As across Europe, anti-Semitism worked its way into official Swiss policy over decades. Freedom of residence and civic and legal equality had been granted to Jews in Switzerland only in 1866, and even in the glow of pan-Helvetic pride in national diversity around 1891, a referendum was passed in 1893 banning Jewish ritual slaughter of animals on ostensibly compassionate grounds (ritual slaughter remains illegal in Switzerland today). Russian pogroms in the 1880s resulted in floods of destitute Jews heading west across Europe, and subsequent concerns about Überfremdung, or foreign infiltration, of Switzerland showed themselves in discriminatory immigration policies that required complete assimilation and social absorption before civic protection could be conferred: in virtually all cases, Jews who applied for refugee status were deemed to be alien to Swiss society and unassimilable.

As the European situation worsened during the 1930s, Switzerland searched for a way to keep the Jews out – as did many European governments – without being seen to compromise their reputation for neutrality and tradition of providing asylum. In 1938, in response to a specific request to the Gestapo made by Switzerland’s police chief, Germany ordered that the passports of all “non-Aryan” Germans – that is, Jews – be stamped with a “J” to identify them to border guards, who were then instructed to turn them back. After August 1942, racial persecution alone was deemed to be not sufficient grounds for emergency admission to the country, and the borders were effectively closed. Only twelve Jews in each year of the war were granted Swiss naturalization papers, and of some 300,000 refugees who were accepted into Switzerland, just ten percent were Jewish. Surviving records testify to 25,000 Jews being turned back at the borders, but the real figure must have been vastly higher.

By autumn 1942, the Red Cross in Geneva knew unequivocally of the systematic murder of Jews in Nazi death camps. Under pressure from the Swiss government, it did and said nothing. The borders remained closed. A few individuals within Switzerland were working against the policies of the government, but the official line was that – in the notorious words of Federal Councillor Eduard von Steiger – “the lifeboat is full”.