The "Righteous among the Nations" of Swiss nationality

The following people of Swiss nationality have been raised to the rank of the «Righteous among the Nations» by the Yad Vashem memorial. The year of their nomination is mentioned in brackets.

Emile BARRAS (1996)
Of both Swiss and French nationality, Emile Barras saved Jews by helpingaving them cross the Swiss border secretly. An active member of the French Résistance, he also helped uniformed members of the Allied armed forces cross the border.

August BOHNY (1990)
August Bohny ran a home for children in Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire from 1941 onwards, and later three homes and a model farm. In these homes, which from 1942 onwards were supported by the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children, he put up Jewish children who had been removed from internment camps in the south of France. In particular, he took in the children sent to him from the camp of Rivesaltes by Friedel Reiter, who was to become his wife. August Bohny successfully protected the children in his care and managed to shield them from the round-ups of Jews carried out in Chambon-sur-Lignon. With its hideaways and a network of escape routes to Switzerland and Spain, the Huguenot village of Chambon-sur-Lignon and its surroundings became a bastion ofor the rescuinge of Jews in France. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Jews found refuge there, and about thirty30 inhabitants of the region (among them the Swiss pastor Daniel Curtet), have been raised to the rank of Righteous among the Nations.
August Bohny currently lives in Basele.

Friedel BOHNY, née REITER (1990)
Born in Vienna in 1912, and placed with a Zurich family by the Red Cross after the First World War I, Friedel Reiter chose the profession of paedriatric nurse. She became involved in the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child War Victims, which was absorbed into the Swiss Red Cross in December 1941 and took the name of Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. A month before, the Cartel sent Friedel Reiter to the internment camp of Rivesaltes in the Eastern Pyrenees. She worked there until Rivesaltes’ internees wereas vacated from its internees in late 1942. Her mission was to provide the interned children – foreigners, Jews, gypsies, and stateless persons – with community clinic services and to hand out supplementary food to them.

During the deportations that began in August 1942, she shielded Jewish children from the convoys waiting to depart, and hid them in her provisions warehouse. She then sent them to Chambon-sur-Lignon, to a home of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children run by August Bohny – who was to become her husband and with whom she currently lives in Basele.

The Swiss nurse kept a diary, which was published 50 years later and about which the film director Jacqueline Veuve has made a film. On February 12, 1942, i.e. before the deportations, she noted in her diary: "If there is one thing I wish, it is to see the day when all these people who are vegetating here will once again be able to live like human beings and will recover that which distinguishes us from animals – dignity."

Friedrich BORN (1987)
It was in April 1944 that the Bernese Friedrich Born (1903-1963) was appointed delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Hungary, where he had for several years represented the Swiss Office for Commercial Expansion. In the face of the mass killings that were carried out with the knowledge of the whole world, the task that awaited him was immense and many-faceted, a task that went above and beyond the traditional ICRC delegate's mission of protecting and supporting prisoners of war and civilian internees. He was able to benefit from the support provided by other members of the ICRC and a local team that consisted of up to 250 members. He worked in close cooperation with Switzerland's Carl Lutz and Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg.

Besides providing Jews deported into concentration camps in Hungary and those who found themselves in the ghettos with material aid, Friedrich Born and his team concentrated their activities on the rescuinge of children whose parents had been deported or could no longer be found. They set up homes, hospitals, and maternity clinics. With great difficulty, they obtained extraterritorial status for their institutions – more than 150 of them – where their children were gathered. Some 8,000 Jews thus benefited from the ICRC's protection. Friedrich Born succeeded in releasing from the big ghetto 500 children who had been placed in the big ghettothere in violation of the ICRC protection that was their due.

He issued about 15,000 ICRC protective letters of ICRC to all the people who were able to assert some connection or other with the delegation and to those who held immigration certificates to Palestine. Finally, he sent false documents drawn up in Switzerland by Latin American consulates to their addressees, thus again saving lives.

