In a historic first, the Swiss federal government on February 19 recognized a 20th century policy of forcibly removing Yenish and Manouche/Sinti children from their families as a “crime against humanity” – but not a “cultural genocide”, as claimed by some Traveller associations and historians. Reiterating a previous apology in 2013, it said this recognition would not lead to criminal proceedings, but rather a work of remembrance and discussion.
“After countless years, it confirms my personal feelings and those of many Yenish people affected,” says Uschi Waser, a 72-year-old Yenish woman who was taken from her family at six months old. “The fact that it was a crime against humanity committed against the Yenish is now clearly documented.”
Between 1926 and 1973, the “Children of the Country Road” project of Swiss charity Pro Juventute, with which the government had close connections, took around 600 Yenish children away from their families. They were forcibly placed in homes or in foster families. The Yenish are a semi-nomadic people from mostly German-speaking Europe. They do not identify with eastern European Roms. They have been present since the 11th century in what is today’s Switzerland, where they are recognized as a national minority.
The Manouche/Sinti communities – other Traveller ethnic groups – were also victims of the Swiss charity’s project, and authorities and church aid organizations were involved too. According to the government, it should therefore be assumed that around 2,000 Traveller children were forcibly removed from their families.
In addition, says the government press release, “adults who were placed in out-of-home care during their minority years were placed under guardianship or in institutions, forbidden to marry and, in some cases, forcibly sterilized”. Speaking in an interview with Swiss public broadcaster RTS, Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider described all this as “a dark chapter in our history”.
“Inhumanity, violence and abuse”
The government recognition follows increasing pressure from Traveller organizations to recognize a “cultural genocide”, and a government-commissioned legal opinion by Zurich University international law professor Oliver Diggelmann. “It was a really remarkable step by our government to recognize that it could be called crimes against humanity according to contemporary standards,” Diggelmann told Justice Info. This is the first time Switzerland has admitted commission of an international crime.
Waser, who has since 1989 been president of the Stiftung Naschet Jenische, says her young life was marked by “inhumanity, violence and abuse”. She is not the last survivor, she told Justice Info, but “many cannot talk about it and shy away from the public, so I try to be their voice too”. Her organization supports Yenish people affected by the “Children of the Country Road” project and liaises with authorities, schools and others working with the Yenish in Switzerland.
Waser says she was taken away from her parents at the age of six months in a police van. She was then moved multiple times. “There was a lack of humanity and warmth in all the homes and institutions,” she says. “A lot of corporal punishment and psychological terror was the order of the day. I was abused by my stepfather for years and raped by an uncle on the night of my 14th birthday. As punishment, I was sent to the last reformatory surrounded by three-metre high walls with barbed wire, until I was 18 years old.”
There are a number of organizations and projects in Switzerland working with the Yenish and other Traveller groups. The “Our Faces, our Stories” project, for example, encourages people who suffered under the “Children of the Country Road” campaign to talk about their experiences.
Crime against humanity or genocide?
“According to current standards of international law on state responsibility, the persecution of the Yenish, which can be described as a ‘crime against humanity’, is attributable to the Swiss State,” says the legal opinion on which the government’s announcement is based, but “under current international law, the persecution of the Swiss Yenish cannot be classified as ‘genocide’.”
It says their persecution includes acts that could be constituents of genocide, such as forcible transfer of children from one group to another and measures to prevent births, but “genocidal intent cannot be established” within the meaning of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, i.e. the intention to destroy a group physically or biologically. “According to historical facts, even measures to prevent births were not intended to destroy the group biologically, but to ensure its assimilation and prevent the advent of more ‘nomadism’,” it continues.
But some, like historian Thomas Huonker, disagree. “It was systematic persecution of a whole ethnic group, with the aim of destroying the group,” he told public broadcaster RTS in an interview. And he believes there was that intent. “As early as 1943, Pro Juventute said we might not have succeeded in re-educating them in a sedentary, bourgeois sense, but at least we have managed to reduce their numbers. And that went on for another 30 years,” said Huonker. Amongst the means for doing this, he cites prohibitions of marriage or sexual relations, and detention in institutions where members of the Traveller community had no contact with the other sex. Women from this group were also forcibly sterilised.
Remembrance and reparations
Following the legal opinion it commissioned, the government admits a crime against humanity committed by Swiss authorities in the past. But this does not mean opening criminal proceedings, Interior Minister Baume-Schneider told RTS. “Time has passed. It’s about opening up a duty of remembrance and transmission and recognizing that, in our humanist country under rule of law, our minorities are entitled to respect and protection. Switzerland failed to protect these minorities.” She said the authorities now intend to engage in dialogue to improve recognition of the nomadic lifestyle of these minorities.
The government says it has already taken steps since 1983 on remembrance and reparations. These include commissioning historical studies, supporting some Traveller organizations and some money for reparations. In 1988 and 1992 a total of 11 million Swiss francs was approved to set up a reparation fund for victims of the “Children of the Country Road” project. Victims were able to come forward to claim individual reparations, according to a government spokesman. Waser says payments were between CHF 2,000 (USD 2,223) and CHF 17,000. She got CHF 17,000 because she was “externally controlled” until the age of 18.
A 2014 law on rehabilitation of people placed in administrative detention provided for a support fund. These were not just members of the Traveller community. Some 60,000 Swiss are thought to have been subject to this forced placement system, mainly people from poor backgrounds or considered socially marginalized, such as single mothers and the unemployed. A 2017 law provides for assistance to people placed outside their families prior to 1981, including “solidarity contributions” and support to victims.
But Waser says there is still much to be done. She thinks the government must do more to provide “stopping places for Yenish and Sinti who want to live the travelling culture, and the appropriate schooling model for them, up to a recognized school-leaving certificate”. More also needs to be done, she says, on the justice system at the time and its “criminal judicial decisions”. Many girls and boys were victims of sexual abuse, she explains, and some victims had the courage to report the perpetrators at the time, resulting in court proceedings and judgments. But, she continues: “How were decisions made back then? Who represented the rights of the victims? How biased the judgments because we were cared for in institutions?”
