> >
Print

Switzerland 2005

 

An increase in the number and severity of antisemitic and racist activities was observed in 2005, including an arson attack on a synagogue. Some 700 neo-Nazis gathered on 1 August for the annual Swiss Independence Day festivities in Rütli, twice as many as in 2004. Several anti-fascist demonstrations took place throughout the year in opposition to the Rütli and other extreme right events.

 

the jewish community

The Jewish community remained stable at about 18,000, or 0.25 percent of Switzerland’s population of 7.2 million. All major cities in Switzerland have a Jewish community, the largest ones being located in Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. Seventeen communities are members of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG/FSCI). Switzerland’s two liberal communities have formed a platform which cooperates with the SIG in the fields of antisemitism and security. CICAD (Coordination Intercommunautaire Contre l’Antisémitisme et la Diffamation), based in Geneva, represents Switzerland’s French-speaking Jewish communities. CICAD organizes teacher seminars and trips to Auschwitz for teachers, and distributes information and material to schools. Both SIG and CICAD train Jewish high school students to provide information and communicate with their classmates in matters relating to antisemitism and Israel.

Media Watch, established by SIG and CICAD in 2004, monitors and analyzes Swiss media coverage of issues related to Israel and the Jews and counters antisemitic statements and attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel. Media Watch works in close collaboration with the Jewish organization AKdH (Aktion Kinder des Holocaust), which runs the biggest database in Switzerland on subjects of Jewish interest. AKdH also operates the program ‘Internet-Streetworking’, which seeks to rehabilitate neo-Nazi youngsters from the streets.

There are Jewish day schools in Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne and four newspapers focusing on Jewish topics: Tachles and Jüdische Zeitung (in German) and Revue Juive and Hayom (in French).

 

Political Parties and extra-parliamentary groups

Right-Wing Parties and Groups

The Partei National Orientierter Schweiz (PNOS) and the NAPO (National Extra-parliamentary Opposition) have overtaken the National Initiative Switzerland (NIS) as leading far right organizations. The PNOS gained its first seat in an executive body when 19-year-old Dominic Bannholzer was elected to the municipal council of Solothurn. NAPO activity consists mainly of advertising its presence in silent parades in smaller cities, on key dates such as 1 May. NAPO founder and representative Bernhard Schaub is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on Holocaust denial and is in close contact with the German NPD and with many other far right groups throughout Europe. On 30 April he delivered an unauthorized May Day speech in Aarau to 60−80 extreme rightists. The speech, though alluding to global conspiracies, did not violate the anti-racism article of the Swiss Penal Code (StGB Art. 261bis) and the police did not intervene. A complaint was filed by a trade union but the case was later dismissed owing to lack of conclusive evidence.

The Swiss Association for Animal Protection (STS) withdrew its initiative to prohibit the import of kosher meat, after the two Chambers of the Swiss parliament rejected it in 2004 and 2005. This ban would have complemented the existing ban on ritual slaughter.

 

Neo-Nazi/Skinhead Activity

Some 700 neo-Nazis gathered on 1 August for the annual Swiss Independence Day festivities in Rütli. This was twice as many as in 2004, perhaps because of their improved organization. Moritz Leuenberger, a member of the Swiss National Council, accused his party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), of minimizing the appearance of neo-Nazis and their vulgar behavior during the event. Former SVP leader Christoph Blocher, now a federal councilor, with responsibility for the Federal Department of Justice and Police, made no comment. Blocher has been accused of delaying the adoption of a law forbidding the display of Nazi symbols.

            Two extreme right bands which play antisemitic songs appeared at a concert in Raum on 29 July organized by White Revolution. About 100 people attended. Extreme right concerts were also held in Holastel and Oberrieden, near Zurich, in June. Some 400 neo-Nazis rallied in Brig (Valais), on 17 September, in memory of neo-Nazi Ian Stuart, founder of Blood & Honour. Although the event was illegal, police did not intervene.

            Skinheads distributed CDs made by Schoolyard, a project of Germany’s ultra-right NPD, in schools in the Aargan Canton, in September. The schools’ principals tried to withdraw the material from circulation and instructed teachers to discuss the matter in class.

 

AntiSemitic and Racist Activities

An increase in the number and severity of antisemitic and racist activities was observed in 2005. The Meldestelle für antisemitische Vorfälle (office for the registration of antisemitic incidents in the German-speaking part of Switzerland) reported a total of 38 antisemitic incidents from September 2004 to September 2005.

CICAD recorded a total of 75 antisemitic incidents in the French-speaking part (Romandie) of Switzerland, from December 2004 to December 2005. These included two ‘grave’ incidents (the ‘grave’ category includes physical attacks, targeted threats, desecration of cemeteries, destruction/arson of property or break-ins); 49 ‘serious’ incidents (includes targeted mail, insults, offensive publications and swastikas); and 24 other incidents (includes non-targeted swastikas, antisemitic declarations and publications or discriminatory treatment).

 

Violence and Vandalism

A synagogue and a Jewish-owned clothing store in the southern city of Lugano were petrol bombed on the night of 14 March 2005. Both attacks, which were carried out by the same person, caused considerable damage, in particular, destruction of the synagogue library. No one was injured. The attack on the synagogue was the first case of arson against a Jewish institution in Switzerland in decades. The perpetrator, a 58 year old Italian, was arrested. After federal prosecutor Rosa Item ruled out antisemitic motives, the SIG wrote to Item asking her not to make rash conclusions or to downplay antisemitism.

