Geneva reveals archive secrets about World War Two refugees
The Geneva authorities have published a preliminary report about the treatment of refugees at their border during the Second World War. Historians have examined 10 per cent of some 20,000 files kept in the state archives.
The first element to appear from the historians’ work is that border guards did not all behave the same way during the war. According to Geneva minister Robert Cramer, the canton’s inhabitants “weren’t all heroes, but they weren’t all evil either.”
On the basis of the files already examined, the historians believe eight per cent of Jewish refugees who made it the border were turned back. This is equivalent to 800 people.
Of these 800 people, one hundred are on a register that lists Jews deported from France to concentration camps. The fate of the other 700 is not known.
The canton also had a certain amount of leeway when dealing with refugees. Sometimes the authorities made the most of that freedom, other times the applied federal regulations to the letter.
Geneva was the main Swiss gateway for refugees during the war. The canton had kept nearly all the files on border crossings between August 1942 and the end of the conflict.
swissinfo with agencies
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