The Swiss and their Zionist Clients

By Steve Rodan

Haim Pozner was a rising Zionist apparatchik in Poland before World War II. During the Hitler years, Pozner worked and studied in Germany and then was allowed to resettle in Switzerland, where he became a leading Zionist emissary during World War II. His job: Selecting which Zionists would be allowed to escape Europe for Palestine as well as obtain the Jewish money from the doomed Jews.

Pozner, who later changed his last name to the more Hebraic "Pazner," marked a small but important cog in the relationship between the Zionist leadership and Switzerland in the 1930s and 1940s. The relationship was an outgrowth of the strategic alliance between the Zionist movement and the Third Reich. Both Hitler and the Zionists used Switzerland as a funnel for money and fugitives, particularly as Germany headed toward defeat in the last years of World War II.

The money sent from occupied Europe to Switzerland -- whether that of the Nazis or Zionists -- represented the last trace of the millions of Hitler's victims. Many of them had already perished in Auschwitz, Treblinka and other death camps. The key now was to seize and hide their assets -- whether cash, jewels or even gold teeth.

Neutrality?

For more than a century, Switzerland has claimed to be neutral, refusing to help either side in a conflict. The historical record shatters the myth: During World War II, both Britain and the United States regarded Switzerland as an "economic satellite of the Axis and the source of part of Axis economic and military power." [1]

Pozner personified Swiss policy toward the Zionist movement. A member of the Labor Zionist movement and director of the Palestine Office in the Polish port of Danzig, Pozner was important to Zionist policy on the eve of World War II. While tens of thousands of Jews were blocked from entering Switzerland, Pozner was deemed a privileged guest. He was allowed to study and obtain his doctorate from the University of Basel in 1939. He was given a work permit that authorized his positions as head of both the emigration and finance offices of the Jewish Agency.

Emigration and finance were the key elements to the Zionist relationship with Bern. As head of emigration, Pozner, with a few exceptions, was entrusted with blocking the flight of Jews from Poland and the rest of occupied Europe. Instead, with the quiet authorization of the Gestapo, he relayed money and instructions to Zionist activists in the ghettos. Until the last months of the war, he sent large sums to the remaining Zionist presence in Germany.

No daylight

When it came to the Jews, there was no daylight between Germany and Switzerland. As Hitler ratcheted up the persecution of the Jews in the 1930s, Switzerland made sure to close its doors to the victims. In 1938, Bern officially discriminated against Jewish immigration when it agreed to recognize the "J" on the German passports held by Jews. German gentiles could enter Switzerland freely for commerce or vacations. The Jews were kept out.

The Zionists did not intervene, arguing that this marked the price of neutrality. The myth of neutrality was exposed in June 1940 after Germany defeated and occupied France. Bern allowed tens of thousands of French soldiers to enter -- members of the 45th French Army Corps. They were joined by a division of 12,000 Poles as well as a cavalry regiment from Morocco, all of whom had briefly fought with the Allies. The more than 40,000 soldiers were allowed to remain in Switzerland throughout the war. At first, the conditions were difficult, but rapidly improved until the French and Poles achieved freedom of movement, employment and even university education.

In contrast, the Jews who had escaped Eastern Europe and managed to enter Switzerland were sent to a so-called concentration camp at Büren an der Aare. That was the same camp built for the Allied soldiers, where they had been incarcerated until January 1941.

Throughout the war, the Jewish Agency and Zionist leadership used Switzerland to communicate with the movement in occupied Europe. But the clear understanding was that the Zionists in Switzerland could not help the Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos. Nor, could the Zionist bureaucracy in Switzerland release information on the Final Solution.

Holocaust secret

Pozner learned that early in the war. Although he was kept abreast of the massacres of Jews throughout Poland and the Soviet Union, the Zionist administrator was informed by a Swiss professor that Hitler had authorized the extermination of all the Jews in Europe. In July 1942, Pozner had been approached by Edgar Salin, a German economist and professor at the University of Basel, where the Jewish Agency representative had studied. Salin had learned of Hitler's plans from somebody who was a leading member of the German business community.

Pozner could have leaked the information to the Swiss press, the BBC in London or to senior diplomats. Instead, he sent a note to Chaim Barlas, the head of the Jewish Agency in Turkey and in steady contact with Nazi diplomats during the war. The decision for the Final Solution was never released, even to the Zionists trapped in occupied Europe.

