Neutral my backside. I think they helped the Nazi's to keep from being invaded, the two faced SOB's. Any port in a storm I guess, the gutless wimps.

__________________
Barack Obama's Executive Flop

If Obama couldn't lead such a small organization as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to success, how can any one bellieve he can lead this country to it?

That is neutral! The Swiss were taking deposits from everyone. Unless they refused deposits from Allies or Jews I'm not sure how it makes them not neutral. You can certainly argue that if they knew the people were Nazi's and they knew what the Nazi's were doing to the Jews that it was immoral for them to take the gold. But it was certainly neutral.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

It's pretty common knowledge (well...for anyone who is into WWII), that the Nazis banked in Switzerland. As a matter of fact, there's still millions of deutchemarks still sitting in their original accounts, collecting interest, and the Swiss don't know what to do with it. Since the Nazis are gone, there's no one who can own the accounts, and make transactions from them.

__________________
"It's the rich people's fault they earn more." - Makedde

Finland help Germany hide wealth an d artwork.

Don't mind if I do.

It is ironic that the Jew stereotype fits the Swiss so precisely. I wonder why it is the Jews that have been stereotyped as moneygrubbing and not the Swiss?


Donating it all to holocaust survivors and their families seems like a good solution to me.

__________________
My Political Blog (Last post Feb 14) - My MySpace Page

I think it's because of direct business dealings. Jews got a reputation as being skin flints because they stereotypically tend to drive a hard bargain. All groups are equally money grubbing. I've seen Jewish men arguming over dry cleaning rates. The Swiss don't do that. That's not to say I think it's wrong for them to get shirts done for $1.79 instead of $1.99, but that's where it comes from. Most stereotypes are rooted in truth, even if they can't be applied universally to a group of people.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

If you are willing to deal with mass murderers in order to make money, that strikes me as somehow worse than arguing over dry cleaning bills.

__________________
My Political Blog (Last post Feb 14) - My MySpace Page

I never made any claim regarding anyone's moral anything. I was merely throwing out a reasonable explanation why the Jews are considered moneygrubbers, but the Swiss aren't.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

This is completely false:

The Swiss in the 1940s Were No Worse Than the Rest of Us

By Walter J. Rockler - International Herald Tribune

"The current wave of vilification of Switzerland, most recently abetted by a U.S. government report, is overblown and basically warped. A public image is being created of the Swiss as virtual Nazi collaborators. This is false.

In writing these views, I should note that I was the Nuremberg war crimes trial prosecutor directly responsible for cases against German bankers, and I spent two years at that work. My cases had no Swiss components or angles.

Switzerland has maintained a policy of neutrality and nonalignment in European and world affairs for hundreds of years. That was its official policy also in World War II. I do not know where the sympathies of most Swiss were directed during the war, but the country is the oldest democracy in the world and has a pluralistic population of German, French and Italian background.

Were some Swiss pro-Nazi? Probably. But the United States had its German American Bund, Britain its Cliveden set and Mosleyites, and France the Vichy government."

Rest of article at:

The Swiss in the 1940s Were No Worse Than the Rest of Us - International Herald Tribune

This is from a U.S. government report which is condemning the Swiss:

"The study said the Swiss National Bank (SNB) did not know the source of the gold, but that it also made no attempt to find out if victim gold was being deposited."

My question is "how exactly were they supposed to find this out?" They had no legal authority to investigate the Germans, and no means to send bank investigators into a war zone. All they had to go by was the information provided to them by the depositors.

Again, there are some black spots on their record, they were far from perfect, but to say this is what kept the Nazis at bay is false.

Link

I will end with the words of a non-neutral figure from World War 2, Winston Churchill, who said:

"I put this down for the record," wrote Churchill to Anthony Eden in a December 1944 memo reprinted in Triumph and Tragedy. "Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans to keep herself alive? She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."

__________________
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Yeah, but it's a bank. They can't just seize those funds, and dole them out as they wish (hey, wow! That sounds just like the democratic platform!). That's why they're all just sitting there earning interest.

__________________
"It's the rich people's fault they earn more." - Makedde