Newsgroup: it.cultura.ebraica
Titolo: Svizzera, neutralità, Shoah

http://www.iht.com/articles/125101.html
L'International Herald Tribune, che viene coedito da The New York Times e da
The Washington Post, ha pubblicato oggi un articolo su una nuova legge
svizzera che pone rimedio al paradosso giuridico per cui molti cittadini
svizzeri che hanno salvato degli Ebrei dalla Shoah sono stati puniti per
aver compromesso la neutralità del paese - una neutralità filonazista, a
dire il vero.
L'articolo si sofferma sulla vita di una di costoro, Aimée
Stauffer-Stitelmann, che ora potrebbe richiedere il perdono giudiziale ai
sensi della nuova legge.
Ciao.
60 years later, Jews' rescuer seeks Swiss pardon
Elaine Sciolino NYT
BERN As a 17-year-old Jewish schoolgirl in Geneva, Aimée Stauffer-Stitelmann
risked her life - and broke Swiss law - in rescuing Jewish children from the
Nazis.
..
On Tuesday, nearly six decades after she was censured and briefly jailed by
a Swiss military tribunal, she became the first citizen to seek to clear her
name under a new law offering to pardon those who were penalized for
violating Switzerland's strict neutrality during World War II.
..
"It is absurd, laughable, to ask to be rehabilitated after 60 years, and I
had to be persuaded to do it," Stauffer-Stitelmann, who is now 79, said in
an interview. "But this is less about the past and more about the future. I
want to draw attention to the suffering of immigrants who are here without
papers. I want the people of Switzerland to fight against falling into the
same situation again without even knowing it."
..
The law, which went into effect on New Year's Day, is considered a small but
important step in Switzerland's tortuous and uneven struggle to confront its
wartime history. It follows the "Nazi Gold" affair of the 1990's, when
Switzerland and its banks were identified as the main routing source for
gold looted by Nazi armies, and forced into a $1.25 billion settlement with
Jewish groups and Holocaust heirs in the United States.
..
"This law is part of the unfinished history of Switzerland," said Stefan
Keller, a Zurich-based historian. "This rehabilitation is symbolic proof
that decisions at the time were wrong. It shows what could have been."
..
It also underscores the limits of Switzerland's willingness to make amends.
..
Pardons are not automatic and those who were affected or their survivors
must formally appeal for pardons within five years. There will be no
financial compensation. The pardons will not extend to Swiss citizens who in
addition to opposing the Nazis actively fought in the French Resistance in
World War II or joined the Spanish civil war against Franco's Spain.
..
Proponents of the legislation complain that a five-year, 600-page study
finalized in 2002 that challenged the Swiss claim of strict neutrality
remains so sensitive that Parliament has refused to debate it.
..
A retired schoolteacher and lifelong political activist, Stauffer-Stitelmann
came by train from her home in Geneva to the vast meeting hall in this
city's Federal Palace, the seat of the Parliament, to announce her request
for a pardon at a news conference. A parliamentary pardons commission will
now review the request.
..
With her husband, Henri Stauffer, 80, at her side, she told some of her
stories. She said she knew so little about her underground work that she
wore high heels in crossing the border between France and Switzerland and a
bright white coat on nighttime reconnaissance missions where she was
supposed to be invisible.
..
She said she distracted customs officers with idle and endless chatter and
either used false papers to help her young charges or brought them on foot
across an unguarded stretch of the border. "I had a tiny, suicidal side,"
she said in the interview.
..
Asked to describe what she did to save lives, Stauffer-Stitelmann replied,
"Not very much." In 1938, the year Germany swallowed Austria in the
Anschluss, the Swiss government began imposing border controls on refugees
from Germany and Austria in an attempt to appease Hitler.
..
"Switzerland, and in particular its political leaders, failed when it came
to generously offering protection to persecuted Jews," said the Bergier
report, as the 600-page study is known. It added, "By adopting numerous
measures making it more difficult for refugees to reach safety, and by
handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss
authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime to attain its
goals."
..
Several hundred Swiss nationals lost their jobs, were fined or even
imprisoned for secretly helping Jews and other refugees flee the Nazis.
..
Born in Paris and holding both Swiss and French passports,
Stauffer-Stitelmann was able to move across the border. She said she brought
between 15 and 20 Jewish children into Switzerland from France from 1942 to
1945 and also helped a small number of Resistance fighters.
..
Paradoxically, she was penalized by the Swiss government for violating
border laws by helping Jews return to France in 1945 and put in detention in
Geneva for 18 days.
..
Among those she saved were two Berlin-born Austrian children, Hella
Amelkin-Luft, now a 68-year-old grandmother living in New York, and Uriel
Luft, her 70-year-old brother, a theatrical agent living outside of
Montreal.