Charles-Jean BOVET (1989)
A native of the Canton of Fribourg, Charles-Jean Bovet (1900-1952) was a parish priest in the Haute-Savoie during the Second World War II. In September of 1942 he saved the life of Bernhard Blumenkranz, the future director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, by secretly helping him cross the border to Switzerland illegally.

Paul CALAME-ROSSET (1998)
Born in 1905, and currently living near Geneva, this architect and his wife lived in Brussels during the Second World War II. His villa, which was situated in the heart of a quarter inhabited by Germans, displayed a sign saying «Swiss Property». He harboured several Jewish families there and saved them «at the risk of his life».

Daniel CURTET (1987)
As the pastor of the parish of Fay near Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire, Daniel Curtet took an active part in the accommodatingon of Jewish refugees amongby the families of his parish. He put some of them up at his own residence before he couldwas able to find a host family for them. Moreover, pPastor Curtet sent information about the hunt for the Jews in France to Switzerland, by means of coded letters addressed to his father, who lived in Lausanne.

Maurice DUBOIS (1985)
In Sspring 1940 Maurice Dubois (1905-1998) from Bienne, an early player in the international civil service, was dispatched to the maternity hospital of Elne, the oldest child- aid institutions set up by the Swiss in the south of France. After the military defeat of France, he provided aid to the refugees, who were streaming towards the non-occupied zone byin hundreds of thousands, with help from Toulouse, where he had settled. This was primarily a matter of distributing provisions and clothing collected in Switzerland.

He soon became responsible for the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child War Victims in non-occupied France and, after this organisation becamewas affiliated towith the Red Cross, for the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. He worked tofor the employment of Swiss nurses in the internment camps of Gurs and Rivesaltes (Friedel Reiter). With the help of his wife Eléonore, he also developed a network of homes for children, notably in Montluel in the Department of Ain, Faverges and Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons (Renée Farny) in Haute-Savoie, and in Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire (August Bohny).

The castle of La Hille in the Ariège, the most famous of the homes opened by the Dubois, accommodated about a hundred100 Jewish children who had escaped from Germany and Austria. Rösli Näf was its first manageress; Anne-Marie Piguet and Sebastian Steiger, among others, worked there. On the night of 26-27 August 1942, the French police entered La Hille and arrested 45 children in order to deport them. Alerted by Rösli Näf, Maurice Dubois immediately went to Vichy. With the help of the Swiss legation, he managed to get the French authorities to release the 45 children. After the war, Maurice and Eléonore Dubois ran a guest home for former concentration camp inmates in Adelboden.

Renée FARNY (1992)
Renée Farny worked as a supervisor at «Feux-Follets», a home for children that had been opened in Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons in September 1941 and been placed under the management of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. For dozens of Jewish children, this home was a hideaway, a refuge, and the point of departure for their secret departure into neighbouring Switzerland.

Late in 1942, Renée Farny safeguarded the passage into Switzerland of eleven11 Jewish children from another home of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children, La Hille castle in the Pyrenees. However, the route was soon uncovered, and the management of the Swiss Red Cross forced Renée Farny and the manageress of La Hille, Rösli Näf, to leave their posts.

Harald FELLER (1999)
Born in Berne (where he is still living) in 1913, Harald Feller joined the Federal Political Department (now the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs) in 1939. After Maximilian Jaeger was recalled (on 10th November 1944), and his successor, Anton Josef Kilchmann, after him (on 12th December) the responsibility of running the Swiss mission in Budapest fell to Harald Feller, as ad interim Chargé d’Affaires.

At the end of December 1944 a group of Arrow Cross members attacked and pillaged the Swedish mission. The Minister, Carl Ingvar Danielsson, was lucky to escape with his life. He and 5 colleagues were given shelter in the building occupied by the Swiss mission. Harald Feller lodged them for several weeks, which was not without risk : Sweden represented Soviet interests and was therefore directly threatened by the Arrow Cross organisation. Harald Feller later supplied the Swedes with false Swiss passports.

