Swiss to reveal Nazi links

By Emma Jane Kirby, BBC News, Thursday 30 August 2001, 10:14 GMT 11:14 UK

Switzerland is to publish a series of reports on Thursday which are expected to reveal more about the role it played during World War II.

An independent commission of experts will publish information about Switzerland's financial and industrial links with Nazi Germany.

The committee, which was set up four years ago to examine Switzerland's wartime past has already published two reports on the country's gold transactions and on its wartime refugee policy.

The independent commission of experts, led by Swiss historian Jean Francois Bergier, was set up by a unanimous decision of the Swiss parliament.

Nazi ties

Researchers from Switzerland, the United States, Poland, Britain and Israel have been investigating the volume and fate of assets moved to Switzerland before, during and immediately after World War II.

The commission is publishing eight new reports this week, mostly focussing on the relations between Swiss industrial and commercial companies and the Nazi regime.

The reports will also examine the use of slave labour by German subsidiaries of Swiss owned enterprises and will study how wartime Switzerland was used as an art dealing centre for looted cultural assets.

A final report, which will merge some 25 separate studies and will cost around 13 million dollars, is due to be published in the first half of next year.