The Bergier Report
Bern
Key figures: Jean-François Bergier
Further reading: Bergier Commission
Dormant accounts (1995–1998). In the mid-1990s Jewish organisations and foreign governments accused the Swiss banks of withholding the deposits of Holocaust victims. The lawsuits filed in the United States ended in August 1998 with a settlement: the big banks paid 1.25 billion dollars.
The commission (1996). On 12 December 1996 the Federal Council, mandated by Parliament, set up an Independent Commission of Experts, chaired by the economic historian Jean-François Bergier, with Swiss, Polish, American and Israeli scholars. It received unprecedented powers: access to the archives of banks, insurance companies and businesses, which were not allowed to destroy documents from the period.
The conclusions (2002). The final report, published in March 2002 together with numerous volumes of studies, identified three fields in which the authorities and part of the business world failed in their duties: refugee policy, concessions to the Axis powers, from trade to the purchase of Reichsbank gold, and the restitution of assets after the war. Alongside resistance and solidarity, the history of Switzerland in the war also includes these compromises.
The headquarters of the Swiss National Bank in Bern in 1936: during the war the National Bank bought large quantities of gold from the Reichsbank
Photo: Leo Wehrli, ETH-Bibliothek, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The historian Jean-François Bergier (1931–2009), chairman of the commission
Photo: Peter Friedli, Wikimedia Commons
Jean-François Bergier with Alois Riklin and Erwin Schärrer at the University of St. Gallen, 15 June 1985
Photo: Regina Kühne, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Credit Suisse and UBS headquarters on Paradeplatz in Zurich: in 1998 the big banks paid 1.25 billion dollars
Photo: Ank Kumar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Swiss Federal Archives in Bern, among the archives opened to the commission
Photo: Sandstein, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Jean-François Bergier in 1997, the year after the commission was set up
ETH-Bibliothek, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Swiss National Bank on the Federal Square in Bern
Photo: Hpschaefer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, who led the restitution claims
Wikimedia Commons, public domain