William FRANCKEN (1998)
Laure FRANCKEN (1998)
As a country doctor, William Francken (1889-1962) owned a chalet in Novel above Saint-Gingolph in Haute-Savoie. This was where he and his wife provided the numerous Jews who were trying to get into Switzerland with care and support. The couple accompanied some of them as far as the border. Most of their rescue effortsactions took place in 1942.

Jean-Edouard FRIEDRICH (1999)
Jean-Edouard Friedrich, who was born in 1912 and now lives in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, was a member of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross to Berlin. This delegation, which was opened in 1940, was responsible for an area extending over the entire territory of the Third Reich, including the General Government, and the occupied countries, in particular the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Friedrich helped several Jews escape to Switzerland. He obtained papers for a young couple and accompanied them to the Swiss border. He also led a young woman from Stuttgart, where he was on mission, to passeurs who were to take her to Switzerland. The German police intercepted them at the border. Friedrich drew the Germans' attention to him and allowed himself to be captured so that the fugitives could escape to Switzerland.

Albert GROSS (1989)
Abbot Albert Gross (1904-1975) was delegated by the Bishop of Fribourg and the Catholic aid organisation Caritas to provide internees in France with spiritual help. It was in this context that he stayed in the internment camp of Gurs in the Pyrenees in 1942 and 1943.

When the deportation convoys were set up from August 1942 onwards – some 3,000 Jews who had been interned in Gurs perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor – he saved several Jews from deportation, among them Georges Wadnaï, who later worked as a rabbi in Lausanne.

Paul GRÜNINGER (1971)
Originally trained to become a schoolmaster, Paul Grüninger (1891-1972) became commander of the St.Gallen police force, which he had joined in 1919. After the Austrian Anschluss (March 11, 1938), he applied the federal directives in a way that was tantamount to authoriszing the entry into Switzerland of all the Jews who were looking for a refuge in the border canton of St.Gallen.

On August 19, 1938, the Swiss border was hermetically sealed for Jews escaping from Austria. Paul Grüninger opposed this decision in vain. From that moment on, he chose to ignore the federal directives. He falsified official documents to prevent expulsions. He sent writs of summons to appear in court and invitations to inmates atof the Dachau concentration camp to allowmake them to come to Switzerland. He closed his eyes to fake visas. Let us hear the testimony of one Hellmut R., who had arrived from Vienna just before Christmas 1938 and was not sent back by Paul Grüninger:

«Several people advised me to write a letter to Commander Grüninger. (…) I begged him to do everything to save my parents. He replied by return of post that he was not in a position to grant them a visa. But he sent me a "summons" for them to appear at a "hearing" in his office in St.Gallen. My parents used their last pennies to buy railway tickets and, thanks to this official document, were able to leave Austria and enter Switzerland. The Commander made sure that I found my parents at once and he granted them a permit to stay on.» (Stefan Keller, Grüningers Fall – Geschichten von Flucht und Hilfe, Zürich, 1993, S. 111-112)

Paul Grüninger was suspended from his duties in April 1939, then dismissed from the service. Late in 1940, the St.Gallen District Court fined him on the grounds of a violatingon of official duties – a ruling it reviewed in 1995.

It is impossible to determine precisely how many Jews this police commander saved. He himself put their number at 2,000, then at 3,000. A book by Stefan Keller, then a film by Richard Dindo – both entitled Grüningers Fall – have contributed towards making Paul Grüninger's fate better known.

Hildegard GUTZWILLER (1995)
A member of the Order of the Sacred Heart, Sister Hildegard Gutzwiller (1897-1957) entered the Sophianum in Budapest in 1927. Only seven years later she was appointed Mother Superior of this school, thus assuming responsibility for a community of some 200 members.

After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 and the beginning of the deportations to Auschwitz, Jews sought sanctuary in the Sophianum, which enjoyed the twofold diplomatic protection of Switzerland and the Vatican. A total of 70 refugees – among them 38 Jews – were thus able to hide. They survived, even though the Sophianum was badly damaged by the bombardments.