..
In late 1942, Stauffer-Stitelmann crossed the border into France and picked
up Hella and Uriel in the French border town of Annemasse.
..
Their father, a wealthy lawyer, was suffering from tuberculosis and
well-connected enough to flee to Davos, Switzerland, for treatment and
arrange for his children's escape; their mother and grandmother died at
Auschwitz. Stauffer-Stitelmann successfully hid the children from the guard
at the Swiss border by telling them to hide behind a certain door and when
to run to a train. She hid them again under the seat of the train
compartment. On the Swiss side of the border in Geneva, she delivered them
to a man waiting with a bicycle. The children were sent to live with
different families in Switzerland, and eventually reunited with their
father.
..
"My brother and I and our four children and nine grandchildren are here
today because of what a girl of 17 did for us," said Amelkin-Luft. Out of
the more than 11,000 children deported from Nazi-occupied France, only 300
came back. "They had no use for children," she added.
..
Of the young woman who saved her, Amelkin-Luft added, "If she had been
caught in France, she would have ended up in Auschwitz herself."
..
"I don't want to dramatize this - life is dramatic enough," said Luft. "But
today, read the newspapers and you will see so much to lose faith in human
beings. Today, more than ever, we need heroes, and Aimée is a hero of the
best kind."
..
It is not known how many of the Swiss citizens who were censured are still
alive or who might come forward and petition the government for pardons. The
Paul Grüninger Foundation said it had put forward the names of 26 people it
believed should be pardoned.
..
The foundation is named for a Swiss police officer and former school teacher
who illegally allowed about 3,000 Austrian Jews to enter Switzerland during
1938 and 1939.
..
After the war, Stauffer-Stitelmann said, she supported partisan fighters in
Spain, organized protests against apartheid and the American war in Vietnam,
and was at the front of massive anti-globalization marches in Evian last
summer.
..
After retiring as an elementary school teacher in 1987, she helped create an
underground school in the basement of a church to teach French to the
children of illegal immigrants who were then banned from attending public
schools.
..
The New York Times BERN As a 17-year-old Jewish schoolgirl in Geneva, Aimée
Stauffer-Stitelmann risked her life - and broke Swiss law - in rescuing
Jewish children from the Nazis.
..
On Tuesday, nearly six decades after she was censured and briefly jailed by
a Swiss military tribunal, she became the first citizen to seek to clear her
name under a new law offering to pardon those who were penalized for
violating Switzerland's strict neutrality during World War II.
..
"It is absurd, laughable, to ask to be rehabilitated after 60 years, and I
had to be persuaded to do it," Stauffer-Stitelmann, who is now 79, said in
an interview. "But this is less about the past and more about the future. I
want to draw attention to the suffering of immigrants who are here without
papers. I want the people of Switzerland to fight against falling into the
same situation again without even knowing it."
..
The law, which went into effect on New Year's Day, is considered a small but
important step in Switzerland's tortuous and uneven struggle to confront its
wartime history. It follows the "Nazi Gold" affair of the 1990's, when
Switzerland and its banks were identified as the main routing source for
gold looted by Nazi armies, and forced into a $1.25 billion settlement with
Jewish groups and Holocaust heirs in the United States.
..
"This law is part of the unfinished history of Switzerland," said Stefan
Keller, a Zurich-based historian. "This rehabilitation is symbolic proof
that decisions at the time were wrong. It shows what could have been."
..
It also underscores the limits of Switzerland's willingness to make amends.
..
Pardons are not automatic and those who were affected or their survivors
must formally appeal for pardons within five years. There will be no
financial compensation. The pardons will not extend to Swiss citizens who in
addition to opposing the Nazis actively fought in the French Resistance in
World War II or joined the Spanish civil war against Franco's Spain.
..
Proponents of the legislation complain that a five-year, 600-page study
finalized in 2002 that challenged the Swiss claim of strict neutrality
remains so sensitive that Parliament has refused to debate it.
..
A retired schoolteacher and lifelong political activist, Stauffer-Stitelmann
came by train from her home in Geneva to the vast meeting hall in this
city's Federal Palace, the seat of the Parliament, to announce her request
for a pardon at a news conference. A parliamentary pardons commission will
now review the request.
..
With her husband, Henri Stauffer, 80, at her side, she told some of her
stories. She said she knew so little about her underground work that she
wore high heels in crossing the border between France and Switzerland and a
bright white coat on nighttime reconnaissance missions where she was
supposed to be invisible.
..
She said she distracted customs officers with idle and endless chatter and
either used false papers to help her young charges or brought them on foot
across an unguarded stretch of the border. "I had a tiny, suicidal side,"
she said in the interview.
