Once again debate has arisen concerning the measures that should be taken by Switzerland to settle the claims of Holocaust victims whose stolen property made its way into Swiss banks.

The compensations provided by my country to date have been widely portrayed not as an honorable act of compassion but as evidence of a guilty national conscience. This confusion comes after two years of accusations that Switzerland collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II by stealing Jewish property and mistreating refugees. These charges were not based on any new information. All the relevant details have been available since 1946. But what is new is the surge of resentment against Switzerland, and the ignorance that underlies it. Since I directed the Swiss war economy during the menacing years of World War II, when we had to prepare against Nazi aggression, I’m appalled to see Swiss wartime actions misrepresented so consistently. It is time to set the record straight.

To begin with, Swiss neutrality during the war was not an opportunistic subterfuge. It was a continuation of our policy, maintained over centuries, of achieving permanent armed neutrality. That neutrality is based on explicit provisions of international law recognized by the Allies, and it includes the obligation not to take sides with any belligerent nation. It has never implied moral indifference. During World War II the vast majority of Swiss sympathized with the Allies and our shared democratic traditions. That is why Hitler continually expressed contempt for us. Many who now criticize Switzerland’s neutrality overlook the contributions it enabled us to make. Our International Red Cross was permitted into Germany and Japan, where it saved the lives of many Allied prisoners of war.
Neutrality also enabled Max Waibel, a Swiss intelligence official, to assist in arranging a conference at which Allen Dulles, then an official with the American Office of Strategic Services, met with the German commanders in Italy to negotiate an early German surrender, thereby reducing bloodshed and destruction in the final days of the war.
This same spirit animated the efforts of Walter Stucki, a Swiss diplomat who prevailed upon the Germans to hand over the city of Vichy to the Allies peacefully. These are just two examples of many acts of mercy and courage shown by the Swiss people.
Switzerland wasn’t fully free, however, to act as it wished during the war, as President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill both understood. We were blockaded by the German Army on one side and by the Allies on the other.
To avoid economic strangulation we had to negotiate constantly with both sides. Swiss industries developed armaments for our own defense and supplied them to Germany at its demand and to the Allies at theirs.
Despite these constraints, we defied Germany by sending the Allies precision instruments from our watch industry. We also smuggled plans and know-how to the Allies so they could start up their own production of these items.
And while the Germans forced us to expand our credit lines so they could import more Swiss goods, we used German coal, oil, steel, cement and food to build our mountain fortifications and the guns that held off the threat of Nazi Invasion.
Some have argued that we should have been tougher with the Germans after the fall of Stalingrad in 1943, which reduced Nazi power in Europe and slightly eased our long-term military concerns.
But that turn of events also made Hitler desperate and multiplied the risk of his making unpredictable moves against Switzerland.
The issue of Jewish property has also been misunderstood. First, Switzerland was not the preferred destination for those trying to get their holdings out of Europe. The United States was. Even Switzerland kept the bulk of its gold reserves in Fort Knox. As far as I know, aside from a few isolated instances, Swiss banks did not pocket unclaimed deposits. These accounts continue to exist and are still available to legitimate claimants and their heirs.
I’m confident that current investigations will show that only a tiny fraction of those accounts are associated directly with the Holocaust. In any case, those records are available for inspection. Other countries, including the United States, simply took the money after a period of time and de-stroyed the records. There is also a good deal of confusion about Switzerland’s handling of gold trans-actions with Nazi Germany. Some of the gold the Germans sold us had apparently been looted from Jews. But we had no way of investigating this.
Furthermore, international law required the Swiss National Bank to deal equally with every country, including Germany, that wanted to buy our currency with gold. We lacked a legal basis, not to mention the military might, to cut the Germans off.
In 1946, the Allies and Switzerland signed the Washington Agreement, which settled the postwar claims of various European banks. Initially, the United States still held six billion francs in frozen Swiss assets as well as gold payments owed to the Swiss National Bank. Because international law supported the Swiss position, the United States released the assets.
Switzerland, like the United States, made a contribution to the recovery of Europe at that time because she had suffered less than most. The attempt to reopen this settlement a half-century later is scandalous.

Of all the allegations that have been made against Switzerland, nothing disturbs me more than the charge that my country was insensitive to the plight of wartime refugees. In 1938, when it became clear that substantial numbers of people would soon be fleeing German control, an international conference was held in Evian, France.
The Swiss offered to take an unlimited number of refugees on a temporary basis. Despite our tiny population (about half that of New York City), we accepted more than 300 000 people. It is true that we turned away 30 000 Jews. But we sheltered 25 000 other Jews at a time when other countries, including the United States, shut their doors firmly against Jewish refugees.
Some have pointed out that many refugees were housed in temporary camps, along with the thousands of Allied soldiers and pilots who sought internment in Switzerland rather than be sent to Nazi prisons or face death. Yet how else could a small mountainous country deal with a sudden population increase of nearly 10 percent – in wartime?
Today a generation that knows nothing about World War II is being misled about my country. To compare a diplomat like Walter Stucki with an SS executioner, as some have done, is untrue and shows bad faith. The same holds for those who have referred to the defensive strategy of General Henri Guisan as a «submissive gesture», when in fact the Germans hated Guisan because of his visceral distaste for Nazism.
It is time for these falsehoods and half truths to stop. All my life I have done my best to foster good relations with America, Switzerland’s great sister republic. But good relations must rest on truth.