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BBC News | EUROPE | Swiss come clean on Nazi dealings
Swiss businesses were making use of slave labour, mostly imported by the Nazis from eastern Europe, in their German subsidiary companies. The research was carried out by an independent commission led by Swiss historian Jean Francois Bergier, mandated by parliament to shed light on the country's past.
The report says that companies like AIAG and BBC, which supplied basic materials, as well as food giant Nestle, were aware that forced labour was being used in their German subsidiaries. "As a rule they were not worried or uneasy about the situation, and as long as production was maintained they had no thoughts of intervening in the management or personnel policy of their subsidiaries," says the report.
Thursday, 30 August, 2001
Company names appearing in this article are:
- ABB Ltd. (Brown Boveri & Cie, AG ("BBC")
- Algroup/Alusuisse Group AG (ALIG) previous to that known as Swiss Aluminium Industrie AG (AIAG), now owned by Alcan, Inc. (Canada)
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
Swiss firms have been complying with a Friday deadline set by a judge in the United States to declare whether or not they benefited from slave labour during World War II. It is now believed at least 11,000 slave labourers were employed by Swiss companies with affiliates in Nazi Germany.
Some of the companies using slave labour remain among the most famous in Switzerland - for example engineering firm Brown Boveri, or food giant Nestle, whose German affiliate Maggi replaced the swastika flying over its factory with the Swiss flag just hours before the arrival of allied forces in 1944.
Friday, 25 August, 2000
Company names appearing in this article are:
- ABB Ltd. (Brown Boveri & Cie, AG ("BBC")
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
U.S. National Archives & Records Administration
War and Civilization Lecture University of North Carolina-Wilmington, North Carolina
April 19, 2001
Greg Bradsher
From the end of World War II until five years ago the Holocaust was primarily viewed as the greatest murder in history. And indeed it was. But since the
spring of 1996 it has become ever more apparent that the Holocaust was also the greatest robbery in history. The Nazi-era witnessed the direct and indirect
theft of well over $150 billion of tangible assets of victims of Nazi persecution.
Company names appearing in this article are:
- Assicurazioni Generali (Italy)
- Allianz AG (Germany)
- Ford Motor Company (USA)
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
Vatican Bank Claims
May 11, 2001
Ukrainians, Serbs, Russians and others who were forced to work for Swiss owned
firms such as Nestle, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz, Novartis, Hoffmann-La Roche, Maggi,
Wander, and many other companies in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Austria. Italy,
France, Belgium, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Hungary, and Norway now may be
compensated.
Company names appearing in this article are:
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
- Ciba and Geigy (Novartis)
- Sandoz (Novartis)
- Novartis AG (Ciba and Geigy merged in 1970, Sandoz and Ciba integrated to form Novartis in 1996) (Switzerland)
- Hoffmann-La Roche (Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche), based in Nutley, N.J., is the U.S. prescription drug unit of the Roche Group) (Switzerland)
- Maggi (a subsidiary company of Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
- Wander AG (Switzerland)
One of the world's biggest banks, UBS, admits for the first time that it exploited Nazi slave labourers from Auschwitz during World War II. It is the first time the bank, which prevented Holocaust survivors and their families from retrieving their wartime assets, has admitted exploiting slave labour.
Monday, 7 August, 2000
Company names appearing in this article are:
- UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland)
- Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland)
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
- Roche Holding AG now known as Roche Group (Switzerland)
- Novartis AG (Switzerland)
Friday October 31, 1997 - Thursday November 6, 1997
FREDY ROM
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Panel members cited the chocolate manufacturer Nestlé as an example, saying the company refused to cooperate when the commission sought records about its Maggi subsidiary, which employed thousands of war prisoners and Jewish slave laborers at its factory located in Germany near the Swiss border.
Company names appearing in this article are:
- Nestlé S.A. (Nestle) (Switzerland)
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