As a 17-year-old Jewish schoolgirl in Geneva, Aimee Stauffer-Stitelmann risked her life -- and broke Swiss law -- in rescuing Jewish children from the Nazis.
On Tuesday, nearly six decades after she was censured and briefly jailed by a Swiss military tribunal, she became the first citizen to seek to clear her name under a new law offering to pardon those who were penalized for violating Switzerland's strict neutrality during World War II.
"It is absurd, laughable, to ask to be rehabilitated after 60 years, and I had to be persuaded to do it," said Stauffer-Stitelmann, who is now 79.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
"But this is less about the past and more about the future. I want to draw attention to the suffering of immigrants who are here without papers. I want the people of Switzerland to fight against falling into the same situation again without even knowing it," she said.
The law, which came into effect on New Year's Day, is considered a small but important step in Switzerland's tortuous and uneven struggle to confront its wartime history. It follows the "Nazi Gold" affair of the 1990s, when Switzerland and its banks were identified as the main routing source for gold looted by Nazi armies, and forced into a US$1.25 billion settlement with Jewish groups and Holocaust heirs in the US.
"This law is part of the unfinished history of Switzerland," said Stefan Keller, a Zurich-based historian who has written about Switzerland and World War II.
"This rehabilitation is symbolic proof that decisions at the time were wrong. It shows what could have been," he said.
It also underscores the limits of Switzerland's willingness to make amends.
Pardons are not automatic and those who were affected or their survivors must formally appeal for pardons within five years. There will be no financial compensation. The pardons will not extend to Swiss citizens who, in addition to opposing the Nazis, actively fought in the French resistance in World War II or joined the Spanish Civil war against Franco's Spain.
Proponents of the legislation complain that a five-year, 600-page study finalized in 2002 that challenged the Swiss claim of strict neutrality remains so sensitive that parliament has refused to debate it.
A retired schoolteacher and lifelong political activist, Stauffer-Stitelmann came by train from her home in Geneva to the vast meeting hall in this city's Federal Palace, the seat of the parliament, to announce her request for a pardon at a news conference. A 12-member parliamentary pardons commission will now review the request.
With husband Henri Stauffer, 80, at her side, some of her stories spilled out. She said she knew so little about her underground work that she wore high heels when crossing the border between France and Switzerland and a bright white coat on nighttime reconnaissance missions where she was supposed to be invisible.
She said she distracted customs officers with idle and endless chatter and either used false papers to help her young charges or brought them on foot across an unguarded stretch of the border.
"I had a tiny, suicidal side," she said.
Asked to describe what she did to save lives, Stauffer-Stitelmann replied, "Not very much."
In 1938, the year Germany swallowed Austria in the Anschluss, the Swiss government began imposing border controls on refugees from Germany and Austria in an attempt to appease Hitler.
"Switzerland, and in particular its political leaders, failed when it came to generously offering protection to persecuted Jews," said the Bergier report, as the 600-page study is known.
It added: "By adopting numerous measures making it more difficult for refugees to reach safety, and by handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime to attain its goals."
Several hundred Swiss nationals lost their jobs, were fined or even imprisoned for secretly helping Jews and other refugees flee the Nazis.
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