How a Swiss aid operation helped former SS members reach Brazil 

Danube Swabians wait in Linz, Austria, in May 1951 for the departure of the train that will take them to a Mediterranean port, from where they will emigrate to Brazil. Margrit Bäumlin / Keystone

New research reveals how former Waffen-SS members were included in one of Switzerland’s largest post-war humanitarian projects and ended up living freely in the South American country. 

Crossing the Atlantic on a journey of around 10,000 kilometres to Brazil was long, expensive and difficult. But for around 2,500 people known as the Danube Swabians, it became an opportunity for a new beginning. Of German origin and language, these people had lived for generations in what was then Yugoslavia but, after the Second World War, faced reprisals, expropriations and expulsions after part of the community had collaborated with the Nazi regime. 

Among those who chose to leave Europe for Brazil, however, were at least 16 former members of the Waffen-SS, the paramilitary branch of the Nazi Party, whose units were involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity. These men did not arrive in the South American country on their own. They came as beneficiaries of a Swiss humanitarian operation that mobilised the Catholic Church, NGOs and Swiss government funds to establish a new colony in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná. 

“It was known that Nazi war criminals were leaving Europe through the so-called ratlines, and it was evident that men there [within the project] were Nazis and members of the SS. But even so, nobody asked questions,” says Peter Hug, a Swiss historian specialising in Switzerland’s relations with Nazi Germany and author of Humanitäre Hilfe der Schweiz für SS-Kriegsverbrecher (Swiss humanitarian aid for SS war criminals), the book that reveals the story.  

Danube Swabians wait in Genoa, Italy, in May 1951 to continue their journey to Brazil. Margrit Bäumlin / Keystone

Published in May 2026, his research documents the presence of at least 16 former Waffen-SS members among the settlers sent to Brazil and reconstructs how Swiss humanitarian organisations and authorities helped make their resettlement possible. 

“For Switzerland and the Vatican, this population became an opportunity to present themselves as defenders of refugees, after Switzerland had been very close to the German regime and the Church had never formally protested against Nazi crimes. The fact that there were criminals among them ended up being considered less important,” he adds. 

The establishment of the colony, called Entre Rios, also affected populations who already lived and worked on the farms allocated to the Europeans. They ended up marginalised within the new social structure, amid an attempt by the settlement’s leaders to preserve a supposed German cultural superiority. 

An operation involving several actors 

The operation that brought former Waffen-SS members to Brazil began to take shape in the years immediately after the war, through an articulation between representatives of the Catholic Church in Austria and the Vatican and a group of Danube Swabians linked to the former Ustasha state in Croatia, a fascist puppet state that existed from 1941 to 1945.  

“The idea came from Croatian priests close to the Germans and from Andreas Rohracher,” says Hug, referring to the then Archbishop of Salzburg and one of the most influential figures in the Austrian Catholic Church, who, according to Hug, was close to Austrofascism, the authoritarian Catholic-conservative regime that ruled Austria from 1934 to 1938. 

“From 1945, they wanted to create closed settlements for the Danube Swabians, where the idea of German cultural superiority could be preserved even after the defeat in the war,” he says. 

The project gained momentum with the involvement of Caritas, the Catholic humanitarian non-profit organisation based in Lucerne. According to Hug, the organisation had a fundamental advantage: it was part of a Catholic network with a global presence and capable of opening doors in different countries.  

“It was a huge operation which needed to be coordinated globally on two continents,” he says. 

The scale of the undertaking, however, eventually exceeded Caritas’s capacity. From 1950 onwards, the project passed into the hands of the Schweizer Europahilfe, or Swiss European Aid, an organisation close to the government. With it came Swiss diplomacy, resources and more direct involvement by the country’s authorities in the operation that would eventually choose the interior of the Brazilian state of Paraná as its destination. 

The beginnings of international aid: After World War II, Caritas Switzerland provided support to people in war-torn areas by sending food and clothing packages. Keystone / Caritas Schweiz

The change was not merely administrative. In Hug’s assessment, the project became an operation combining Switzerland’s humanitarian, diplomatic and economic interests. “The project started within the Catholic Church. Then they had big problems, and then it was the Swiss government and these NGOs around the Swiss government who took it over,” Hug says. 

At the centre of the operation was the Agrária Cooperative, created in 1951 to organise the new settlement. Its first president, Michael Moor, had held leadership positions in economic organisations of the German community in the Ustasha State of Croatia, an ally of the Nazis, and had influence over the choice of land and the first groups sent to Brazil. 

The colony and its collective memory 

“These families lived as refugees and stateless people in Europe after having actively participated in the Second World War on Germany’s side. The main difference, which we must emphasise, is the fact that some of the adult men sent with their families to Entre Rios had fought in the war as members of the Waffen-SS. This did not prevent them from entering Brazil,” says Méri Frotscher, a history professor at the State University of the Midwest (Unicentro) and a researcher on German immigration. 

In Brazil, the Swabians arrived at a time when the country was reopening to European immigration and were presented to the authorities as refugees and skilled farmers, a profile that suited the country’s colonisation policy. 

A past that challenges Swiss neutrality 

For Hug, more than revealing failures in a specific humanitarian operation, the Entre Rios case challenges the way Switzerland has constructed and preserved its own memory of the Second World War. 

“We are neutral. We are humanitarian. And we are the best in the world,” Hug says ironically, describing this narrative. “The island of peace in a world of chaos. And this is wrong.” 

More than seven decades later, this reassessment is beginning to reach the Swiss organisations involved in the operation, as well as the impact that initiatives such as the creation of the Entre Rios colony had in Switzerland and on local populations. 

SWISSAID acknowledges that the perspective of local populations remains largely unexplored and says it is seeking out their descendants to learn their side of the story. “We are currently in the process of establishing contact with the descendants of the communities affected at the time,” the organisation said in a statement to Swissinfo. 

SWISSAID argues that this historical reassessment should not be restricted to humanitarian organisations. “It remains to be seen how the story can be told from a Southern perspective. Perhaps, and hopefully,  the [Swiss government] will take an interest in coming to terms with this part of history”. 

Soldiers gathered in a courtyard in Brasília, waiting to patrol in front of the National Congress on April 4, 1964. Public domain / Arquivo Nacional Collection

Caritas Switzerland also now acknowledges serious failures in the operation. The organisation says there was no individual vetting of the backgrounds of the selected settlers and regrets that funds intended for humanitarian purposes benefited members of the Waffen-SS. 

“We deeply regret that, through this project, funds intended for humanitarian purposes benefited people who were members of the Waffen-SS,” the organisation said in a statement. 

Caritas also offers a critical assessment of the impact on the population already living in the region, saying their rights and needs were not considered in the planning. For Caritas, the creation of a closed European settler colony was rooted in a colonial logic and today serves as an example of how humanitarian aid can produce the opposite of its intended effect. 

“The approach taken and the establishment of a closed settler colony in Brazil after the Second World War can serve today as a warning of how aid can turn into its opposite,” the organisation said in a statement. 

The Agrária Cooperative did not respond to requests for comment. 

Edited by Virginie Mangin/ts