Switzerland pays Holocaust victims

The Swiss government has agreed to pay one-hundred and eighteen thousand dollars to a Jewish brother and sister whose parents died in a Nazi concentration camp after being deported from Switzerland.

The settlement covers the costs incurred by Charles and Sabine Sonabend; in return they will drop their legal action against the Swiss government.

The Sonabend family fled from Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1942.

But they were arrested by the Swiss authorities and deported.

The children were rescued and hid in Paris but their parents were killed at Auschwitz.

Neutral Switzerland took in nearly thirty-thousand Jews during the Second World War but turned away an equal number. Last year an international panel criticized Switzerland for turning back Jews when they knew they would face almost certain death.

A BBC correspondent in Geneva says the legal maneuver of paying costs is intended to avoid compensation claims from other Holocaust victims' families - although no other claims are pending.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service