The height of the Swiss cooperation with the Zionists took place in 1944. With the German Army in retreat on virtually all fronts, Switzerland became the haven for the new fortunes of mid- and high-level Nazis. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into Swiss banks from the Third Reich. The deposits were joined by Zionist funds, consisting of money taken from Jews after the German occupation of Hungary in March. The Zionist and Nazi money were delivered by the same couriers and reached the same banks -- often concealed in accounts by Zionist activists with Swiss citizenship.

After the war, U.S. military intelligence was briefed on the flow of Jewish money to Switzerland. Stefan Vadasan was a driver for a Gestapo agent in Hungary for several months in 1944. After that, he was a chauffeur for Zionist apparatchiks in charge of collecting Jewish ransoms. Vadasan told the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps of the partnerships in Budapest between the SS and the Zionists in collecting and depositing the Jewish money. When the Germans fled with their loot from Hungary in late 1944, the Zionists tried to do the same. Some were successful.

One of them, Vadasan said, was Rudolf Kastner. who "had a bank account in Switzerland with the German Major as a partner." Kastner's partners in the Zionist leadership in Hungary, including Andre Biss and Lazlo Szantho, fled to Bucharest.

"From them, he [Vadasan] heard that they wanted to leave for Switzerland where they had a large amount of money deposited in various banks," Vadasan said. [2]

Same banks

The banks used by the Germans and Zionists were the same. The Union Bank of Switzerland was said  by U.S. intelligence to have played a leading role in receiving and concealing German assets as well as money from the United States to the Axis powers. The bank's general manager, Alfred Schaefer, dealt with Emil Puhl, vice president of Germany's Reichsbank and a key player in the smuggling of gold obtained from dead Jews to Switzerland during the last year of the war.

Credit Suisse held way over 60,000 accounts of Nazis during the war. Like UBS, Credit Suisse participated in Berlin's forced transfer of accounts in Switzerland held by Jews. The bank's director, Wilhelm Schulthess, knew first hand of the German policy as a confidante of SS chief Heinrich Himmler. [3] The bank also allowed the Germans and their collaborators to access their loot after the Allied victory. [4]

The Zionist relationship with Switzerland expanded after World War II. Now, Switzerland became the financial center of the movement in continental Europe. Money flowed from former Jewish communities to Swiss banks while Zionist funds moved from the United States to those same institutions. It was regarded as the greatest windfall in the history of the Zionist movement.

Little wonder that Pozner did not return to Palestine and later the State of Israel after the war. He served as Israel's financial representative in Europe until the spring of 1953. Later, he was assigned to track money that flowed from Europe to such Nazi safe havens as Argentina, Sweden and Uruguay. The trust he had developed with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was so solid that Pozner was named judge in the high court of the ruling Mapai Party, where members were secretly prosecuted and tried without the knowledge of outsiders.

Billions in stolen accounts

The extent of Jewish assets smuggled to Switzerland was only hinted at in 1998. Credit Suisse, USB and other Swiss banks reached a settlement to compensate 457,100 people who claimed that their money was robbed and concealed. By 2015, the banks disbursed $1.28 billion.

But despite promises Credit Suisse and its colleagues torpedoed U.S. investigations of at least 12,000 Nazi account holders. Credit Suisse, in particular, was said to have laundered Nazi money and financed ratlines for fleeing SS and Gestapo officers. They included Adolf Eichmann, Kurt Becher and Friedrich Schwend. The Zionist fugitives sought by liberated European countries included Kastner, who fled to Switzerland, and Jacques Van Harten, who found a haven in Palestine.

"While some questions were brought to limited closure [by the prior investigations], the important question of the size and flow of assets owned by Nazis and Nazi collaborators into or via Switzerland has not even begun to be resolved," the redacted 2023 U.S. Senate Budget Committee report said. [5]

Notes

1. Report by U.S. Economic Warfare Division, London, quoted in "Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War." 61340 Vorabseiten_e (uek.ch)]

2. "Secret Control" RG 226. Entry 108A, Box 280. NARA

3. "Zwischen Bundeshaus und Paradeplatz. Die Banken der Credit Suisse Group im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Pages 102-3. 2001.

4. "Report of the Independent Ombudsperson and Independent Advisor to Credit Suisse." Senate Budget Committee, February 15, 2023. 2023-02-15 Neil Barofsky Report on Credit Suisse (senate.gov)

5. ibid. Page 67. Also "Credit Suisse Failed to Fully Investigate Nazi-Linked Accounts, Full Report Confirms." Sen. Chuck Grassley. Aug. 17, 2023.

Below: Union Bank of Switzerland