Refugees as Subject of Press Coverage in Switzerland 1938 to 1947

Kurt Imhof, Patrik Ettinger, Boris Boller

Systematic analysis of public communication in the political sphere in Switzerland between 1938 and 1947 based on a representative selection of newspapers indicates that refugees were only a peripheral topic. Compared with broadly discussed domestic issues of social and economic policy, defense and the supply of goods, as well as the integration of the Swiss Social Democratic Party, the refugee issue remained marginal. Still, a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis allows the identification of certain periods during which refugees received more intensive media coverage. These periods were marked by events such as the internment of French and Polish soldiers in 1940 and events at the border immediately before the end of the war. These periods of more intense coverage were also marked by a discussion of refugee issues. To a certain degree, one such period can be identified in 1938 between the Evian conference and the November pogroms in Germany; other, more intensive periods of increased media coverage, were in the fall of 1942 after the expulsion of Jewish refugees, in the fall of 1944 as a result of the prominent criticism of internees by Federal Councillor Bircher, and finally in the immediate aftermath of the war in the context of controversy surrounding irregularities and scandals in internment camps. In the quantitative comparison of these periods, one can see a trend toward more intense media coverage beginning in 1943, with a clear peak in 1945. Thus, broader media coverage and discussion of refugee issues did not take place in Switzerland until the late war years and the immediate postwar period. This intensified focus must be seen against a background of Switzerland’s problematical relationship to the victorious powers.

Analysis of the content of media coverage includes how Swiss personalities and institutions on the one hand, and refugees on the other, were perceived and categorized and the amount of freedom of movement each player felt he or she possessed. The undiminished perception of Switzerland as a «transit country» dominates in all the newspapers and suggests its primacy in the Swiss national identity. Accentuated by fears of being overrun by foreigners (Überfremdungsängste) that had social or economic roots, this «transit doctrine» determined the degree of freedom to make decisions in refugee policy. Even occasional criticism of refugee policy, found above all in Tagwacht, with its Social Democratic leanings, does not question the primacy of the transit doctrine.

The Swiss sense of national identity as a transit land and a bulwark of humanitarian traditions also influenced the choice and representation of refugee groups. With refugee children, children sent to Switzerland on vacation (Ferienkinder), and interned soldiers, the image of refugees presented in the media is characterized by groups whose return to their country of origin was settled or at least could be foreseen. Media coverage on generous aid to children therefore, had a key function because it resolved the latent contradiction between Swiss humanitarian traditions and the state-mandated transit doctrine. There was much less coverage of refugees who sought safety in Switzerland for political, religious, or racial reasons. Moreover, it was limited to newspapers that felt a particular affinity with the group in question because of a shared world-view. The fact that many refugees were Jewish was mentioned explicitly in newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland, but not in the German-speaking part of the country. It is just as rare, at least before 1942, to find a relationship between coverage of refugees and the continual coverage of their persecution in Nazi – dominated Europe. Thus, the reasons for flight were generally excluded from coverage of refugees. This, too, contributes to the fact that there was little discussion of refugees in Switzerland and that the discussion that did occur was consensual and non-controversial.