Report Says Nation Aided in Holocaust

An international panel of historians declared that Switzerland was guilty of acting as an accomplice in the Holocaust when it refused to accept many thousands of fleeing Jews and instead sent them back to almost certain annihilation at the hands of the Nazis. In a 956-page report commissioned three years ago by the Swiss government to reevaluate the nation’s wartime role, the nine-member panel said it had unearthed records proving that Switzerland “declined to help people in mortal danger” when it turned away at least 24,500 Jews in the 1940s. The panel accused the Swiss government at the time of pursuing an inhumane policy sharply at odds with the country’s tradition of offering asylum to those facing persecution.