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A report on the evidence and the issues that remain by David Marks, Associate Producer, BBC FRONTLINE.
When we started looking for our documentary Nazi gold, we knew the emotional issue of Holocaust survivors claims against Swiss banks was the outbreak of Switzerland's relations with review of the Nazi Germany new accounts of witnesses and survivors, and information from recently declassified documents to the United States and Switzerland, contradicted the historical record previously agreed to Switzerland close trade and banking relations with Berlin, his political refugee controversial and tragic, certain officials of Nazi postwar support in their flight to South America, in wartime in Switzerland seems to many observers were less neutral in the First World war.
But there is a story that we discussed - the forced transport of Italians through Switzerland via the passage of the mountain Gotthard - representing a dramatic new claim on the role of Switzerland during the war, we tracked down a woman who to describe in detail an incident which since 1943 had been discussed behind closed doors within the Jewish community in Zurich at first, this woman - we call Elizabeth - had contacted a Holocaust survivor who had written on the role of Switzerland in the war, she described how, as a teenager in Zurich, she helped provide humanitarian aid to people in cattle trains headed to Germany.
We finally established communication with Elizabeth directly and gained his trust, she asked that we guarantee privacy before giving an interview Her husband confirmed that it was a story she had told him for the first time there more than 40 years, she's smart, kind and cheerful woman without reason to tell her story, except the desire to put on the record that it has witnessed.
Elizabeth said her experience with transports of Nazi prisoners took place some time after the middle of December 1943, it stressed that it was very secret, tell us, I think that it was rather overcast and she added, we knew they were in Germany, we knew they were Jews, we know the concentration camp in our interview with her, she described poignant scenes at Zurich main station, with details we sought to confirm.
The question is - who were on the trains they were Jews on their way to concentration camps or slave workers seized by the Nazis in Italy to keep their plants running or was it possible transport included that time.
To start, we found witnesses whose stories suportent charge that Italians were forcibly sent through Switzerland Elena Dreher, an Italian supporter, described the attempts of his unit to stop freight trains loaded with before people they spent in Switzerland, she recalled that the tower Italians Germans in towns and villages by offering free cigarettes to all men between 18 and 40 years they would be arrested and sent to Germany as slaves; many would be worked to death supporters tried to stop the transport and sometimes managed to derail trains before reaching the Swiss border.
Otto Frey, a Swiss railway supervisor told us how he helped arrange trains with cattle cars full of Italians to be transported against their will through Swiss territory He stressed, told us to get the trains through Switzerland as soon as possible, we heard similar accounts of five additional railroad retirees, including a description of a train that was stopped by railway workers in Switzerland, so people can escape from the inside.
We have found material in the National Archives of the United States on the use of the Swiss railway system by the Germans there was US intelligence documents from the war that confirmed a huge amount of traffic through the Gotthard mountain pass between 1943 and 1944 German trains with coal and non-strategic supplies to Italy were passing through Switzerland at a rate of up to one every ten minutes have also been reported on the record-hidden weapons and soldiers accounts on the same road, including a report by Jean Ziegler, a Swiss parliamentary group, who as a young man claims to have witnessed a freight train derailed in 1944 with weapons and Nazi soldiers give orders to an incident that officially never happened.
Regarding the government policy of neutral Switzerland on the railway passage through the country, it was based on the German-Swiss-Italian Treaty of 1909, which established the use of the Gotthard tunnel He stayed the instrument by which traffic has been adjusted and justified until the end of the war, but soldiers and weapons were officially banned the Nazis used the Brenner Pass in Austria for the majority of military transport on the forehead Italian.
