Swiss sent Gypsies back to Nazi killers 

  Historians expose decades of discrimination whose victims included legendary jazz
  guitarist Django Reinhardt

  The legendary jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, was among an unknown number of Gypsies
  who were systematically turned back from Switzerland during the second world war,
  even though the authorities knew they faced extermination in Nazi Germany, according
  to an independent commission of historians. 

  The study, part of officially-backed investigations into Swiss wartime history, says
  the authorities failed to lift a decades-old policy of discrimination against Gypsies.
  It says they were aware in 1942 that Gypsies were being sent to Nazi death camps. For
  years, Swiss border guards had witnessed Gypsies being beaten and shot at before they 
  were expelled by Italian fascists. 

  Official Swiss restrictions on Gypsies were only lifted fully in 1972. 

  The international panel, led by a Swiss historian, Jean-François Bergier, was unable to
  estimate how many travellers had tried to flee to Switzerland and how many had later died.
  An estimated 100,000 Gypsies were killed by the Nazis. 

  The Bergier commission found that Swiss border guards did not identify Roma, Sinti or
  Jenisch as ethnic groups in official records. But it says that, apart from a few
  exceptions, there was no evidence that Gypsies of foreign origin were granted asylum,
  while there were plenty of cases to indicate the opposite. 

  "Switzerland belonged at the beginning of the 20th century to the first countries that
  restricted the freedom of movement of Gypsies," it says. 

  The restrictions, first implemented in 1906, were largely followed throughout the
  continent, and the study raises harsh questions about the treatment of Gypsies in many
  European countries during the pre-war years.
 
  Discrimination was encouraged by Interpol's predecessor, the International Criminal
  Police Commission, set up in 1923, which treated Gypsies as criminals and a threat to
  public order. It backed the policy with racist theories advanced by its German and
  Austrian creators. 

  A foundation to support travellers was set up three years ago after it was revealed
  that hundreds of Gypsy children had been snatched from their families and adopted in 
  Switzerland from 1926 to 1972.
 
  Peter Capella in Geneva
  Saturday December 2, 2000
  The Guardian

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