A REPORT FROM SWITZERLAND

by Max Morf

About 100 years ago, Friedrich Engels spoke of Switzerland as a small country
that, like Holland, fits for a European testing ground for all sorts of
political and social experiments. Karl Marx's associate was certainly right as
far as funds extortion is concerned.

On August 12, 1998, the big Swiss banks Credit Suisse Group and UBS did a deal
with the representatives of the victims of the Holocaust and various American
politicians. They agreed to pay US$ 1.25 billion, in return for which all the
pending class actions against the Swiss National Bank would be dropped,
although claims against certain Swiss insurance companies re to continue. This
agreement enables the Swiss banks to pursue their business in the USA. Only
weeks before, the banks had proclaimed loudly that their final offer was
US$600 million, but the threat of a boycott forced them to pay more than
double that.

How could such a situation have come about? To answer this question we have to
go back to 1934, when the banking-secret was introduced into Swiss law, in
order to protect primarily the interests of foreign customers from the
authorities of their respective countries. The bulk of these clients were
German Jews who were treated by the banks like other German citizens, i.e.
without any reference to religion or race.

Due to her neutrality and her convertible currency, Switzerland was considered
a safe financial haven at the time. As the threat of war increased, however,
this could not be guaranteed. Consequently many depositors had their accounts
transferred to Great Britain, the USA, Palestine or South America, to mention
just a few destinations.

Surrounded

Until 1942, thanks to the Geneva loophole with a railway link to the
unoccupied part of France, Switzerland could maintain commercial relations
with the Allied powers. With the occupation of the whole of France, however,
Switzerland was completely surrounded by Axis forces, and trade was limited to
those countries. In this context, a solid and stable currency was of paramount
importance to Switzerland, particularly June 1941, thereafter the Swiss franc
began to replace the US dollar as an international means of payment on the
continent.

Since the international gold standard still prevailed at the time, and Swiss
gold and monetary reserves -- 6.3 billion francs -- were blocked in America,
London and Ottawa, the stability of the currency depended on the delivery of
German gold.

This German gold was even more necessary as the Swiss National Bank
administered the gold deposits of the Bank for International Settlements in
Basie, and of 16 other foreign central banks, and had thus to meet certain
liabilities. Here is an example of a typical gold transaction with Germany:

The German Reichsbank sold on the market gold against Swiss francs, in order
to pay for the German importation of manganese and wolframite from Spain and
Portugal. The central banks of these countries afterwards changed the francs
they received into gold with the Swiss National Bank. The Swiss authorities of
the time knew that after 1942 some of the gold might be of doubtful origin,
but they decided to keep buying it -- not for mere enrichment but to maintain
monetary stability and to save the country from invasion. 

Full and final settlement

The Allies knew of these gold transactions and, in 1946, signed with
Switzerland the Washington Agreement. Under this settlement, Switzerland had
to pay 250 million francs in gold as a contribution towards European
reconstruction, while the Allies in turn gave up all claims on the gold
acquired by the Swiss during the war.

Thus the Swiss National Bank doesn't owe a penny to Mr. Edgar Bronfman of the
world Jewish Congress (WJC), or to anybody else for that matter.

After the war, the vast majority of the depositors, their heirs or authorized
agents could dispose of the accounts without any encumbrances. In 1962, a
government decree on the possessions of persecuted Jewish foreigners allowed
the account holders or their heirs to claim their rights, whereupon 9 million
francs was distributed: three-quarters too the entitled persons and one-
quarter to Jewish charities.

In 1965, the whole question was verified and an inventory produced by the
banks revealed the sum of 32 million francs in 775 dormant, heirless accounts.
In 1996, according too the Swiss Bankers Association, there was a total of
38.7 million francs in accounts opened by foreign customers prior to World War
Two, with the owners of which the banks had no contact. It may well be the
case that some of these accounts did belong to Jews who died in concentration
camps during the war.