One of the Jewish survivors, Agnes Klein Van Gorp, testified:

«On several nights, Nazi hordes tried to enter the convent. Mother Superior Gutzwiller faced them heroically, and she managed to fend them off. The Deputy Mother Superior (M. Möller, a Dane) protected us and looked after us. She risked her own safety and her life to help us.» (Jörg Gutzwiller, Sanfte Macht. Hildegard Gutzwiller, eine mutige Christin, die Juden rettete, Freiburg and Konstanz, 1998, Spage. 15).

Anne-Marie IM HOF, née PIGUET (1990)
Born in 1916 in the Vallée de Joux, Anne-Marie Piguet entered the service of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. To begin with, from June 1942 to January 1943, she worked in the home in Montluel in the Department of Ain, which accommodated many Jewish and Spanish children whom Aid to Children had removed from the Rivesaltes internment camp.

In May 1943, after a short stay at the Toulouse operational centre of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children, she arrived at the castle of La Hille in the Ariège. This home was host to a number of Jewish children from Germany and Austria who were either orphaned or separated from their parents. But several of them had already escaped to Switzerland or Spain,; others had been deported.

The threat of deportation persisted, particularly for those who were more than 16 years old. Anne-Marie Piguet organiszed a clandestine route to Switzerland through the Risoux and her native Vallée de Joux. Nine of her protégés from the castle of La Hille took advantage of it. They travelled in two groups, inthrough a France completely occupied by the Germans. They reached Switzerland safe and sound, with the help of two Frenchwomen who lived near the border, the Cordier sisters.

Another Swiss woman who worked at La Hille castle, Gret Tobler, returned to Switzerland late in 1943. She secretly took two children with her. Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet, who lives near Berne, has recounted her experience in the service of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children in a book entitled La filière. En France occupée 1942-1944 (1985).

Frieda IMPEKOVEN, née KOBLER (1966)
Frieda Kobler, born in 1880, had married the writer and actor Toni Impekoven, and lived in Frankfurt/Main during the Second World War II. She hid Jewish men and women at her home.

Jeanne LAVERGNAT (1998)
Arthur LAVERGNAT (1998)
Arthur and Jeanne Lavergnat let numerous groups of Jewish children and other refugees use their market-gardening farm near the French/Swiss border as a half-way house during their escape.

Carl LUTZ (1964)
Gertrud LUTZ, née FRANKHAUSER (1964)
Carl Lutz (1895-1975) deserves very particular mention. As the first Swiss national who was elevated to the rank of Righteous among the Nations in 1964, he – aided by his wife and his helpers – saved about 62,000 Hungarian Jews after the German occupation of March 1944. Previously, he had helped some 10,000 to emigrate to Palestine.

Vice-Consul Carl Lutz had been in charge of the Department of the foreign interests of the Swiss Legation since his arrival in early 1942; in particular, he looked after the interests of the United Kingdom and the United States. This function enabled him to issue protective letters for holders of Palestinian certificates (an authorizsation to immigrate, countersigned by the British authorities) who were waiting to emigrate. At the time of the German occupation, their number was about 8,000, and Carl Lutz pursued the negotiations with a view to their emigration.

The situation of the Jews, however, rapidly got worse; deportations to Auschwitz began on May 15, 1944. In these circumstances, Carl Lutz put the Hungarian office of the Jewish Council for Palestine under Swiss diplomatic protection. Moreover, he and his staff issued tens of thousands of additional protective letters which were no longer covered by Palestinian certificates. The hHolders of these letters were placed in 76 protective houses, which were for the most part buildings of previous diplomatic missions of countries whose interests were represented by Switzerland. Carl Lutz and his superior, the Swiss Minister Maximilian Jaeger, had to intervene regularly to ensure that this diplomatic protection was safeguarded and respected. In particular, they had to confront gangs of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian pro-Nazis, who tried to seize the Jews who had found refugeprotection in these protective houses.