..
Asked to describe what she did to save lives, Stauffer-Stitelmann replied,
"Not very much." In 1938, the year Germany swallowed Austria in the
Anschluss, the Swiss government began imposing border controls on refugees
from Germany and Austria in an attempt to appease Hitler.
..
"Switzerland, and in particular its political leaders, failed when it came
to generously offering protection to persecuted Jews," said the Bergier
report, as the 600-page study is known. It added, "By adopting numerous
measures making it more difficult for refugees to reach safety, and by
handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss
authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime to attain its
goals."
..
Several hundred Swiss nationals lost their jobs, were fined or even
imprisoned for secretly helping Jews and other refugees flee the Nazis.
..
Born in Paris and holding both Swiss and French passports,
Stauffer-Stitelmann was able to move across the border. She said she brought
between 15 and 20 Jewish children into Switzerland from France from 1942 to
1945 and also helped a small number of Resistance fighters.
..
Paradoxically, she was penalized by the Swiss government for violating
border laws by helping Jews return to France in 1945 and put in detention in
Geneva for 18 days.
..
Among those she saved were two Berlin-born Austrian children, Hella
Amelkin-Luft, now a 68-year-old grandmother living in New York, and Uriel
Luft, her 70-year-old brother, a theatrical agent living outside of
Montreal.
..
In late 1942, Stauffer-Stitelmann crossed the border into France and picked
up Hella and Uriel in the French border town of Annemasse.
..
Their father, a wealthy lawyer, was suffering from tuberculosis and
well-connected enough to flee to Davos, Switzerland, for treatment and
arrange for his children's escape; their mother and grandmother died at
Auschwitz. Stauffer-Stitelmann successfully hid the children from the guard
at the Swiss border by telling them to hide behind a certain door and when
to run to a train. She hid them again under the seat of the train
compartment. On the Swiss side of the border in Geneva, she delivered them
to a man waiting with a bicycle. The children were sent to live with
different families in Switzerland, and eventually reunited with their
father.
..
"My brother and I and our four children and nine grandchildren are here
today because of what a girl of 17 did for us," said Amelkin-Luft. Out of
the more than 11,000 children deported from Nazi-occupied France, only 300
came back. "They had no use for children," she added.
..
Of the young woman who saved her, Amelkin-Luft added, "If she had been
caught in France, she would have ended up in Auschwitz herself."
..
"I don't want to dramatize this - life is dramatic enough," said Luft. "But
today, read the newspapers and you will see so much to lose faith in human
beings. Today, more than ever, we need heroes, and Aimée is a hero of the
best kind."
..
It is not known how many of the Swiss citizens who were censured are still
alive or who might come forward and petition the government for pardons. The
Paul Grüninger Foundation said it had put forward the names of 26 people it
believed should be pardoned.
..
The foundation is named for a Swiss police officer and former school teacher
who illegally allowed about 3,000 Austrian Jews to enter Switzerland during
1938 and 1939.
..
After the war, Stauffer-Stitelmann said, she supported partisan fighters in
Spain, organized protests against apartheid and the American war in Vietnam,
and was at the front of massive anti-globalization marches in Evian last
summer.
..
After retiring as an elementary school teacher in 1987, she helped create an
underground school in the basement of a church to teach French to the
children of illegal immigrants who were then banned from attending public
schools.
..
The New York Times BERN As a 17-year-old Jewish schoolgirl in Geneva, Aimée
Stauffer-Stitelmann risked her life - and broke Swiss law - in rescuing
Jewish children from the Nazis.
..
On Tuesday, nearly six decades after she was censured and briefly jailed by
a Swiss military tribunal, she became the first citizen to seek to clear her
name under a new law offering to pardon those who were penalized for
violating Switzerland's strict neutrality during World War II.
..
"It is absurd, laughable, to ask to be rehabilitated after 60 years, and I
had to be persuaded to do it," Stauffer-Stitelmann, who is now 79, said in
an interview. "But this is less about the past and more about the future. I
want to draw attention to the suffering of immigrants who are here without
papers. I want the people of Switzerland to fight against falling into the
same situation again without even knowing it."
..
The law, which went into effect on New Year's Day, is considered a small but
important step in Switzerland's tortuous and uneven struggle to confront its
wartime history. It follows the "Nazi Gold" affair of the 1990's, when
Switzerland and its banks were identified as the main routing source for
gold looted by Nazi armies, and forced into a $1.25 billion settlement with
Jewish groups and Holocaust heirs in the United States.
..
"This law is part of the unfinished history of Switzerland," said Stefan
Keller, a Zurich-based historian. "This rehabilitation is symbolic proof
that decisions at the time were wrong. It shows what could have been."
