Assesses: Similar laws existed in various cantons.
A Swiss historian revealed yesterday (Wednesday), that, in 1934, Adolf Hitler asked the Swiss canton Vaud for the wording of the law under which retarded women had been sterilised commencing 1928. This revelation has stirred up a commotion in Switzerland, both because of its timing, following two years of revelations as to relations between Switzerland and Germany, and due to its proximity to revelations concerning the enforced sterilisation of women in Sweden.
The historian, of the University of Lausanne, said that the Vaud canton, near the French border, had sterilised a large number of mental retards since 1928, and 90% of them were women. He added that, in his opinion, similar laws existed in other cantons. According to Swiss media reports yesterday, the sterilisation stopped a mere twenty years ago.
Swiss women’s organisations, shocked and angered by Yost’s revelations, called for an investigation to be launched and for all available information on the matter, hitherto suppressed, to be published. The secretary of one such organisation said the revelations are redolent of the era in which the Swiss authorities took gypsy babies away from their parents, on the grounds that they were "inferior". Another women’s leader said she was not surprised by these revelations, since it was reasonable to assume that such things had been done in Switzerland.