Pro memoria: What Swiss neutrality made possible

In recent weeks, various articles and commentaries sharply attacking Switzerland’s political stance as a neutral country have appeared in the so-called quality media. This is nothing new, but you do get the impression that the citizens of our country are to be “softened up”. In order to give us a guilty conscience, we are accused of an indifferent attitude towards suffering caused by wars, a lack of solidarity with the afflicted of this world and a cowardly shirking of responsibility. This is part of the campaign that has going on in Switzerland for years – Switzerland’s achievements and tasks are denied through historical distortion. Will Switzerland be no longer allowed to exist as a place of hope for many war-torn peoples?

Contemporary witnesses
against forgetting

Fortunately, documents still exist which were drawn up by contemporary witnesses in a time when this tactic of confusion was not yet used. They testify to a deeply rooted compassionate attitude among the Swiss population, who wanted to do their bit when the need required it. An example of this are the many women who volunteered during and after the Second World War to enable children from war-torn countries to recuperate in Switzerland. One of them was my mother Olga Bürkli-Stutz (1911–1997). She was one of the Red Cross helpers responsible for accompanying the children’s trains that, from 1942 to 1956, made it possible for 181,000 children from various neighbouring countries to spend their holidays and recuperation in Switzerland. Europe was on its knees, so that the need was great! Thus, the largest children’s aid campaign during and after the Second World War was set up in Switzerland. At that time, tuberculosis infection was on the rise, especially in the cities. In order to prevent this disastrous development, many pre-tuberculous children came to the Swiss mountains. They were supposed to be able to recover in the fresh mountain air. Youth homes and hotels became sanatoriums, and at that time took in 7000 sick children. This children’s aid was mainly financed by donations of money and goods from the population, also through bazaars and badge sales.
  As early as 1942, trains were on their way to France and Belgium to bring children to our country. Unfortunately, it was not until 1946 that the borders were opened for children’s trains to Germany and Holland. For Germany, extensive negotiations had to be conducted beforehand with the occupying powers USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
  Other children, too, traumatised by the war, undernourished and weakened, came to Switzerland this way. They found a place in the many host families who fed them and cared for them and gave them time to recover.
  My mother left me her recorded memories of that time.

This is my task

“I had been attending Samaritan courses at the Red Cross for a long time and had been passionate about it ever since. My husband was in military service, we didn’t have any children yet and I had no job. But there was enough to do. At the beginning of the war, I contacted the Swiss Red Cross (SRC), which had put out an appeal: ‘Who can take in a child from the war zones for a holiday stay of three months?’ Countless families and couples, urban as well as rural, came forward. There were therefore always enough foster places.
  The selection of children for a holiday stay in the host families was made by doctors on site in the respective countries according to the guidelines issued by the Swiss Red Cross, the primary reason being severe malnutrition. And indeed, we had never seen such hollow-cheeked children in our country as those on our trains. My heart was touched!

On the train to Holland

I soon got a job and was on the first train that went through Germany to Holland. In the wagon we wore nurses’ uniform, but on the road, we wore a uniform with the Swiss and Red Cross badges on the sleeves. At night we slept on the train, lying on wooden benches and covered with a woollen blanket. The stations and towns we passed through in Germany were mostly destroyed. People lived in these deserts of rubble; it was distressing. The journey took 48 hours because the main railway lines, tunnels and bridges had been destroyed or badly damaged at the end of the war and they had only been provisionally repaired. So, the train often travelled at a snail’s pace.

Our task in Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam and spent the night on the train. The next morning, we welcomed the holiday children and escorted them to the different carriages. Their light backpacks and small suitcases were stowed in the luggage net. After a final check, the signal sounded for departure. The children leaned far out of the windows, shouted and waved to the parents who stayed behind and grew smaller and smaller. Pale, skinny children sat on the wooden benches and looked at us shyly with big expectant eyes. Siblings held each other’s hands anxiously. Their clothes were poor, thrown together and patched. The boys often wore short trousers and knee socks and their skinny little legs were stuck in high lace-up shoes. The girls wore little cotton skirts and their jackets were made from worn-out adult coats. To distract the children from their homesickness, we provided them with slices of bread, cocoa and fruit soon after departure. So, our little passengers slowly thawed out and soon started chatting animatedly.

On the way to Switzerland

The train travelled through the wide plains of Holland past the famous windmills and canals with ships disappearing behind the dams. An important part of our train was the kitchen wagon, a converted baggage car equipped with a wood cooker. Our cooking team prepared delicious soups here and spread hundreds of sandwiches, which were very popular. The soup came into the wagons in heavy metal buckets and we filled it into bowls with large ladles. The children could not tolerate heavy meals, they were not used to eating much, and we also made sure that they did not get sick during the journey.
  After a long journey, the train rolled into Lucerne station. At the former Kunsthaus, Red Cross helpers handed over their holiday children to the foster parents. During regular visits we found out whether the children fitted into the families and whether everyone was happy. If foster parents and children did not get along, a new place was sought. But most of the children quickly gained confidence and recovered. They got red cheeks and gained weight, up to 8 kg! Many families made lifelong friends with their holiday children.

