Word: swiss
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Swiss banks have been following orders for the past 50 years. And for most of that time, one standing order has been to stall and stonewall when Holocaust survivors ask about their dead relatives' accounts. Passbook, please; death certificate, please; that's the law; those are the orders...
...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...
...most damaging blow to Swiss credibility came on the night of Jan. 9. During regular rounds at the main Union Bank of Switzerland office in Zurich, security guard Christoph Meili, 29, peeked into the shredding room. There he saw two carts full of documents waiting to be destroyed. Meili noticed that some of them concerned dealings with Germany during the 1940s, including sales of confiscated properties. All of them were protected by recent Swiss regulations forbidding the destruction of any documents that might help clarify Switzerland's wartime banking role...