for fleeing Jews) repeatedly rejected Jewish refugees and only accommodated approximately 250,000 people between the years from 1939 to 1945; tiny compared to its size. Historians today estimate that the USA could have easily accommodated over 6 million refugees.
It was the Chief of the Swiss Federal Police, Dr Heinrich Rothmund, who proposed the idea of marking Jewish passports with a red 'J', and which became an important method of discrimination adopted by the Nazis. The Swiss government wanted to know and control the amount of Jews entering Switzerland but it led to a measure that made fleeing from the Nazis even harder for Jews.
Interestingly, on the March 8, 1995, the Swiss government made an official apology for their involvement with the Nazi Party, in particular their role in developing the 'J' stamp.
Between the years of 1939 and 1945, roughly 10,276,000 tons of coal was transported from Germany to Switzerland and provided 41% of Switzerland's energy requirement.
^^^^^^^^^^
5. Switzerland and the Jews after WW2
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings/sinister.html
Switzerland served as a repository for Jewish capital smuggled out of Nazi Germany and the states threatened by it, and also for vast quantities of gold and other valuables plundered from Jews and others all over Europe. Right up until the end of the war, Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe. At the war's end Switzerland successfully resisted Allied calls to restitute these funds, and in the Washington Agreement of 1946 the Allies contented themselves with acceptance of a mere 12% of the stolen gold. Holocaust survivors and the heirs of those who perished met an implacable wall of bureaucracy and only a handful managed to reclaim their assets. As it turns out, some of the dormant accounts were taken by the Swiss authorities to satisfy claims of Swiss nationals whose property was seized by Communist regimes in East Central Europe.
It took the Swiss fifty-five years to exonerate (posthumously) Paul Grueninger, the police chief in the St. Gallen Canton who defied regulations and aided thousands of Austrian Jews in escaping to Switzerland. As a result of his actions, Grueninger was dismissed from the police and convicted of fraud.
Bally, the celebrated Swiss shoe company, appears to have acquired shops in Germany confiscated from Jews. Diamonds stolen from over 1,000 firms in German-occupied Belgium were sold to Swiss and Spanish dealers.
Swiss art dealers trafficked in art seized from Jews and others. Britain's chief investigator of looted art produced damning reports on the activities of the Swiss dealers. Both American and British authorities pressed for the prosecution of several of the worst offenders. Nothing, however, seems to have come of this.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/switzerland-virtual-jewish-history-tour
The Swiss government upheld the prohibition against kosher slaughter, ruling that, while it may impinge on religious freedom, it was indispensable to prevent cruelty to animals. The issue was brought to referendum and, in August 1893, an article was inserted into the Swiss confederal constitution declaring ritual slaughter illegal throughout the whole of Switzerland. That ban continues to this day.
The end of the war had delivered many thousands of Jews into the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. In 1942, the Swiss police issued a regulation that denied refugee status to refugees only on racial grounds, e.g., Jews. By the end of the war, less than 25,000 Jews were permitted to take refuge. Most of the refugees left Switzerland at the end of the war. More than 30,000 Jews were turned away according to a 25-volume study on Switzerland's role during World War II completed in 2002.
Switzerland has generally been seen of as supportive toward Israel, while maintaining its noted neutrality. This support was strengthened by an Arab terrorist attack against an El Al plane in Zurich in 1969 and an act of sabotage on a Swissair plane bound for Israel in 1970. However, like in the rest of Europe, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment has increased since September 2000 according to the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism.
The Jewish population is well represented in the textile and clockwork industries as well as manufacturers and wholesalers. Switzerland does not have much Jewish representation in Switzerland's largest industry -- chemicals. They also do not play a significant role in public banking, but European banking magnate Edmond Safra ran his banking industry from Switzerland for many years and Jews own many private banks in Switzerland. Jews are also not well represented in public service, but Switzerland's first woman president (January 1, 1999 - January 1, 2000), Ruth Dreifuss, was also Jewish.
^^^^^^^^^^
6. The Persecution by Switzerland of a Swiss Hero Because he Helped Save Jews?
ST. GALLEN, Switzerland '
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-01-mn-9232-story.html
Throughout his adult life, Paul Grueninger was a marked man: Convicted by a Swiss court of illegally helping as many as 3,000 Austrian Jews cross into Switzerland and flee the gathering storm of World War II, he was cashiered from the national constabulary, evicted from his apartment, shunned by his community. Rumors flared that he had filched valuables from defenseless refugees and taken advantage of Jewish girls.
Grueninger died in dishonor in Switzerland in 1972, 80 years old, broken and impoverished. But on Thursday, 23 years after his death, the man now known as Switzerland's Oskar Schindler was finally exonerated in the same provincial courthouse where he was convicted in 1940 of falsifying the immigration documents of Jewish refugees, thus helping them enter Switzerland.
'I'm glad it's over,' said Grueninger's daughter, Ruth Roduner, who appeared fatigued while the presiding judge made brief remarks. 'It lasted a long time, 55 years.'
The decision, made by a five-judge panel of St. Gallen's district court, marked the end of a lengthy battle for a small but dogged group of Grueninger's admirers, including several former refugees now living in the United States.
^^^^^^^^^^
B. Britain
7. Why were people so proud of the British Empire?
https://www.quora.com/Why-were-people-so-proud-of-the-British-Empire
Stephen Tempest
Because they believed it ended slavery, ensured peace, stability and the rule of law, spread the values of civilisation, and brought trade and prosperity to millions of people worldwide.