Resolute academic who looked into Switzerland's soul: Jean-François Bergier remembered
Many Swiss libraries devote more space to works about Switzerland's role in the second world war than to histories of watchmaking, pharmaceuticals - and even crossbows - combined.
That this small, neutral nation should exhibit such a vivid interest in the war says much about the intensity of feeling about what happened between Switzerland and its neighbours during the rise of Nazism and the conflagration beyond. For its detractors, Switzerland was the small, but significant, base that oiled the Nazis' financial wheels. For many Swiss, by contrast, the war was a period of plucky self-reliance when a nation of part-time soldiers used its courage and training to thwart continental Europe's most fearsome military machine. It was the work of Swiss historian Jean-François Bergier to uncover the truth.
Revelations about the dormant Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims and the stonewalling that greeted the efforts of relatives to gain access drew such stinging international criticism that in December 1996 Switzerland set up an international commission of experts to examine the country's wartime role. Bergier was roused from his bed late at night by a call from officials in Bern and asked to take on the job of chairing it. He was given quarter of an hour to make up his mind - and agreed.
The pipe-smoking Bergier was an unlikely man for the job. As a respected economic historian with links to bourgeois and rightwing politicians, his name was unknown outside academia. He had no experience of the diplomatic and media minefields that would confront the chairman of a 10-member commission, none of whom was likely to sanction a whitewash.
Backed by a staff of about 100, the commission, which reported in March 2002, went well beyond the initial question of relations with Nazi Germany. In 25 volumes and almost 11,500 pages, Bergier and his colleagues delved much deeper, encompassing the Swiss government's approach to the thousands of Jews seeking entry to escape Nazi oppression.
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That this small, neutral nation should exhibit such a vivid interest in the war says much about the intensity of feeling about what happened between Switzerland and its neighbours during the rise of Nazism and the conflagration beyond. For its detractors, Switzerland was the small, but significant, base that oiled the Nazis' financial wheels. For many Swiss, by contrast, the war was a period of plucky self-reliance when a nation of part-time soldiers used its courage and training to thwart continental Europe's most fearsome military machine. It was the work of Swiss historian Jean-François Bergier to uncover the truth.
Revelations about the dormant Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims and the stonewalling that greeted the efforts of relatives to gain access drew such stinging international criticism that in December 1996 Switzerland set up an international commission of experts to examine the country's wartime role. Bergier was roused from his bed late at night by a call from officials in Bern and asked to take on the job of chairing it. He was given quarter of an hour to make up his mind - and agreed.
The pipe-smoking Bergier was an unlikely man for the job. As a respected economic historian with links to bourgeois and rightwing politicians, his name was unknown outside academia. He had no experience of the diplomatic and media minefields that would confront the chairman of a 10-member commission, none of whom was likely to sanction a whitewash.
Backed by a staff of about 100, the commission, which reported in March 2002, went well beyond the initial question of relations with Nazi Germany. In 25 volumes and almost 11,500 pages, Bergier and his colleagues delved much deeper, encompassing the Swiss government's approach to the thousands of Jews seeking entry to escape Nazi oppression.