The Swiss are inspired hotelkeepers, wrote the English writer C.E. Montagu. "Some centuries since, when a stranger strayed into one of their valleys, their simple forefathers would kill him and share out the little money he might have about him. Now they know better. They keep him alive and writing cheques."
Yet another English writer observed that "the Swiss fleece you with admirable gravity."
Ex-president Mobutu of ex-Zaire will know the feeling. In one week in May he had the most appalling run of luck. He lost his job, his country - and then the Swiss robbed him. No doubt the money he deposited in Switzerland over the years was looted from Zaire's mineral resources, but what right did that give the Swiss banks to seize his assets? Just, by the way, as it became certain he would be toppled.
European Jews will know the feeling. Swiss banks stopped paying interest on all their foreign deposits in 1937. The reason they gave was a need to prevent speculative flows of hot money into the country. But there was nothing speculative about the money Jews in Germany and central Europe were depositing in Switzerland. They were looking for a safe home for assets which otherwise would be confiscated by the Nazis.
Holocaust fund
Some 60 years on, the Swiss banks have established a fund to benefit Holocaust victims and their heirs. The banks have placed $200 million in the fund. They invited Mr Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, to become international chairman of the fund. He refused, saying: "I am a teacher, a writer. It is not for me to measure the suffering of people to decide how much they should be compensated."
Mr Stuart Eizenstat, a US under-secretary of commerce, chaired the study which concluded that Switzerland had evaded its responsibility to its Jewish depositors for all those years. The same study also blamed President Truman's administration for not leaning on the Swiss to make reparations to the Jews. The Cold War began in earnest in March 1948 when the Red Army blockaded Berlin. The US State Department successfully argued that Switzerland might be driven into the arms of communism if America harassed it over Jewish deposits!
The unravelling of the sordid business is told in a recent book by Tom Bower. The book is called Blood Money and subtitled The Swiss, the Nazis and the Looted Millions, illustrating, I fear, Mr Bower's wholehearted abandonment of detachment. He is frank enough to acknowledge that some of his research was funded through the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Mr Bower's narrative would be more powerful if he did not endlessly proclaim his indignation. Still, it is a shocking tale. After 16 years of absolute denial, in 1962 the Swiss government finally admitted that outstanding heirless assets - money deposited by Jews who perished in the Holocaust - might represent a substantial sum.
Swiss charity
In 1972, the Swiss banks declared that heirless assets amounted to about $6 million.
The Swiss government had earlier pledged to transfer all such assets to Jewish relief organisations. Now it proposed to give the entire amount to a Swiss charity. After protests, the government said it would give only one-third to the Swiss charity (at times, one can sympathise with Mr Bower's indignation.) It was the Swiss banks' misfortune that in 1981 Edgar Bronfman became chairman of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). The heir to the Seagram liquor business brought commitment - and money - to the job. He funded the research which established that Kurt Waldheim, president of Austria and a former secretary-general of the United Nations, had been associated with Nazi war crimes.
In 1995, the Swiss Bankers' Association made a take-it-orleave-it offer to Bronfman. If the WJC dropped all its claims, the Jews would receive $36 million. The bankers calculated that a man like Bronfman would not be able to resist a deal and, as Bower remarks, they did not contemplate the possibility that a businessman might be troubled by questions of morality. Bronfman rejected the offer.
In the same year, Bronfman met the New York senator Al d'Amato, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Senator D'Amato was a powerful ally with an important Jewish constituency. He held a hearing in New York's federal court building. Six witnesses, all victims of the Holocaust, told the world of the misery and humiliation they had suffered at the hands of the Swiss banks.
Public relations disaster
The public relations disaster was complete, but still official Switzerland refused to see it. In 1996, the Swiss federal president accused the American Jewish lobby of "extortion and blackmail". In January of this year, Switzerland's ambassador in Washington resigned after the leaking of a report in which he urged his government to "wage war" against groups in the US which "cannot be trusted".
On January 22nd, the chairman of Credit Suisse broke ranks and urged the setting up of a well-endowed compensation fund. The following day, the Swiss government and all the country's leading financial institution agreed to co-operate with the plan.
It is difficult to under-estimate the damage done to Switzerland's reputation. As one of the Holocaust victims told the d'Amato hearings: "My father was able to protect his money from the Nazis, but not from the Swiss."