Word: switzerland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Switzerland's Bloch reminds, there is "no Ali Baba cave under the Swiss National Bank, filled with gold and jewels." The dormant accounts will probably yield little cash, and how will anyone know how much of the $68 million in Nazi gold the Allies have left was taken from Jews rather than from national treasuries? Whatever money is eventually deemed to belong to the Jews will never be more than a tiny fraction of what was taken so viciously from them. Something akin to the truth may well be all that is left to solace them...
Number 45 Bahnhofstrasse is an imposing building in central Zurich. Its monumental columns are topped by the sculpted heads of a peasant patriot, a mother, the god Mercury and William Tell, the mythic Swiss hero. This secular temple is the main branch of the Union Bank of Switzerland. Inside, there are acres of reddish brown Tessin marble. The ornate overhead moldings frame a 20-ft. by 30-ft. skylight. A uniformed guard approaches: "Who are you? What are you doing? Identification papers, please." Is this brusque aggressiveness necessary? "I am only following orders," he says in German...
...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...
...Swiss Jews wish the Americans would back off a bit. "Many Swiss resent that they are made to feel guilty," says Rolf Bloch, 66, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities. "If they are attacked in a collective way, they will react. One reaction is anti-Semitism. In Switzerland today, there is not as much anti-Semitism as in the '30s. But it's flaring up again...
...hardest part of facing history is accepting guilt--not as individuals but as a nation. "Switzerland never said, 'We're sorry,'" says a Swiss banker. "We didn't do the worst things, but we did things we are not proud of--awful things. No one today has any guilt relating to that time. But we must acknowledge that the Swiss made mistakes, say we're sorry, then make the proper gestures...