Archivist’s Ignorance Cited in Shredding

The largest Swiss bank claimed that its chief archivist was unaware of an internal ban on the destruction of documents that might shed light on the handling of assets of Holocaust victims. Union Bank of Switzerland said archivist Erwin Haggenmueller knew of a government ban on destruction of historical documents possibly related to the Holocaust but regarded none of the material he threw out as coming under that ban. Meanwhile, the guard who reported the document shredding said he had filed a lawsuit against the bank and its chairman, saying they had slandered his reputation by questioning his integrity. Bank officials contend that the watchman should have turned the documents over to them rather than go public with his discovery.