In December 2005, the attacker was found guilty of premeditated multiple arson attacks and sentenced to two years in jail and a fine of CHF 3,000 to be paid to SIG. However, the jail sentence was commuted to ambulatory psychiatric therapy. Four days after the attacks a silent rally took place in Lugano at which 2,500 participants called for tolerance and a struggle against racism. The event was convened by the municipality, the bishop of Lugano, the Evangelic Reform Church, the Islamic community of Tessin Canton and the Union of Jewish-Christian Friendship.

The Grand Synagogue in Geneva was defaced in April with swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans, and a memorial in front of the synagogue to Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps was spray-painted with the words “Heil Hitler” and “Gas the Jews.” Following the attack, the governments of the Canton and the City of Geneva expressed their strong support of the Jewish community and condemned all antisemitic actions. The investigation was still ongoing.

On 12 May, 13 tombstones were found damaged or overturned in the Jewish cemetery of La Tour-de-Peilz. The exact date of the desecration could not be established and the culprits were not found.

 

Discrimination and Propaganda

In 2005, the Swiss press reported an incident that took place in 2003 but was not disclosed then. In late 2003 leading members of reputedly the most exclusive yacht club in Zurich rejected the application of Jewish publicist Peter C. Newman, a Canadian, now living in London. Newman and his then sponsor say that the refusal was due to antisemitic views held by some older members of the board. Moreover, in April 2005 the leading Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung quoted Newman’s sponsor, who claimed other Jewish applicants had also been rejected. The sponsor has now resigned from the Yacht Club. The club’s president, Jörg Hotz, denied the charges, stating that the decision to ‘postpone’ Newman’s admission had been due to other reasons.

            In December, a pamphlet on Jews and Israel, “The Echo of the Madmen of God,” was distributed in Geneva and Lausanne. It included a caricature depicting Jews as pigs, a personal attack on a member of the World Jewish Congress, a degrading representation of the Ten Commandments and a Star of David with a serpent coiled around it. The pamphlet originated in Sion. CICAD lodged a complaint with the attorney general of Geneva.

            Leaflets claiming that Jews financed and organized the Russian Revolution were placed on windshields in Spiez in February. The incident was under investigation.

            In the pamphlet “No to Military Cooperation with Israel,” Mathais Reynard, president of Socialist Youth in French Valais, accused the Jews of taking advantage of the support of the West for them as victims of the Holocaust. In December, CICAD asked Swiss Socialists, whose party purports to fight against racism, antisemitism and discrimination, to reject this position.

 

Responses to Racism and Antisemitism

Official Activity

The Swiss government plans to propose new laws to reinforce domestic security and combat terrorism and hooliganism (see

 http://www.ejpd.admin.ch/ejpd/de/home/dokumentation/mi/2005/2005-08-171.html, 17 Aug.2005). The government also voted to continue support of a project against racism and xenophobia, allocating 1.1 million Swiss francs yearly to start in January 2006. The current fund, begun in February 2001, expires in 2005.

After Switzerland joined the International Task Force on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research in 2004, the directors of public education organized a two-day meeting in December 2005 dedicated to “Teaching the Memory of the Holocaust in Switzerland.” The purpose was to demonstrate to teachers various educational projects and didactical approaches.

In August 2005, the Commission of the National Council rejected a parliamentary initiative submitted in October 2004 by Socialist Party National Councilor and Councilor of State Carlo Sommaruga, calling for a prohibition on the import and transit of agricultural, industrial or commercial products exported by Israel and produced in the Gaza Strip or West Bank.

            Following the August 2004 publication of a report of the Federal Department of Justice and Police on extremism in Switzerland, which also deals with “Jewish political extremism” (see ASW 2004), the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities and other Jewish organizations wrote to Christoph Blocher, the federal minister in charge of the department, denying that Swiss Jewish organizations were extremist or violent and asking that the report be amended. While reference to specific organizations (such as the Association des étudiants israélites de Genève) was deleted from the report, the allegation that Jewish organizations might “take justice into their own hands in case of an attack” was retained, despite a meeting held in January 2005 between representatives of SIG and Blocher, during which the minister conceded that there was no concrete evidence of Jewish political extremism in Switzerland.

 

Legal Activity

Four leading members of the PNOS, including its president Jonas Gysin, were convicted of racism in July 2005 after the PNOS used a poster in the 2003 Aarau election campaign which recalled early 1930s’ Nazi posters. The court ruled that the PNOS party program, in part formulated by Holocaust denier Bernhard Schaub, was racist.

In May 2005, the High Court of Justice in Thurgau dismissed a complaint lodged by Erwin Kessler, president of Verein gegen Tierfabriken (Association against Animal Factories − VgT), against Pascal Krauthammer, a Jewish lawyer. Krauthammer had written in his doctoral thesis, “The Prohibition of Shechitah in Switzerland, 1845−2000,” that Kessler was “in regular contact with neo-Nazis” and had “forged Talmud excerpts.”  In 2005, Kessler also served a 45-day sentence in jail following a 1998 verdict of the Zurich high court finding him guilty of numerous instances of racial discrimination.

In March the Court of Justice of Veveyse (Freiburg District) sentenced Rene-Louis Berclaz to three months imprisonment for racial discrimination. Berclaz had questioned the existence of gas chambers in World War II, on the Internet. He served six months in prison for racial discrimination in 2003.

 

Public Activity

Several demonstrations against right-wing extremism took place in 2005. Some 1,000 people gathered in Bern under the slogan ‘All against the Right’ on 12 March and shouted anti-Nazi slogans. On 1 August about 800 persons demonstrated in Lucerne against the presence of right-wing extremists at the national festivities in Rütli (see above). Four hundred anti-fascists rallied in Aarau, a week after PNOS sympathizers had demonstrated on 1 May in Aarau and Solothurn.