After the destructive pogrom riots on the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, the German government issued an ordinance that Jews should pay for the destruction caused by the anti-Jewish rioters themselves and that any insurance money that was paid out should be paid to the German state rather than to the private individuals affected. The ICE found that, "In general, the Swiss companies reacted with remarkable passivity to the Nazi’s flouting of established legal tradition...In this way, the Swiss insurers helped to cover up events which would have cast the completely illegal and immoral methods of the German state and party organisation in November 1938 into sharp relief."