PARIS — As the dark clouds of World War II gathered over Europe, Jews by the tens of thousands desperately hoped to find sanctuary in neutral Switzerland. Many were turned away at the frontier, or even handed to the Nazis by the Swiss.
But in other cases, even those permitted to cross the Alps to safety were not at the end of their ordeals. A study--to be formally released today in Los Angeles, and already disputed in Switzerland--asserts that the thousands of Jewish refugees who were confined by the Swiss in camps were kept under grim, sometimes cruel conditions behind barbed wire at gunpoint and forced to work for little or no pay.
Many families were separated by police--including, in some cases, nursing infants from their mothers--the historical study says. A "special Jew-tax," it says, was levied on the richest foreign Jews--but not on Christians or refugees of other faiths--to help underwrite their upkeep in Switzerland.
"The Swiss were really sadistic: They wanted to hurt the Jews--to deliberately hurt the Jews," Alan Morris Schom, the American historian who wrote the study, said in a telephone interview from his home in the Loire Valley of France.
After more than a year of research, including into archival records recently declassified by the British Foreign Office, Schom concluded that there is no doubt that the camps--which held an estimated 22,500 men, women and children by 1944--were meant specifically for Jewish refugees.
"At least 80% of the inmates were Jews," Schom said. "Some camps had up to 95% or 98% Jewish membership."
Men as old as 60 were made to haul logs in forests or dig ditches on roads in the Alps, including during the harsh Swiss winter, Schom said. Women were often assigned to institutions and private homes to mop floors and clean toilets.
Living conditions in unheated barns or wooden barracks were spartan at best. Male inmates might be insulted with anti-Semitic remarks or forced to carry out tasks beyond their physical strength, Schom said. Refugees who complained could be sent to "punishment camps" or expelled from Switzerland altogether.
"These were really slave labor camps," Schom maintained. "On the whole, people were absolute prisoners. If they tried to leave their jobs, they could be handed back to the Gestapo."