For thirty years after the inventory of 1965, these dormant accounts were a
nonissue. In 1995, however, everything changed. Switzerland became the target
of heavy smear campaigns launched by the World Jewish Congress and various
American Jewish organizations. So why did they wait thirty years with their
claims, instead of taking action decades earlier? After all, as we are
constantly reminded, the aging survivors of the Holocaust need the money
quickly.

Propaganda War

Knowing that they had neither good reason nor concrete proof for claiming
billions of dollars from the Swiss government or banks, the claimants waited
for the right moment to start their propaganda war. The ground was prepared on
the weekend of September 24/25, 1994, when the citizens accepted the new
article 261bis of the Swiss penal code in a national referendum. This so
called anti-racist and anti-revisionist measure was passed by 54.7 percent to
45.3 percent, and became law on January 1, 1995.

The badly defined rubber paragraph can be interpreted at the discretion of the
judge. Thus, anybody who tries to refute, for example, a compensation claim by
a Jewish organization, runs the risk of being accused of "racial
discrimination" or "grossly minimizing" genocide. The bankers who recommended
acceptance of this law will now certainly regret it.

Another opportunity for blackmailing Switzerland was given on May 7, 1995, by
the Minister of Finance, Mr. Kaspar Villiger. Speaking in parliament to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, he said that
Switzerland had a large debt towards the Jewish people for having sent back so
many who tried to enter the country as refugees, and for having induced the
German authorities in 1938 to mark the passports of German Jewish citizens
with a "J". He expressed the regrets of the Swiss government and apologized
"for a failure which is inexcusable."

It is true that during a certain period in 1941 and 1942, no Jewish refugees
were allowed to enter Switzerland. According to different sources, the number
of persons refused asylum was between 10,000 and 25,000. However, Switzerland
had nothing at all too do with the notorious "J" stamp. That idea came from
the German authorities, as Mr. Villiger should have known.

Shortly after this undue avowal, bankers were warned that they could be
arrested when abroad if they were not co-operative, and the first blackmail
followed. On September 14, 1995, a delegation led by Edgar J. Bronfman
of the World Jewish Congress arrived in Berne for talks with the Swiss
Bankers' Association. The WJC claimed that the figure of 38.7 million francs
in dormant accounts was far too low, and asked the bankers for a more adequate
reply and "more sensitivity."

In March 1996, the WJC warned of a boycott of Switzerland by investors,
similar to that launched against South Africa some years earlier. The New York
lawyer, Ed Fagan, launched a class action suit against the Swiss banks for
US$20 billion, saying on August 8, 1997, that "Germany came to trial in
Nuremberg, and Switzerland will do it here in Brooklyn."

The Republican New York senator Alfonse D'Amato, chairman of the Senate
Banking committee, running for re-election in November 1998, and wooing Jewish
support, organized a public hearing on the billions supposedly stolen from
Holocaust victims by the wicked bankers. He also threatened to withdraw the
licenses of Swiss banks operating in the USA.

Wave of masochism

Simultaneously, a debasing hate campaign was started by the American and
British media. Their Swiss counterparts, politicians of all hues, church
leaders and all sorts of so called do-gooders joined the crusade. A wave of
national masochism swept over the country.

The bankers, fearing the loss of their reputations and their American
business, decided to create a "special fund for Holocaust victims". With help
from industrialists and the Swiss National Bank, this quickly amassed some 270
million Swiss francs. This money is to be paid to the poorest and most needy
Jewish survivors.

Since this sum is about seven times the 38.7 million uncovered by the
inventory of dormant accounts, the naïve Swiss politicians and financiers
thought that the campaign would come to an end. They were wrong. It was
stepped up.

Delamuraz, the former Minister of Public Economy --the only member of the
government with the guts to tell the truth--spoke of the blackmail perpetrated
by certain Jewish groups. Barraged with outrage from the left, the clergy and
Bronfman & Co.,however, he was quickly obliged to express his regrets for
having been misunderstood.

