Swiss project spotlights volunteers who broke rules to help others

Some volunteers have defied laws and official decisions to help people in need, according to a project by the University of Fribourg and the Gosteli Archive, a Swiss archive. The project, reported by SRF, examines how voluntary work can challenge social norms and drive change.

Called umtun, the public history project presents nine stories of people who questioned accepted rules and helped when the state did not. It grew out of a Swiss National Science Foundation research project and is based at the University of Fribourg’s Interdisciplinary Institute for Ethics and Human Rights. The project also plans panel discussions in Zurich and Bern.

Helping Jewish refugees cross the border

During the Second World War, after Switzerland closed its borders to Jewish refugees, Red Cross worker Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet helped organise secret routes from occupied France into Switzerland. She and other helpers illegally brought 12 children and adults across the border, protecting them from deportation to concentration camps and death at the hands of the Nazis. Im Hof-Piguet later received recognition as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Churches offered asylum to Kosovo Albanian families

In the early 1990s, Kosovo Albanian refugees were expected to leave Switzerland, despite aid organisations’ warnings about human rights abuses in Kosovo. In autumn 1993, 16 parish communities in the canton of Bern joined together to offer church asylum to affected families. Volunteers arranged accommodation and support in rectories and parish halls.

The churches and their members were engaging in civil disobedience, putting their consciences before official decisions and protesting the federal government’s deportation policy.

Advice and support for women seeking abortions

At the start of the 20th century, abortion was illegal in Switzerland. Women’s rights activist Margarethe Hardegger offered free advice at her home in Bern on contraception and unwanted pregnancies. When needed, she also connected women with abortion assistance and supported those facing hardship.

Hardegger was arrested in 1915 and convicted of aiding an abortion. Her work, the project says, was motivated by solidarity with working women who often lacked the money or access to seek help elsewhere.

Campaigning against alcohol abuse

Around 1900, women’s organisations drew attention to a link that was rarely discussed at the time: alcohol abuse and domestic violence. The Swiss Association of Abstinent Women viewed alcohol as a danger to women and children, arguing that many men spent their wages in taverns and then became violent at home.

Rather than calling for bans, volunteers promoted awareness and abstinence through lectures, leaflets, drink stands and home visits.