Switzerland, land of asylum? The word of witnesses As part of Switzerland’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

André Panczer

Until 1942, André and his parents lived in Paris. They then retreated to Prayssac (Lot), then to Nice, after a stay in the "Jewish colony" of Megève (Haute-Savoie). On 21 September 1943, when he was 8 years old, André was put in a convoy of children to Switzerland by the local Zionist youth movement led by Jacques Wajntrob, who was arrested two days later and deported. The 20 children are safely passing through Switzerland where André will stay with the Bosshard family.

Isidore Jacubowiez

Until May 1944, Isidore was a schoolboy and lived under his real name in Paris. Then housed at a neighbor of his parents (his mother is deported in 1943 and his father hides), he is transported to Lyon, where a network takes care of making him travel to Switzerland. He arrives there on May 25, by a convoy of 11 children aged 7 to 18 organized by a sector presented under the name "The Sisters of the Holy Family".

Edmond Richemond

In 1942, Edmond Richemond was 13 years old when his mother was arrested during the roundup of the Vel d'Hiv. Managed to escape, he is taken in by neighbors and later entrusted to La Colonie scolaire and the EEIF who take him to Switzerland. Refugee in Geneva, he is transferred to the Cropettes sorting centre then to the camps of Charmilles, Varembé and Champel. Until the end of the war, he worked in a luxury hotel in Crans-Montana. He will find his brother and father, both survivors of Auschwitz.

Rosette Tasma-Wielblad

In July 1942, Rosette Tasma-Wielblad and her family escape the Vel'd'Hiv raid by hiding at a neighbor’s house. She is placed with her sister with a nanny. His parents were arrested in November 1943 and deported to Auschwitz a few days before his 9th birthday. Rosette hides with her aunt, uncle and cousins in Saint-Pierrede-Chartreuse near Grenoble. She is part of a convoy taken by Marianne Cohn to a smuggler at the Swiss border. She is then collected by a family in Geneva.

Sabine Sonabend

The Sonabend family tries to cross to Switzerland in August 1942. They are sent back to France by Switzerland. Arrested by a German patrol, the parents are deported. In 1997, invoking the law on liability, Charles Sonabend filed a complaint with the Federal Council and demanded compensation from the Confederation for moral injury. His sister, Sabine, presented a request in the same direction in 1999.

followed by the projection of

Closed Country by Kaspar Kasics and Stefan Mächler

Crossed destinies of the Sonabend family and the Popowski family. Fritz Straub is a guard at the Boncourt border post where the Sonabend family was turned away on August 17, 1942. She is forced to live in a convent before being expelled. Fritz Straub and the nuns follow strictly the orders of police chief Heinrich Rothmund. A few days earlier, on 8 August 1942, Heinrich Rothmund had personally given his consent to the entry of the Popowski family into Switzerland.