The anti-Swiss campaign continued and on March 5, 1997, the government
completely lost its head. The Minister of Justice, Mr. Arnold Koller, made a
speech explaining the difficult situation Switzerland was in from 1940 to
1944. He explained that the state could not have acted otherwise, and that its
actions had been necessary to keep the country out of the war. Very wise words
indeed. But then Mr. Koller added that the government was planning a "Swiss
Foundation for Solidarity" with capital of seven billion francs raised by
revaluing the gold assets of the Swiss National Bank and selling some of them.

The estimated yield of 350 million francs per annum is intended to go to ease
misery both in and out of Switzerland, including to Holocaust survivors.
Whether this will ever actually happen is still uncertain, for the proposal
has to be voted on in several polls. In the meantime though, Senator D'Amato
and his friends immediately seized on the proposal as a striking
acknowledgement of liability.

So the stupid and hasty offer merely incited the blackmailers too turn the
thumbscrews even more. The threats to boycott the Swiss banks then became very
serious. The moratorium on action was scheduled to expire by the end of March
1998. Shortly before that date, Edgar Bronfman said that Switzerland would
have to pay between one billion and ten billion US dollars. At the end of the
long and tedious negotiations between the Swiss banks and the self-appointed
Jewish organizations which resulted, the payment of US$1.25 billion was
agreed.

One cannot help but congratulate Edgar Bronfman and the WJC for having
succeeded in forcing once pugnacious and now fainthearted Switzerland to her
knees so quickly.

Sigi Fiegel, a prominent lawyer and Zurich Jewish community leader, did not
approve at all of either the WJC blackmail or the media hate campaign which
went with it. Have they become Swiss nationalists, or do they fear a counter-
boycott of Jewish business enterprises by exasperated locals?

Perhaps they do not want an angered Swiss population to start asking awkward
questions. They proclaimed that the whole story is not so much a question of
money but of justice, truth, responsibility and insight. What do these
gentlemen mean by such nice words? That the Holocaust must never be forgotten,
and that anti-Semitism and racism must be fought at every level. To that end,
special courses must be introduced into schools, and a Holocaust museum should
be built (as if the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maidenek, Buchenwald and so
on were located in Switzerland or run by Swiss staff!).

Artificial guilt

So we do not just stand to lose money. Our youth must be brainwashed and our
entire population inculcated with a complex of eternal guilt in order to get
them to accept the massive influx of so-called refugees from Asiatic and
African countries.

Those who dare to protest against this obnoxious plan--this real
genocide--risk being persecuted for racial discrimination or grossly
minimizing a genocide. Here are just a few examples of the Stalinist "justice"
now arising from article 261bix of the Swiss penal code: Jergen Graf, 47
years, a Swiss revisionist author of several books, and his publisher, Gerhard
Forster, 78 years, were recently sentenced to 15 and 12 months imprisonment
and a fine of 8,000 francs (approximately £3,280) each.

Dr. Max Wahl, 75, the former editor of the new defunct news-bulletin Eidenoss,
was sentenced to 45 days in prison for having mailed to his old subscribers a
notice saying that the "six million exterminated Jews were a lie."

Over the last two years, several booksellers have been condemned to fines for
having sold Lesmyths fondateurs dela politique Israelienne (The Founding Myths
of Israeli Policy) by the French philosopher Roger Garaudy--a Muslim former
Marxist--and other politically incorrect literature.

Other trials are still pending, for example that of Mr. Gaston-Armand
Amaudrus, the editor of the monthly news-bulletin Courier du Continent, for
having written in March 1995 of the Holocaust as a collection of "mythical
facts".

Today, Switzerland, as a test case, is going through the mangle. Tomorrow it
will be France, Poland, Sweden, Portugal and other countries.

The above is from: The CDL Report

P. O. Box 449 

Arabi, LA 70032

(A Christian non-denominational organization)
  

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