Carl Lutz worked in close cooperation with Friedrich Born, the delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with the Swede, Raoul Wallenberg, and with the representatives of the neutral countries and of the Vatican. Late in 1944, when he was no longer able to leave his residence in Buda on account of the advancing Red Army, his work in Pest was carried on by Peter Zürcher until the Soviet victory.

Carl Lutz's activities ion behalffavour of the Jews have now become better known thanks to a book by Theo Tschuy, Carl Lutz und die Juden von Budapest [Carl Lutz and the Jews of Budapest] (1995).

Marie MAIENHOFER (1991)
Marie Maienhofer (1898-1994) took holy orders under the name of Sister Jeanne Berchmans. She saved the life of a mother and her two children at Thonon.

Rosa NÄF (1986)
Rosa Näf (1911-1996), more widely known as Rösli Näf, had worked for Doctor Albert Schweitzer in Africa for three years and became the first manageress of the castle of La Hille. Through the impetus of Maurice Dubois, the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child War Victims had opened that home to accommodate about one hundred100 Jewish children who were refugees from Germany and Austria.

After foreign Jews were beginning to be arrested by the French police in August 1942, Rösli Näf organiszed an illegal escape into Switzerland for the older children in her care. The route went through the Aid for Children home of Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons, which was run by Germaine Hommel and where Renée Farny worked. Ten children managed to cross the Genevan border close by. Others were turned back, yet others arrested. A certain number were deported. Once the route was discovered, the management of the Swiss Red Cross management forced Rösli Näf, Germaine Hommel, and Renée Farny to leave their posts. After the war, Rösli Näf settled in Denmark.

René NODOT (1974)
Born of a Swiss father in 1916 in Bourg-en-Bresse, René Nodot also has French nationality and currently lives in the region of Lyons. In his capacity as a functionary of the social service for foreigners in the Ain Department – and secret adviser to the Swiss General Consulate in Lyons – he had the Jews listed for deportation warned so that they couldwere able to escape from their homes. He was an active member of the Réesistance and also organiszed a route into Switzerland through Saint-Julien and Collonges-sous-Salève.

Marcel PASCHE (1992)
Born in 1911 and living at present in Canton Vaud, Marcel Pasche was a Protestant minister in northern France. He brought Jews from there towards Switzerland and gave them addresses of trusted people who lived near the frontier.

Ernest PRODOLLIET (1982)
Trained as a businessman, Ernest Prodolliet (1905-1984) worked in the Swiss Consular Agency in Bregenz from 1938; he was in charge of the passport office. He frequently travelled to St.Gallen and knew Police Commander Paul Grüninger personally.

In August 1938, the border was made virtually uncrossable for Jews trying to escape from the former Austria. According to witness reports, Ernest Prodolliet granted some 300 transit visas through Switzerland to Jews trying to reach Palestine or other countries. He also played the part of a people smuggler and persuaded customs officials to let Jews enter without the requisite documents. In mid-December 1938, a disciplinary enquiry was instituted against him, and he was recalled to Berne. As a vice-consul in Amsterdam from the spring of 1939 until late 1942, he again issued forged certificates to Jews whose deportation was imminent.

Roland de PURY (1976)
Jacqueline de PURY, née de MONTMOLLIN (1976)
Born in Geneva in 1907, the pastor Roland de Pury preached resistance to the Vichy government's anti-Semitic policy in his church in the rue Lanterne in Lyons. With the help of his wife Jacqueline, a native of Neuchâtel, he hid Jews in his flat. He was arrested by the Gestapo and held atin the Fort de Montluc for five months.

Fred REYMOND (1998)
Fred Reymond (1907-1999), who lived in the Vallée de Joux, saved the lives of dozens of people between 1940 and 1945, including those of Jews and French resistance fighters. He helped them cross the French/Swiss border through the forest of Risoux, put them up in his house, then escorted them to the interior of Switzerland, where the danger of being turned back was slighter.