Back to Holland

After three months, rested, well-fed, satisfied girls and boys went home. They had backpacks full of sweets, but also of crayons and other useful things. Their suitcases and tied together cardboard boxes, filled with clothes, shoes and many valuable things, were stored in the luggage cart. They weighed so much that the children could hardly carry them themselves.
  In Amsterdam, the families were waiting to clasp their children in their arms. The joy was enormous. Beaming faces everywhere! The parents and the children thanked us from the bottom of their hearts as they said goodbye.
  Then it was time for us to go home again. It was 1 August, our national day, and the wagon was decorated with Swiss flags. In the kitchen car, the cooks were preparing something good for everyone. Great gratitude filled me to be able to travel home again on this special holiday to our well-kept Switzerland, spared from the war.

Berlin-Dortmund: 
Starved and neglected

The sight of the German cities was distressing. For example, Dortmund had had 850,000 inhabitants before the war, but in 1946, only 85,000 were left. 80% of the city was destroyed and the ruins were slowly being overgrown by ‘rubble grass’. Among the ruined houses and piles of rubble threatening to collapse, the survivors lived in cellars. Several families shared one room. People even had to be grateful to have a roof over their heads at all. The sight of this hurt my heart. The children we picked up in German towns demanded our attention every second. Many argued and some fought over the best window seat. We had to be careful that none of them fell out of the window. It was noticeable that during the war there had been little time for these children: the father was a soldier, the mother provided for the living and possibly worked in the armaments industry. Even after the war, everyday life was hard and hunger was a constant companion. And now these children were on their way to Switzerland.
  When we ladled soup out of the big pots during the journey, the children enthusiastically counted the pieces of sausage floating in their soup and they marvelled at the thick slices of bread and butter before taking a bite. At night, the boys and girls slept on the benches and on the floor. We wrapped them in thick, warm woollen blankets. But sometimes a sleeping child would fall off the bench and then wake the others with its screaming. It took many a comforting word to calm these frightened war children until peace would return to the compartment. We were also challenged! We were relieved for two hours at a time and lay down on a bench in an empty wagon. Whether sleep was possible – that was another question!
  On the return journey after three months, the mood was more relaxed. The children were hardly recognisable. They sat contentedly on the benches, a few kilos heavier, and described their experiences in the Swiss families to their seat neighbours in the brightest colours. They had had a bed all by themselves! They were even able to speak the Swiss dialect, they said, and their siblings would not be able to understand them at all, and so they talked double Dutch in the broadest Swiss German dialect. Here too, there was great gratitude when we were able to hand the children back to the parents, complete with heavy suitcases and boxes of clothes filled by the host families.

Also in Switzerland

We were able to count on the strong support of the Swiss population for our work. In 1942, the “Wochenbatzen” was introduced: Swiss households could donate 10 centimes a week. Schoolchildren, Samaritans and volunteers went from house to house collecting the “Wochenbatzen”. By the end of 1946, this Wochenbatzen alone had raised the impressive sum of 8.5 million Swiss francs.
  More than 70,000 sponsors were recruited from the Swiss population from 1946 onwards. They sent children who could not be invited to Switzerland a package packed with food, clothes and bedding every month. In this way, they and their families were provided with the most basic necessities.
  In 1944 the Federal Council initiated the Schweizer Spende (Swiss Donation) and made available 150 million francs. The population collected more than 50 million francs until 1948. With the Swiss Donation, children in war zones received a warm meal once a day. This relief work was mainly entrusted to the Red Cross. For example, it set up a milk distribution centre in Dortmund. Women came from far and wide to collect a ration of milk, milk powder or condensed milk for their children.

Memories that remain

I also travelled to Hamburg and Vienna. A train with 400 to 450 children was accompanied by about 40 Red Cross workers, plus the kitchen crew and the railway staff. It was not always without risk. On one journey to Vienna, our compartment was shot at. I was just scooping soup from the big pot and bending down when a shot cracked above my head and a bullet flew out of the next window. Luckily, I had bent down and the children had been sitting on the benches. No one was hurt, but the shock was great. My knees felt weak and trembly for a long time. – In this way I experienced and saw many things, beautiful things, but also unspeakably sad things. The trips with the children and the gratefulness of their parents gave me great satisfaction. The cooperation among us helpers was always very friendly. That is why working for the Red Cross was extremely enriching for me and for my life.”  •