Switzerland used some of the unclaimed assets of Holocaust victims as payment for its own postwar claims against other European nations, a Swiss historian says.
Peter Hug, who searched 6,500 boxes of official letters, diplomatic notes and other documents at the Swiss government's request, said Thursday the research revealed what happened to millions of dollars of the money that European Jews deposited in Swiss accounts.Attracted by Switzerland's banking secrecy laws and its neutrality, many Jews deposited their money in Swiss accounts for safekeeping as the Nazis gained power in Germany.
Over the years, many Holocaust survivors and the heirs of victims have pressed the Swiss government to return the deposits, but have lacked bank account numbers and other evidence and have largely been ignored.
"For me, what is morally very, very questionable is that for 50 years, Switzerland did nothing to try to find the people this money actually belonged to," said Hug, a University of Bern historian.
After World War II, Hug said, Swiss businesses and individuals were seeking compensation from Eastern European countries whose new communist governments had nationalized economies and confiscated what had been Swiss-owned property.
The Swiss government used the dormant deposits to entice Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to pay the compensation, Hug said.
After searching through unclaimed Swiss bank accounts and insurance policies, Swiss authorities promised Poland some $1.6 million of unclaimed Polish money. Of that, it paid less than $400,000.
Last week, U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., alleged during a hearing in New York that Switzerland made a deal with Poland in 1949 under which Swiss citizens and corporations whose property was nationalized by the Polish communists could be paid back with deposits of heirless Polish Jews.
Swiss Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti said Wednesday that D'Ama-to's claims were "so far, totally without foundation." But he promised a thorough investigation.