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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 Switzerlands 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.
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