The Bergier report
The report “Switzerland and Refugees in the Nazi Era” was published on 10 December 1999. It lists and analyses the situation of refugees who were turned back or admitted into Switzerland during World War Two. The first report, entitled “Switzerland and Gold Transactions in the Second World War” and published on 25 May 1998 concerns Nazi gold allegedly accepted by the Swiss National Bank. The final report will be published in 2001.
The Bergier Commission in Bern is also known as the ICE or Independent Commission of Experts. It was established on 12 December 1996 by the Swiss federal assembly with a mandate to investigate from a historical and legal point of view the volume and fate of assets moved to Switzerland by victims of the Nazi regime and its representatives or collaborators. The investigation was also mandated to examine the relations between Switzerland and the Third Reich as well as Switzerland’s Holocaust-era refugee policy.
It has unlimited access to all relevant documents, and the banking confidentiality laws were waived for the purposes of its research. It informs the Swiss Federal Council every six months of the status of the investigation.
The Swiss government approved the allocation of 22 million francs to the commission over a 5-year period.
Who are the members of the Bergier Commission ?
The Bergier Commission is composed of 10 members. The president is Professor Jean-François Bergier, professor of history at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. The other members are :
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Wladyslaw Bartoszewski
Historian -
Saul Friedländer
Historian -
Harold James
Historian -
Helen B. Junz
Economist -
Georg Kreis
Historian -
Jacques Picard
Historian -
Jakob Tanner
Historian -
Daniel Thürer
Lawyer -
Myrtha Welti
Secretary General
Law degree holder, political consultant
There are also 30 part-time researchers working for the commission.
For more information consult the complete Bergier report, available on the Independent Commission of Experts website.