Saggi di Dodis 4 (2022/4)

The debate on the work of the Bergier Commission was dominated by the question of rejected Jewish refugees. According to the Bergier Commission, 24 500 civilian refugees (or 20 000 according to a later estimate) were turned back from Switzerland during the Second World War, mostly Jews, more than half of them from Ticino and Mesolcina. The documentary corpus on which these estimates are based was re-examined and cross-referenced with numerous other sources. It emerges how in Ticino and Mesolcina the rejections actually concerned mainly Italian military personnel, some of whom had already been accepted and returned to Italy on their own initiative, and how asylum was refused to a maximum of 760 Jews (but probably significantly fewer), with a maximum rejection rate of 14,4 per cent. Significantly fewer Jews were rejected at the Italian border than previously estimated.

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