Jews Defend WWII Swiss, Lawmaker Says

Nearly 100 Jews who were in Swiss work camps during World War II have sent messages of thanks to the neutral nation for saving them from the Holocaust, a Swiss lawmaker said Wednesday.

Francois Loeb said the vast majority of replies to an appeal he made for information about wartime experiences were positive.

Loeb had asked Jews to write to him in response to a scathing report last month by the Simon Wiesenthal Center accusing the Swiss of using refugees as virtual slave labor. Loeb said he will send the survivors’ accounts to the Los Angeles-based center.

“Although many of the conditions wouldn’t meet today’s standards, we find the current campaign against Switzerland is unjustified,” said one letter signed by 15 Jews from the United States, Israel, Italy, South Africa, Argentina, Croatia and Australia. “We haven’t forgotten that we owe our lives to the Swiss people.”

Loeb said he had also been given a copy of a document from 1945 in which 60 refugees voiced their thanks to the commander of a camp in the Bern region.

Only a small proportion of the letters reported problems in individual camps, Loeb said.

Switzerland has been accused of acting as Adolf Hitler’s banker and of sitting on assets of Holocaust victims.

However, the report by the Wiesenthal Center has prompted erstwhile critics to spring to the defense of the Swiss. These include U.S. Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat, a Clinton administration expert on the Holocaust era.

Switzerland has said that although conditions in the work camps were tough, many Swiss nationals suffered similar hardships.