UBS, Credit Suisse, and theft
There are crimes that end with the perpetrators’ deaths, and there are crimes that continue to compound interest long after the victims are gone. The plunder of Jewish assets during the Holocaust belongs to the second category. And the latest revelations about Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, allege that one truth unavoidable: Switzerland’s banking sins seem not a tragic oversight. They were a business model-maintained by denial, sanitized by delay, and shielded by prestige.
This week’s findings, revealed through an independent investigation and testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, allegedly expose a far deeper web of complicity than Credit Suisse ever admitted. They allege Hundreds more Nazi-linked accounts, direct facilitation of Nazi escape routes, accounts tied to deportations, forced sales of Jewish property. If this shocks anyone in Swiss banking, they have not been paying attention.
These are not dusty historical footnotes. These are balance sheets.
The Numbers Tell a Moral Story
The investigator overseeing the inquiry, Neil Barofsky, testified that the audit uncovered 890 accounts potentially linked to Nazis-628 individuals and 262 entities. That alone, if linked, obliterates the long-standing claim that Credit Suisse had already “come clean." And each delay matters, because every year of alleged obfuscation makes restitution harder, survivors fewer, heirs poorer, and accountability dimmer.
Even more damning is the finding that Credit Suisse allegedly supported the notorious “ratlines"-the postwar escape networks that spirited Nazi criminals out of Europe and into South America. The bank opened and maintained accounts for Argentina’s Immigration Office and allegedly provided funds to finance bribes, procure fraudulent travel documents, and pay living expenses and transportation for fugitives-including perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Read that again. A Swiss bank is suspected not only for holding tainted money. It enabled Nazis to flee justice.
Banking Deportation
The investigation also found that Credit Suisse held accounts for the German Foreign Office during the Holocaust-an office directly involved in the deportation of Jews. This is institutional cooperation with genocidal machinery.
Add to that multiple previously unreported instances of forced sales of Jewish-owned property-Aryanization by another name. Jewish families were stripped of homes, businesses, and land; the proceeds were laundered through “respectable" banks; and after the war, survivors were told the records were lost, the accounts dormant, the trail cold. Was it?
The UBS Problem
UBS acquired Credit Suisse in 2023. With the purchase came assets-and liabilities.. Ownership confers responsibility. If UBS benefits from Credit Suisse’s profits, it inherits Credit Suisse’s alleged crimes.
This is not about shaming Switzerland for history’s sake. It is about whether global finance will finally accept a basic moral principle: stolen money does not become clean because time passes or logos change.
UBS now stands at a crossroads. It can repeat the Swiss banking playbook-lawyers, delay, “ongoing review," carefully worded remorse-or it can do something radical: full transparency, proactive restitution, and public accountability.
Anything less might be complicity by acquisition.
Argentina and the Ratlines
Last year, Argentina declassified more than 1,800 documents related to the ratlines at the request of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Those files corroborate what Jewish historians have long documented: Nazi criminals were welcomed, resettled, and financed. Swiss banks were the oxygen.
Barofsky’s investigation into Credit Suisse’s role in these ratlines is ongoing. Which should worry UBS executives far more than any quarterly earnings call. Because each new document raises a question not just of history, but of law.
If iit turns out that the bank knowingly financed the escape of mass murderers, what is the statute of limitations on moral bankruptcy?
The Lie That Time Would Heal
For decades, Swiss banks seem to haveleaned on a cynical assumption: that time would heal-or at least obscure. Survivors would die. Children would tire. Governments would move on. Public attention would drift. Meanwhile, interest would accrue.
That calculation was wrong. Memory did not fade; it sharpened. Documentation expanded. Technology connected dots. And the moral patience of the Jewish people-vast but not infinite-ran out.
There is a particular cruelty in telling Holocaust survivors to “prove" ownership when the very institutions demanding proof helped erase it. There is obscenity in banks invoking privacy laws to protect Nazi criminals while possibly denying families access to their own inheritance.
This is not neutrality. It is theft with paperwork.
What Justice Looks Like Now
Justice now requires several non-negotiables:
First, full disclosure. No more selective archives. No more internal reviews curated by public relations. Every account, every intermediary, every document must be opened to independent scrutiny.
Second, active restitution. Not reactive claims processes that burden elderly survivors, but proactive identification and compensation-funded by the banks, not charities.
Third, public acknowledgment of wrongdoing, not hedged apologies. Say what happened. Say who benefited.
Fourth, institutional reform. Boards, compliance departments, and executives must demonstrate that this culture of concealment is over-not with slogans, but with structural change.
UBS can lead.
Why This Matters Now
Some will ask: why reopen these wounds? The answer is simple. Because they never closed. Because antisemitism is resurging, and financial institutions still underestimate how their choices signal moral boundaries. Because when banks profit from genocide and face no consequences, the world learns the wrong lesson.
And because justice delayed is not just justice denied. It is injustice compounded.
Swiss banks once marketed themselves as guardians of civilization-orderly, neutral, trustworthy. The truth revealed by this investigation is uglier: guardianship for criminals, neutrality for murderers, trustworthiness only for those with power.
That story must end.
The Choice Before UBS
UBS can continue to hide behind acquisition, or it can become the bank that finally dug down and then told the truth Switzerland refused to tell for eighty years.
If UBS chooses the former, it will inherit not just Credit Suisse’s accounts, but its shame. If it chooses the latter, it can help close one of history’s darkest financial chapters.
The Jewish people do not ask for pity. We ask for honesty. We ask for justice. And we ask that banks uncover what really happened.
The money allegedly stolen from Holocaust victims was never Swiss. It was Jewish. It still is.
And the bill is overdue.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach-“America’s Rabbi"-is the international bestselling author of 36 books and is described by The Washington Post and Newsweek as “the most famous rabbi in America," by The New York Observer as “the most famous orthodox Jew in the world," and by The Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews alive. . Follow him on Instagram and “X" @RabbiShmuley.
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