Word: golds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...orders are changing. Under pressure from home and abroad, two high-level commissions named by the Swiss government are examining the issues of Holocaust-era bank accounts; Swiss gold purchases and commerce with the Nazis; and the country's less than hospitable treatment of Jewish and other refugees. The poking and prodding are forcing the Swiss into an uncomfortable bout of national soul searching in which their image as a proud neutral country--founder of the Red Cross, defender of democratic values, oasis of peace and multiethnic harmony--is being challenged by a more sinister image: that of a self...
...Swiss are not alone in examining their conscience--and account books--in these closing years of the 20th century. The Swedish government has ordered a commission to look into its purchases of Nazi gold and the bank accounts of Jews who died in the war. The Bank of Portugal is examining the origins of the nearly 300 tons of gold it bought from the Nazis. In France investigations are now under way to identify confiscated Jewish properties owned by the city of Paris and stolen artworks held by the Louvre and other museums...
...Swiss thought they had dealt with the past, at least in legal terms, through their 1946 agreement with the Allies to return $60 million worth of gold that was believed to have been looted by the Nazis from the central banks of occupied states. The issue of dormant private accounts first came up in 1962. Prompted by Jewish agencies and the state of Israel, the Swiss Bankers Association ordered its members to search for deposits abandoned by Holocaust victims. The process netted a mere $7 million, and though only 26 of 500 banks had bothered to respond...
...part of ordinary Swiss citizens who feel unfairly accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Says army veteran Daniel Besson, 77, of Vuarrens: "I bitterly regret the five winters I spent under arms during the war, with all the privations that involved, in order to guard that mountain of Jewish gold [in the Swiss banks]. If they want to revive the anti-Semitic sentiments of before the war, they couldn't go about it any better...
...TIME's Paris bureau chief and roving European correspondent, had no sooner returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos two weeks ago than he did a quick U-turn back to Switzerland to report and write this week's cover story on the Holocaust bank accounts and Nazi gold. It turned out to be something of a journalistic U-turn as well. "Previously my reporting in Switzerland was limited to the occasional business item," says Sancton. "Suddenly I was confronted with a Swiss story of major proportions, one with intrigue, human drama and historical scope." The tale, as Sancton...