Letters

Sir -- In your review of Elazar Barkan's book, "The Guilt of Nations" ("Blanket Apology", May 27th), you write that the author's "Detailed account of the stonewalling and bureaucratic obfuscation of the Swiss banks in particular, and of their wholesale confiscation of dormant Jewish accounts, makes dismal reading".

The recent Volcker report came to exactly the opposite conclusion; that there has been no confiscation -- wholesale or otherwise -- of dormant accounts of Jews or anyone else by Swiss banks.

Moreover, of the millions of non-active accounts investigated, few can be linked demonstrably to victims of the Holocaust. The vast majority of Holocaust-related accounts were duly claimed at the end of the war or were uncovered between 1962 and 1972 in a Swiss-initiated investigation.

The myth of Swiss banks having grown fat at the expense of Holocaust victims does not stand alone.

It is not widely known that between September and December 1942 -- the crucial months when the "final solution" was implemented in occupied Europe -- 96% of the Jewish asylum-seekers who presented themselves at the border gained admittance into neutral Switzerland.

Jean-Christian Lambelet
Lausanne, Switzerland

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Website comment: a multi-page 1944 report by the World Jewish Congress) paid particular tribute to the efforts of the Swiss Government in accommodating Jewish refugees.

 

Related story: Three accounts with a total sum of 11.000 Swiss Francs were traced as holocaust victims