Eyal Press

Transcription

In the case of Paul Gruninger this Swiss police captain I just mentioned uh who saves hundreds possibly thousands of refugees before he is caught allowing them into Switzerland against the law at the risk of his career uh you know no one who knew Gruninger no one who looks back on yhis case sees him as this kind of heroic type uh to the contrary he was an ordinary guy he uh he didn't stand out he seemed to be a rule follower and a rule enforcer uh I met his daughter and his daughter repeatedly described him to me as normal he was normal in terms of his politics he wasn't outspoken he wasn't uh specially religious so there is this mystery that I begin the book with and I want to figure it out because uh you know these people are not uh these heroic figures and further more I think I think in that sense uh the book should be both a challenge and an inspiration to readers because on the one hand when we put people up on pedestals it sort of uh we think we're honoring them but at the same time we separate them from us you know they are these heroes and we are not and part of the message of the book is well you know these are flawed people just like you and me uh so maybe we shouldn't separate their example from ourselves so much and also the standard they set the book uh in affect says that these people are idealists who just cannot believe what they're seeing so to speak cannot believe their institutions would do this kind of thing and think that they're acting in the finest traditions of and are saving the institutions on which they're blowing the whistle or to which they're dissenting and so forth uh bottom line is in some way that maybe they didn't even realize they are idealists aren't they absolutely uh the the uh we tend to think of dissenters or these sort of whistleblowers uh as rebellious types uh the characters I wrote about are not rebellious types they are as you say idealists so if we turn to Gruninger briefly uh you know here's this normal guy uh why why does he do this well one of the important reasons one of the key factors is that Paul Gruninger was a Swiss patriot uh he believed very much in this Swiss tradition uh this Swiss ideal of letting of of his country serving as a safe haven and a refuge for the persecuted uh which is very much part of Swiss national identity Gruninger as a consequence when he learns of this law to bar refugees in nineteen thirty eight he is remember he's in a part of Switzerland that borders the German Reich that borders Austria he's watching refugees come across the border every day and he cannot square this with this tradition this Swiss uh uh you know national uh value and so what he assumes is well I won't enforce this law and when the Swiss people learn of this someone my superiors learn of this I'll be everyone will forgive me because they'll understand that I was doing the Swiss thing uh in a sense so you can call it naivety you can call it idealism a kind of wide eyed belief in these traditions of course one Swiss uh journalist I met who investigated Gruninger's case said you know of course this is a myth that we have this open you know that we were always this safe haven but Gruninger really believed it and because he believed it he acted on it of course he then realized when he was caught that the Swiss the authorities andthe people would not forgive him uh he was fired he was uh disgraced he uh lived the rest of his days in penury he could not find a job uh so that idealism came crashing up against the reality uh unfortunately in his case and many of the others I tell uh ultimately after he was dead he became a Swiss hero didn't do him any good that's right uh he became a Swiss hero in nineteen ninety three uh when the when he was finally officially rehabilitated and as I tell the story in the book of just how long that took the first plea the first public plea that I describe to rehabilitate this man came in nineteen sixty eight uh he Gruninger was still alive at that time now he had he had sort of live out these difficult years but uh you know if he had been exonerated or uh officially recognized then then he would maybe have lived out his last days with this heroic with this status not so uh the uh Swiss authorities uh denied this effort to rehabilitate him five separate efforts to rehabilitate him were all brushed aside and as I investigated this I thought well why is this why in the eighties uh you know by which time most people in Switzerland looked back at this law with shame uh you know there's no question in most people's minds that barring refugees from fleeing Nazi Germany was wrong by the eighties so why reject this effort to rehabilitate this guy and then it became very clear when I sort of dug in a little deeper if you recognize Gruninger if you say well here was this guy and he did the right thing what does it say about everybody else what does it say about Swiss neutrality about the record of our country during this war during this period when there were moral choices to be made and unfortunately that's the the story in most of the chapters I tell is that uh the people who stand by their principles serve as very uncomfortable reminders to everyone else of what could've been done uh and that makes it very hard for them to get the recognition they deserve This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School of Law