by Jean Ziegler
February 1999

At the time of the publication of Ziegler's book, Switzerland was not a member of the United Nations. In 1986 a referendum opposed UN membership 3-to-1. In March 2002 with a narrow majority the Swiss voted in favor of joining the UN.

In August 1998 Swiss banks agreed to pay a compensation of $1.25b to the survivors and families of the Holocaust. -- Editor

My book is not an investigative report. When the governments of great powers have failed for fifty years, a lone individual can accomplish nothing. My book is not a wholesale indictment of Swiss bankers, either. To repeat: ours is a land devoid of raw materials, yet we are now the world's second wealthiest country in terms of per capita income. Our raw material is money, whatever its source. As a Swiss citizen, I myself benefit from a high standard of living, from the crumbs that fall from the table of the mighty. I have no wish to be ungrateful.

I avow myself a member of the nation of guilty innocents and innocent guilty. I belong to the nation, but the story of the Nazis' looted gold and the proceeds of the Holocaust have tainted it to a degree that I can no longer stomach.

On the morning of September 30, 1998 I received a communication from the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office: Federal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponto informed me that I had been charged with treason, infringing the Independance of Switzerland, and promoting foreign undertakings directed against the security of Switzerland. (Article 266 of the Penal Code)

What led up to this?

On Wednesday, June 22, 1998 in the Dirksen Building at Washington, I had testified before the US Senate's Banking Commission on the subject of ownerless Jewish assets, stolen Nazi gold fenced by Swiss banks, and the tens of thousands of refugee families, mostly Jewish, who had been turned back at the Swiss frontier during World War II. The committee chairman, Senator Alfonso D'Amato of New York, had asked me some crucial questions in the course of the public hearings, and I had answered them to the best of my knowledge and beliefs.

The charge of treason had been brought forward by twenty one financiers, commercial lawyers, and politicians of the far right, most of them extremely wealthy. The bulk of them are major shareholders in large Swiss banks, notably UBS.

These stockholders dissected my book, The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead, and cited a number of isolated passages taken out of context. The "argument" of my enemies goes like this: Ziegler is an accomplice of the Jewish organizations who "extorted" vast sums of money from Switzerland. The facts and theories presented in his book "increased the greed" of the Jewish organization.

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida writes of the epoque spectrale in which we now live. The spectre, or ghost, is one of the protagonists of our age. A ghost is always "in between," neither wholly alive nor wholly dead. It haunts our memory today, yet it is past.

The many millions of Jews and other peoples murdered by the Nazis are the ghosts of our epoch. They haunt the conscience of humanity today.

It is one of the characteristsics of my country's ruling class to refuse to engage in self-criticism. Fortunately, however, Switzerland is more than the sum of her government authorities, ruling class and bankers. It is also inhabited by a cultured, diverse people shaped by 700 years of democratic existence. A private foundation established for the benefit of needy Holocaust survivors is enjoying the support of tens of thousands of ordinary Swiss citizens. Erstwhile frontier guards, military policemen, and railroad personnel are volunteering fresh evidence every week. The horizon is brighter than it was. Cracks are appearing in the official wall of silence; sooner or later it will collapse.

The nation's desire for truth is combating official amnesia, refusal to acknowledge guilt, and suppression of the past. The Swiss people are in a ferment. They want to burst the bonds of their isolation. The most recent opinion poll yielded a clear majority in favor of Switzerland's joining the European Union. The Social Democrats and the trade unions are currently at work on a constitutional initiative proposing Swiss membership in the United Nations.

Profound and painful though the present crisis of identity may be, I am convinced that the Swiss Confederation is on the verge of a revolt: a rebellion of conscience.