Swiss reactions

The Task Force and the federal decree of December 1996

The Swiss government was slow to grasp the scale of the crisis. Its first institutional response came in the autumn of 1996. On 25 October 1996 the Federal Council appointed the diplomat Thomas Borer as ambassador and head of the Task Force “Switzerland – Second World War”, which was to coordinate the federal government’s response on dormant assets, Nazi gold, looted property and refugee policy.¹ Borer became the public face of Switzerland in the American media for more than two years until the Task Force was dissolved at the end of March 1999.

In December 1996 the Federal Assembly adopted the decisive legal instrument. The federal decree of 13 December 1996 on the historical and legal investigation of the fate of assets that reached Switzerland as a result of National Socialist rule created the basis for the Independent Commission of Experts that Jean-François Bergier would chair. Two of its provisions changed the legal position of the banks immediately. Article 4 prohibited the destruction of documents that might be useful to the investigation, as well as their removal abroad or any other measure that would make them less accessible. Article 5 obliged banks, insurers and other institutions to give the commission’s experts access to all relevant records and stated that this duty took precedence over every statutory and contractual duty of confidentiality.² For the first time since 1934, the Confederation had set aside banking secrecy by statute for a historical inquiry. The decree entered into force on the day after its adoption, which gave the prohibition of destruction a date that would become important within weeks.

Delamuraz and the word “blackmail”

The most damaging Swiss contribution to the crisis came from the head of state himself. In an interview at the end of his year as President of the Confederation, published at the turn of 1996 to 1997, Jean-Pascal Delamuraz described the demand for a compensation fund as Lösegeld-Erpressung, ransom and extortion, and suggested that paying into such a fund would amount to an admission of guilt.³ The remark was widely reported in the United States as an accusation of blackmail against Jewish organisations. The World Jewish Congress condemned it and criticised the Swiss government for failing to repudiate it.⁴ Delamuraz expressed his regret on 14 January 1997. By then the remark had become a symbol, cited in American newspapers for years as evidence of Swiss arrogance.

A second diplomatic accident followed within weeks. In January 1997 a confidential strategy paper by the Swiss ambassador in Washington, Carlo Jagmetti, was leaked to the press. It stated that Switzerland was in a war that it had to win on the external and internal fronts. Jagmetti resigned on 27 January 1997.⁵ Both incidents revealed the gap between the language of Swiss internal deliberation and the expectations of an American public that followed the matter through the lens of the Holocaust. They also taught Swiss diplomacy that in a crisis of this kind every document may become public.

The Special Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust

Within weeks of the Delamuraz remark, the position of the Swiss establishment changed. After the three big banks had announced a contribution of CHF 100 million to a humanitarian fund in early 1997, the Federal Council established the Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust/Shoa by an ordinance of 26 February 1997, which took effect on 1 March 1997.⁶ The fund received contributions from the big banks, the Swiss National Bank and private industry. Its capital amounted to CHF 273 million, which grew with interest to about CHF 295 million. Payments went to about 312,000 needy survivors in more than 60 countries, in individual amounts between CHF 600 and CHF 2,000 depending on local purchasing power. Rolf Bloch presided over the fund, whose executive comprised four Swiss members and three international members recommended by the World Jewish Restitution Organization.⁷ The final applications were approved on 14 December 2000.

The fund was a humanitarian gesture and was designed as such. It made no finding of legal liability and did not settle any claim. Its significance lay in the speed and breadth of its distribution. Survivors in Eastern Europe, who had received little or nothing from the German compensation programmes of the post-war decades, were among the principal beneficiaries. The fund also marked a shift in the posture of the Swiss authorities from defence to cooperation.

The Swiss Solidarity Foundation

On 5 March 1997 President Arnold Koller announced before the Federal Assembly a far more ambitious project, a Swiss Solidarity Foundation to be financed from the revaluation of the Swiss National Bank’s gold reserves. The Maissen text refers to it as the 7-Milliarden-Stiftung der Nationalbank, the seven-billion foundation of the National Bank.⁸ The foundation was to use the income from its capital for humanitarian purposes in Switzerland and abroad. Conceived as a forward-looking answer to the questions raised by the past, it was deliberately not tied to the Holocaust alone.