However, as the US archives confirm the Brenner was heavily bombed in December 1943 and effectively closed until early January Also, weather data in this report time heavy early snowfalls have delayed or stopped traffic trains in this period of time in the post -war questioning the German ambassador in Bern by the Americans, he said that the Swiss have gradually increased the number of items that could not cross the border, but confirmed that the short-term agreements on specific transactions related to the passage of the Gotthard were made by the summer of 1944, the Germans were shipping the contents of all Italian factories north since their invasion of Italy end 2 January 1945, Allan Dulles, head of the OSS in Bern, said in a note that he saw no objection to bombing attacks Italian end of the Gotthard line which involves the strategic importance of continuing the road.
In Italy, we were helped by the Documentation Center of contemporary Jewish history, which gathered much information about Italian Jews sent north after the German invasion of Italy researchers confirmed having heard unsubstantiated stories that Nazis sent Jewish prisoners in concentration camps through Switzerland Yet trains with more than 9,000 Jews who went from Italy to Auschwitz are known to have passed through the Brenner or Taravisio - east Transportation to other concentration camps in an irregular situation were referred to historians who have expertise in the borough of supporters, the German occupation of Italy and the capture and use of slave labor.
There are many data on the use of Italian workers slaves by the Nazis after the fall of Mussolini, there was a wave of vengeance against the Italians Italians who were already in Germany were turned into slaves between September 1943 and April 1944 to least 23,000 Italians, many former soldiers, were deported to Germany to work as slaves in German industry over more than 10,000 supporters were captured and deported during the same period of 1944, there were more half a million Italians working for the Nazi war machine.
Estimates of the total number of Italian Jews deported, supporters and soldiers are not accurate and even though we know that many have passed through Austria, there was no information historians and archive outside Switzerland which could explain all transport or directly contradict the information described in our interview.
Elizabeth said that the initial approach of the Jewish community in Zurich to give assistance to people on the train was organized by the Swiss Red Cross We asked them to search their records A Red Cross historian sought documents showing assistance to prisoners transported by train through the Swiss territory during the war Although the search continues, its initial investigation of war reports the Red Cross and minutes of board meetings made no reference to the transport described in our interview or with the Italian forced laborers Regardless, we found documents showing that a representative of the Swiss Red Cross has been in contact with the German commanders in the north of Italy in January 1944, using coordination for the Italian population in addition, the Swiss government has repeatedly called for the Jewish community in Zurich crazy rnir Jewish refugees arriving in Switzerland.
Swiss railways have told us that when their offices were moved in the 1960s all train planning documents and movements during the war were destroyed by correspondence in government archives in Bern had direct references to transport Italian German demands that the trains carrying Italian workers be permitted if Switzerland continued to October 1943, the paths of Swiss iron replied that although they would not provide the trains, they had no objections to the transport undertaken the Swiss government has apparently made no final decision, but the police chief, Heinrich Rothmund, in a memo on September 22, 1943, is aware that transport resumed at a rate of 3-5 trains per day also, in in October 1943, an Allied radio program reported that a freight train on its way through Switzerland was arrested Ave. C Italians aboard slave laborers who were freed the Swiss government rejected the report and called propaganda, saying that no transport of Italian workers were not going through since July 1943 In a letter to the government kept a concerned citizen in the same file, the author claims that the Swiss involved in the service of the German war machine, will be a day to atone for this anti-Christian behavior.
Evidence that the trains slave labor transiting Switzerland is successful, but on claims that Jews on their way to the concentration camps also went through Switzerland.
After months of investigation, we found three witnesses who said much the same story, they were very nervous; an aggressively ended all contact with us on the field we revive the ghosts of a dark and shameful time but the essence of the three stories - as well as our interview with Elizabeth - was the same with long trains of cattle cars sealed roll in Zurich Hauptbahnhof in the middle of the night, carrying Italian Jews and other prisoners in the north.
We are not able to locate anyone who may have been forced on transportation by Switzerland during the war there additional investigative work can be done with the cooperation of Swiss, German and Italian Governments But this survey raises troubling new questions about Switzerland and neutrality, and other elements of our documentary Nazi gold, the accounts of these transport can dramatically change the previously accepted history of the war in Switzerland.
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