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Order versus Education: The Aims of the Swiss Labor Camps for
Refugees
Since World War I,
Switzerland practiced a defensive policy against foreign immigration
to prevent so-called Überfremdung (“foreignization”). Jews
were the main group at which this policy was directed. Immigration
and naturalisation of Jews mainly from Eastern Europe, was strictly
limited in most Swiss cantons during the 1920s and early 1930s.
Based on this, Swiss authorities developed a restrictive refugee
policy when confronted with a massive influx of Jewish refugees from
Nazi Germany in 1933 and again from 1938 on. Nevertheless from 1938
to 1945 around 22,500 Jews were allowed into Switzerland – many of
them only with great difficulty. An unknown number of Jewish
refugees from Nazi persecution was turned back at the border. Those
who found refuge in Switzerland found themselves being interned from
1940 on, when a system of labor camps for men and of so called
“homes” for women, children and the elderly was established. At its
peak the system comprised more than a hundred camps and homes, with
35,000 inmates, roughly 70% of them Jewish. While living conditions
in the civilian-run system seem to have been fairly tolerable (as
opposed to conditions in the parallel system of reception and
quarantine camps under military jurisdiction) they served as a tool
to control and to re-educate the refugees. The overriding aim was
“onward migration” as required by a 1931 law. As a result of
internment, often prolonged for several years, the refugees’
integration into the Swiss labor market and Swiss society was
thwarted and successfully blocked. The camp system was officially
abolished only in 1950. By 1953, all but 1,600 of the refugees had
been compelled to leave Switzerland. |
