Saly Mayer

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Saly Mayer , also Sally Mayer (born June 3, 1882 in Basel , † July 30, 1950 in St. Moritz , entitled to live in Stein and from 1930 in St. Gallen ) was a Swiss textile entrepreneur and politician ( FDP ).

Life

Saly Mayer's parents immigrated to Basel from southern Germany and moved to St. Gallen a few years later . Together with his brother Max, Saly Mayer founded a textile export company in England in 1907. After Max had an accident in 1911, Saly Mayer went back to St. Gallen and expanded his company. In 1930 he acquired the citizenship of St. Gallen. In 1933 he became a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), for which he was elected a member of the city parliament. From 1929 onwards he had headed the secretariat of the Swiss Association of Israelites (SIG) on a voluntary basis , and from 1936 to 1943 he was its chairman. From his private economic situation as a successful, internationally active manufacturer and loyal citizen, he tried to undermine the state refugee policy without publicly criticizing it. Neutral Switzerland initially became a place of refuge for those persecuted by the Nazis. The small and financially weak SIG had to pay for the maintenance costs of Jewish refugees. Mayer's company was headquartered in St. Gallen. The activities of his companies in the international textile trade gave SIG a wide range of opportunities for financial transactions. St. Gallen thus became the hub for the distribution of funds from aid organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to Jews and Jewish organizations in the areas occupied by Nazi Germany.

Saly Mayer personally helped St. Gallen police commander Paul Grüninger after his release because of helping illegal refugees. He had a very ambivalent relationship with the head of the Federal Aliens Police, Heinrich Rothmund . In August 1938, Switzerland closed its borders and turned back thousands of refugees. On the initiative of Chaim Weizmann , Mayer organized a Zionist rescue committee in Switzerland together with Nathan Schwalb , who had been elected head of the Hechaluz World Office in August 1939 . About Schwalb Mayer was also in contact with the resistance circle around Hans Oprecht and Hans Haus Amann , who in September 1940 along with the future UN High Commissioner for Refugees August R. Lindt , the Action National Resistance and in January 1941, the Federal Community initiated.

One of the particular problems that Saly Mayer had to deal with in order to finance the rescue operations was the haggling over the release of foreign currency by the Allies. For a long time Gisi Fleischmann was an important contact point for the Zionist rescue committee in Slovakia. She tried to stop the deportation of Slovak Jews to Poland and to have them transferred to neutral countries. There were also negotiations with Dieter Wisliceny , Adolf Eichmann's governor in Bratislava . In 1943 an attempt was made to buy the rest of the Jewish population in Nazi Europe outside of the Reich and Poland. But the project failed, although a precise schedule had been developed between the rescue committee and Wisliceny, as the Allies did not lift their foreign exchange blockade for this rescue purpose either. In August and September 1944 there were several meetings between Saly Mayer, Kurt Becher and Rudolf Kasztner on the Grenz-Brücke near St. Margrethen .

At the end of the war, Saly Mayer's activity was only possible with covert methods. By evading and deceiving the Swiss and American authorities, he became a “broker” in the “illegal” immigration of European Jews into the British Mandate of Palestine .

Others

The Saly-Mayer-Memorial-Foundation promotes and supports primarily Jewish social and cultural tasks in Germany and abroad.

The Saly Mayer Archive administers the Saly Mayer estate.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ikg-wien.at ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ikg-wien.at
  2. ↑ swissinfo.ch
  3. ↑ schweizerzeit.ch
  4. ↑ Die Brücke von Sankt Margrethen  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.arendt-art.de  
  5. ↑ Entry in the commercial register of the foundation
  6. ↑ Saly Mayer's estate ( Memento of the original dated September 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.afz.ethz.ch
  7. ↑ Review by Patrick Kury
  8. ↑ Review
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Saly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss textile entrepreneur and politician (FDP)
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1950
Place of death St. Moritz