The project became entangled with domestic politics over the use of the National Bank’s surplus gold, which chapter F.I and the chapters on monetary policy discuss in their wider context. Parliament eventually proposed a counter-project under which about 1,300 tonnes of gold, then worth about CHF 18 billion, would be placed in a fund for thirty years, with the proceeds divided equally among the Solidarity Foundation, the old-age insurance (AHV) and the cantons. On 22 September 2002 the Swiss people rejected both the counter-proposal and a competing initiative of the Swiss People’s Party. The counter-proposal failed with 51.8 per cent of the votes against it.⁹ The Solidarity Foundation was never established. The vote showed that a large part of the population, by 2002, regarded the matter as closed by the 1998 settlement and did not wish to tie the national gold reserves to it.

The banks’ own lists and the first Claims Resolution Tribunal

The banks meanwhile took their own steps. On 23 July 1997 the Swiss Bankers Association published in newspapers and on the internet the names of the holders of more than 1,870 dormant accounts opened before 1945, followed by a second list on 29 October 1997.¹⁰ The lists contained names of Swiss holders and, controversially, names of persons with a connection to the National Socialist regime, which showed how little the banks had sorted their own data. To examine claims to these accounts, an arbitral tribunal was set up in Zurich in 1997, later called the first Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT-I). It arbitrated claims to 5,570 accounts and awarded approximately 207 accounts worth a total of USD 18.2 million to victims of Nazi persecution or their heirs.¹¹ CRT-I was a private arbitration under Swiss law whose procedures its successor would later refine.

Notes

1. Wikipedia, “Thomas Borer”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borer; on the mandate see also infoclio.ch, “Die Task Force Schweiz – Zweiter Weltkrieg”, https://www.infoclio.ch/de/die-task-force-schweiz-%E2%80%93-zweiter-weltkrieg, which calls the episode the greatest foreign policy crisis of Switzerland since the end of the Second World War. ↩
2. Bundesbeschluss betreffend die historische und rechtliche Untersuchung des Schicksals der infolge der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft in die Schweiz gelangten Vermögenswerte, 13 December 1996, Arts. 4, 5 and 11, https://www.uek.ch/de/auftrag/19961213bb_de.pdf. Art. 4 reads: “Akten, die der Untersuchung nach Artikel 1 dienlich sein könnten, dürfen nicht vernichtet, ins Ausland gebracht oder sonstwie schwerer zugänglich gemacht werden.” The decree was limited until 31 December 2001. ↩
3. “Die Schweiz und die nationalsozialistische Hinterlassenschaft” (as above), which refers to the provocation caused by “ein Interview zum Jahresende” of Federal President Delamuraz; the date of the apology (14 January 1997) is given in the same text. ↩
4. Congressional Research Service, RL30262 (as above), entries for late December 1996 and 5 January 1997. ↩
5. Congressional Research Service, RL30262 (as above), entry for 27 January 1997. ↩
6. Parliamentary Services, “Die Schweiz und der Zweite Weltkrieg – Chronologie”, https://www.parlament.ch/centers/documents/de/ch-wk2-chronologie-d.pdf, entries of 5 February 1997 (“Die drei Schweizer Grossbanken stellen 100 Mio Fr. für einen humanitären Fonds zugunsten der Nazi-Opfer zur Verfügung”) and 26 February 1997 (ordinance on the special fund, in force 1 March 1997). ↩
7. Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust/Shoa, Final Report, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/109711/FDA_Final%20Report%20on%20Swiss%20Fund%20for%20Holocaust%20Victims_engl.pdf. According to the report, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union received 43.1 per cent of the funds distributed and Israel 29.3 per cent. ↩
8. “Die Schweiz und die nationalsozialistische Hinterlassenschaft” (as above), which also mentions the “265-Millionen-Fonds der Wirtschaft”. ↩
9. politchronik.swiss, “Volksinitiative ‘Überschüssige Goldreserven in den AHV-Fonds’ (BRG 01.020)”, https://politchronik.swiss/de/prozesse/837-volksinitiative-uberschussige-goldreserven-in-den-ahv-fonds-brg-01-020. The initiative was rejected with 52.4 per cent of the votes; turnout was 45.2 per cent. ↩
10. Congressional Research Service, RL30262 (as above), entries for 23 July and 29 October 1997. ↩
11. Swiss Banks Settlement: In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation, “Deposited Assets Claims”, https://www.swissbankclaims.com/DepositedAssets.aspx.html. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.