Boris Toedli, a Swiss citizen of Russian extraction, was sentenced in absentia today to three months’ imprisonment by the Berne Criminal Court for espionage in behalf of Germany. His co-defendant, Ernst Isler, secretary of the Swiss National Front, a Nazi organization, who was in the courtroom, was acquitted.
Toedli, treasurer of the Frontists, was fined 500 Swiss francs and ordered to pay an indemnity for the expenses incurred by a civil suit brought against him, as well as nine-tenths of the cost of the entire trial. Isler was ordered to pay the remaining one tenth of the trial costs.
The verdict came at the conclusion of a two-day trial in which the Government cited documents seized in a raid on Toedli’s home last November to prove he was part of a German-financed spy ring directed against Swiss officials and Jews. Toedli escaped from Switzerland after his implication in the espionage plot.
The two were charged with conducting espionage in behalf of a foreign power — Germany — and with violating the Federal law which prohibits sending out to the press or to agencies of parties or governments information injurious to Swiss citizens.
Supported with documents seized in a raid on Toedli’s headquarters, the prosecution charged that Col. Ulrich Fleischauer, head of the Weltdienst, anti-Semitic news service operating from Erfurt, Germany, was known in Switzerland under five aliases. Col. Fleischauer paid large sums to the service’s correspondents, the Government asserted, one of them receiving a monthly salary of $150, also $4,500 on one occasion and $1,000 for expenses during the 1935 trial in Berne involving “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Toedli, the prosecution held, not only collected information against Jewish personalities, but also against Swiss political leaders in behalf of the Weltdienst, and also for the Anti-Comintern Agency, an anti-Communist outfit operated from Berlin by a Dr. Ehrts.
The prosecution traced the activities of another agent who operated in Switzerland under five aliases and who was deported after trying to establish a “pan-Aryan union” to solve the Jewish question by shipping Jews to the French island colony of Madagascar.
Much of yesterday’s session was taken up with citations from confiscated material which established that Toedli and other agents had sent Col. Fleischauer private information on Jewish and Swiss personalities. A number of witnesses for Isler were heard. He is accused specifically of procuring information about Zurich Jews for Toedli. Witnesses, including Henne, a leader of the National Front, sought to prove that the Weltdienst was a private undertaking not connected with the Nazi Party or the Government.
The Toedli documents, which form one of the chief bases for the charges, were seized in a raid on’ Toedli’s home on Nov. 22, 1937. Of the 300 papers and letters discovered, police impounded 150 and photographed them as evidence.
The papers indicate that Toedli and others received funds and instructions from Germany for stimulating Nazi and anti-Jewish propaganda. They show that Germany finances pro-Nazi organizations abroad, that German embassies assist Nazi agents with passports and visas, that Berne is the communications center for the Third Reich’s network in Western Europe, and that Germany paid special attention to stimulating an anti-Jewish campaign in Western Europe, for which funds came from Berlin and Erfurt.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
