Bordering on the visible: spatial imagery in Swiss memory discourse

Switzerland's ambivalent role vis-a-vis Nazi Germany in World War II and its complicity by implication in the Holocaust are considered against the background of of its government's long silence and denials after 1945. Belatedly, and under pressure, the government's official stance that the country had opposed Nazi Germany was abandoned. Instead, Swiss business firms' and banks' financial collaboration with the Nazis was reluctantly acknowledged, and lawsuits by affected survivors brought to court. Two recent Swiss motion pictures and a sculpture are singled out as significant in this context.