..
It also underscores the limits of Switzerland's willingness to make amends.
..
Pardons are not automatic and those who were affected or their survivors
must formally appeal for pardons within five years. There will be no
financial compensation. The pardons will not extend to Swiss citizens who in
addition to opposing the Nazis actively fought in the French Resistance in
World War II or joined the Spanish civil war against Franco's Spain.
..
Proponents of the legislation complain that a five-year, 600-page study
finalized in 2002 that challenged the Swiss claim of strict neutrality
remains so sensitive that Parliament has refused to debate it.
..
A retired schoolteacher and lifelong political activist, Stauffer-Stitelmann
came by train from her home in Geneva to the vast meeting hall in this
city's Federal Palace, the seat of the Parliament, to announce her request
for a pardon at a news conference. A parliamentary pardons commission will
now review the request.
..
With her husband, Henri Stauffer, 80, at her side, she told some of her
stories. She said she knew so little about her underground work that she
wore high heels in crossing the border between France and Switzerland and a
bright white coat on nighttime reconnaissance missions where she was
supposed to be invisible.
..
She said she distracted customs officers with idle and endless chatter and
either used false papers to help her young charges or brought them on foot
across an unguarded stretch of the border. "I had a tiny, suicidal side,"
she said in the interview.
..
Asked to describe what she did to save lives, Stauffer-Stitelmann replied,
"Not very much." In 1938, the year Germany swallowed Austria in the
Anschluss, the Swiss government began imposing border controls on refugees
from Germany and Austria in an attempt to appease Hitler.
..
"Switzerland, and in particular its political leaders, failed when it came
to generously offering protection to persecuted Jews," said the Bergier
report, as the 600-page study is known. It added, "By adopting numerous
measures making it more difficult for refugees to reach safety, and by
handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss
authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime to attain its
goals."
..
Several hundred Swiss nationals lost their jobs, were fined or even
imprisoned for secretly helping Jews and other refugees flee the Nazis.
..
Born in Paris and holding both Swiss and French passports,
Stauffer-Stitelmann was able to move across the border. She said she brought
between 15 and 20 Jewish children into Switzerland from France from 1942 to
1945 and also helped a small number of Resistance fighters.
..
Paradoxically, she was penalized by the Swiss government for violating
border laws by helping Jews return to France in 1945 and put in detention in
Geneva for 18 days.
..
Among those she saved were two Berlin-born Austrian children, Hella
Amelkin-Luft, now a 68-year-old grandmother living in New York, and Uriel
Luft, her 70-year-old brother, a theatrical agent living outside of
Montreal.
..
In late 1942, Stauffer-Stitelmann crossed the border into France and picked
up Hella and Uriel in the French border town of Annemasse.
..
Their father, a wealthy lawyer, was suffering from tuberculosis and
well-connected enough to flee to Davos, Switzerland, for treatment and
arrange for his children's escape; their mother and grandmother died at
Auschwitz. Stauffer-Stitelmann successfully hid the children from the guard
at the Swiss border by telling them to hide behind a certain door and when
to run to a train. She hid them again under the seat of the train
compartment. On the Swiss side of the border in Geneva, she delivered them
to a man waiting with a bicycle. The children were sent to live with
different families in Switzerland, and eventually reunited with their
father.
..
"My brother and I and our four children and nine grandchildren are here
today because of what a girl of 17 did for us," said Amelkin-Luft. Out of
the more than 11,000 children deported from Nazi-occupied France, only 300
came back. "They had no use for children," she added.
..
Of the young woman who saved her, Amelkin-Luft added, "If she had been
caught in France, she would have ended up in Auschwitz herself."
..
"I don't want to dramatize this - life is dramatic enough," said Luft. "But
today, read the newspapers and you will see so much to lose faith in human
beings. Today, more than ever, we need heroes, and Aimée is a hero of the
best kind."
..
It is not known how many of the Swiss citizens who were censured are still
alive or who might come forward and petition the government for pardons. The
Paul Grüninger Foundation said it had put forward the names of 26 people it
believed should be pardoned.
..
The foundation is named for a Swiss police officer and former school teacher
who illegally allowed about 3,000 Austrian Jews to enter Switzerland during
1938 and 1939.
..
After the war, Stauffer-Stitelmann said, she supported partisan fighters in
Spain, organized protests against apartheid and the American war in Vietnam,
and was at the front of massive anti-globalization marches in Evian last
summer.
..
After retiring as an elementary school teacher in 1987, she helped create an
underground school in the basement of a church to teach French to the
children of illegal immigrants who were then banned from attending public
schools.
..
--------------------------------
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mondiale (soprattutto europea) del New York Times, con una bella redazione a
Parigi.
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