Who takes up a book, don’t miss the dedications. In this case, you surprise particularly: Balz Spörri and René Staubli, two of the three authors dedicate their on Tuesday, emergent, historical non-fiction book to their offspring. Now a story about a Swiss concentration camp victims is, in the form of a book, perhaps not the most obvious reading of a young Generation. Even more striking is the dedications – one is tempted to interpret it as a reminder that the next Generation of posterity shall remain the atrocities of this time aware of. According to experience, the memories fade away, when the last time a witness died. In this case, particularly fatal, we experience it but just that at the right edge of the political parties with the theme of national socialism as a “bird-shit” of German history is gezündelt.
Together with fellow Journalists Benno Tuchschmid, the authors place the 300 pages of Text and image an impressive Overview of the fates of the Swiss concentration camp victims. You know to tell their stories so that you will be shaken 80 years later of them. It was not enough to greet a passing marching storm troopers, the SA, the Hitler salute, as a Swiss abroad beaten, and to be dissipated; it is enough to be gay; who was in a Communist sports club that lost the diplomatic protection of their home country, because you do not want to have such a father landless journeymen here.
The Swiss dance teacher Marcelle Giudici-Fox on the beach in Royan on the French Atlantic coast before the Deportation. Photo: archive of Marie-Claire Giudici, Royan
The book traces the spectrum of the victim with ten life stories: Marcelle Giudici-Fox, a joyful young mother and dance teacher, after the occupation of France by the Nazis, deported to Auschwitz and killed there; Fritz and Frieda Abegg, son and daughter of a migrant the Obwalden Chancellery peasant family, deported because of the support of the Austrian partisans, and then lost; Gino Pezzani, a Ticinese painter, deported from France to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on suspicion of supporting the resistance, released in 1945 a broken man.
little protection from Switzerland
create The reactions of politicians, media and institutions in this country to the growing national socialist atrocities in the neighbouring state, the arc of suspense through the whole book. Especially because they vary in the different phases of concentration camp so different. Only Swiss function carrier of Germany, to temporarily still such a thing as courage to recognize, for example, the envoy Paul Dinichert, intervening in individual cases of detained Swiss in Berlin, fearless, and also the one or other release causes. The bearings serve Laundry in this Phase, in the first line of Repression, intimidation and the brain. Also, the Department of justice in Bern, comes repeatedly to the conclusion that the imposition of “protective custody” against a Swiss citizen, so the detention was not permissible.
And, although the Repression for the Swiss abroad with Jewish roots now life-threatening is not increased in Switzerland the protection of its citizens.
Many Swiss media, however, the critical distance to this reign of terror early on, miss, before Switzerland introduced the censorship. The authors document a propaganda report from the “Schweizer illustrierte” from the Oranienburg concentration camp, published at the beginning of spring 1933 (the”work distraction”). Also, the “Berner Tagblatt” published a laudatory report of the prison Director in Witzwil sees his institution as a model of the German camp. And the International Committee of the Red cross is still in 1940 after a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp satisfied about the conditions of detention, as the program of systematic extermination of what the Nazis as “unworthy of life” as defined, already in progress.
After the occupation of France by the Nazis, Switzerland will be even more cautious against the big neighbour, the number of endangered citizens abroad is increasing with the advance of the German troops. And though the Repression for the Swiss abroad with Jewish roots now life-threatening is increased in Switzerland the protection of its citizens. In Berlin, meanwhile, Dinichert, Hans Frölicher, the uncomfortable as the Swiss envoy replaced. He sympathizes with the totalitarian European regimes, and anything other than a good patron Saint for the victims.
contacts to the policy were extremely helpful
The question of what could have been aware of the Switzerland, which is the time about the atrocities and how much they did for the Concerned, engaged the authors of the entire book. Interesting especially for what the victims of the official Switzerland began: At least they did for marginalized and Left, which they classified as enemies of Switzerland, and, in General, little for the Jews, prior to their systematic persecution and extermination of you loss long the eye.
most of all, Switzerland was, for those whose nationals with a function carrier in politics or police were personally known. In hindsight, it almost appears as a random, who could be tracked down in the last days of the disintegration of Nazi rule before the death marches and saved. For most it was too late.
The book gives in a final memorial list to send all the Victims a name, some, a face. Abroad, there are such lists for a long time, for Switzerland, this is a novelty. You can imagine today, what have suffered, these victims – not to speak of that ever again, there may come a time, in the people of the other cause among the fictions of race, normality, and political views a million times sorry.
Balz Spörri, René Staubli,Benno Tuchschmid:”The Swiss concentration camp prisoners. Forgotten victims of the third Reich”, NZZ Libro, 318 p., CA. 48 Swiss francs book Vernissage: 29. 10., 19.30, cosmos, Zurich
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Created: 26.10.2019, 17:20 PM