He carried out his smuggling activities within the framework of missions entrusted to him by the Swiss Army's intelligence service. He mainly had to gather information in France about German troops. After the war, he was brought before a court for helping to forge identity papers but. He was acquitted.

Hans SCHAFFERT (1967)
A theology student under Karl Barth in Basel, Hans Schaffert served a training period as a delegate at the Comité inter-mouvements auprès des évacués, an organiszation of French Protestants that provided aid for refugees and organiszed escape routes into Spain and Switzerland. During this period of six months, which he served in the Gurs internment camp in the Pyrenees, he led Jewish internees to the Spanish border and directed others towards an escape route into Switzerland.

Back in Switzerland, he became anone of the associates of Paul Vogt, the «Pastor of the Refugees». From the autumn of 1942 onwards, Vogt ran a campaign, the so-called Freiplatzaktion, from which about 1,700 needy refugees were able to benefit: children, mothers with children, people who were ill, and elderly people. He found them host families or put them up in homes or flats.

Martha SCHMIDT (1994)
Born in Zurich in the beginning of this century, Martha Schmidt was hired as a governess by the Cohen family in Montpellier. When the family had to separate for security reasons, Martha Schmidt took the four daughters with her to a village near St. Etienne where they lived under false identities. The family reunited after the war, and Martha Schmidt remained in the Cohen’s service. She adopted a child whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz.

Sebastian STEIGER (1993)
Born in 1918 in the region of Basele, where he still lives, this trained schoolteacher volunteered to join the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children in 1943. He arrived at the castle of La Hille in the Pyrenees in the autumn. For just over a year, he taught the children in that home, most of them Jews from Germany and Austria.

He gave his ID card to a Jew who had just been summoned by the French police, which facilitated the Jew's escape to Switzerland along Anne-Marie Piguet's route.

Sebastian Steiger has recounted his experience and the fate of the roughly 100 children or so of La Hille in detail in Die Kinder von Schloss La Hille. A film is being made on the basis of this book, which was published in 1992.

Ernest WITTWER (1998)
Two Jewish boys found refuge in his father's farm in Haute-Saône. Ernest Wittwer (1922-1976) helped them cross into Switzerland, which led to his imprisonment.

Peter ZÜRCHER (1998)
Peter Zürcher (1914-1975) from Zurich owned a company in Hungary from 1940 on. From 1944 onwards, Carl Lutz, Switzerland's Vice-Consul in Budapest, employed him in the Department of the foreign interests he was in charge of from 1944 on. Soon afterwards, Lutz appointed Zürcher his temporary representative in Pest, anticipating the moment when he would no longer be able to leave his residence in Buda owing to the fighting. This was the case from Christmas onwards.

Two interventions in particular are to Peter Zürcher's credit. He managed to prevent the SS and gangs of Arrow Cross (Hungarian pro-Nazis) from entering the Pest ghetto of Pest and from massacring its approximately 70,000 inhabitants: he had threatened to bring the SS commandant with having him brought before a court if he carried outhad his plans executed. Later, on January 8, 1945, the Arrow Cross planned to evacuate mostthe majority of the Jews who were in the Swiss protective houses within the international ghetto so as to place them in the big ghetto, deport them, or liquidate them. Peter Zürcher was alerted and immediately intervened with Vajna, the Budapest representative of the government of Szálasi, the leader of the Arrow Cross. He denounced the violations of international public law and demanded an immediate and definitive end to the Arrow Cross's attacks on the protective houses and their inhabitants. Vajna finally yielded.

Thanks to his interventions, Peter Zürcher succeeded in completing Carl Lutz's work: that of saving tens of thousands of Jews.

The Task Force : Switzerland – Second World War of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs would like to thank Mr. Herbert Herz, the delegate of the Yad Vashem memorial of Jerusalem for Switzerland and the Savoy region, as well as Mr. Marcel Pasche, for the information they have so kindly provided.

© 1998 EDA — Task Force Switzerland – Second World War — designed by Stauch & Stauch