Refuge Without The Right To Permanent Residence: Holocaust Survivors In Switzerland, 1945–1955
Refuge Without The Right To Permanent Residence: Holocaust Survivors In Switzerland, 1945–1955

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the war, there were approximately 30,000 Jewish refugees living in Switzerland. Following the liberation of the concentration camps, additional Holocaust survivors, most of them Polish, arrived in Switzerland. They were granted temporary residence in Switzerland on humanitarian grounds. Time spent at a sanatorium, most of which were run by Jewish aid organizations, was life-saving especially for people with tuberculosis. Due to a fear of the country being swamped by foreigners, the Swiss government’s policy – tainted with anti-Semitism – was to limit their numbers. Therefore, the government assumed that all Jewish refugees were to regard Switzerland merely as a transit country. Despite a benign economic environment, permanent residency in Switzerland was only granted to a few. Therefore, even though some of the Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe had lived in Switzerland for many years, after 1945 the authorities threatened them with deportation from the country. The Swiss example provides powerful evidence of the fact that humanitarian support for Holocaust survivors and government actions characterized by anti-Semitism were not mutually exclusive after 1945.

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