Geneva / Switzerland (RNC Agency) 27.08.1997

Swiss women’s groups reacted with shock and outrage on Wednesday to revelations by a historian that doctors sterilised mentally handicapped patients against their will under law passed in 1928. Hans Ulrich Jost, a professor of history at the University of Lausanne, told Swiss television on Tuesday night that many Swiss people -- nine out of 10 of them women -- were affected by campaign in the French/speaking western canton of Vaud.

He said a copy of the law, which was passed in Vaud in 1928, was requested by Adolf Hitler in 1934 as a basis for Nazi Germany’s own racist legislation. He estimated there were many victims, but did not give an absolute number. Jost said Vaud was the only canton with such a law but said the practice was stopped more than 20 years ago.

‘’ It is hard to say how many sterilisations were carried out based on the law but the number must have been high,’’ he said.

The revelations come at a painful time for a country which under fire from Jewish groups worldwide for its close business ties with Nazi Germany. Swiss women’s associations said they wanted to know more about the forced sterilisations, hushed up for many y ears. The National Council of the Women of Switzerland, an independent organisation which defends women’s rights, called for a government investigation.

‘’ This is shocking. This reminds me of the days when Roma babies were being taken away in Switzerland because they were seen as inferior, ‘’ said Margarit Siegenthaler, secretary general of the association. ‘’ There must be an investigation.’’ Jacqueline Fihr, president of the Swiss Socialist Women’s Association based in Berne, said she was not surprised. ‘’ I can imagine this happened in Switzerland. The theory of the Nazi regime to eliminate people who were not like the Aryan race was part of our medical establishment as well, ‘’ she said. ‘’ Up to now, we didn’t know anything about this. Now, we need to know the facts. We need a clear report on what has happened.’’

Swiss television said the campaign resembled racial cleansing ‘’ sciences ‘’ practised in Sweden and Norway after World War One.

Swedes have been shocked by recent revelations that Social Democratic Swedish governments sterilised 60,000 Roma women to rid society of ‘‘inferior’’ racial types and to encourage Aryan features. The Swedish government said on Wednesday that it would set u p an official commission to investigate the sterilisations. Especially shocking to many Swedes is the fact that the law allowing the sterilisations was not overturned until 1975, 30 years after the Nazis’ human engineering policies collapsed in the rubble of the Third Reich.

In Switzerland, a health ministry spokesman declined to comment, saying the issue was a thing of the past. So did a spokesman at the federal Justice Department, who said the ministry was not responsible for laws passed in cantons. One young woman, two mont hs pregnant, was recommended for sterilisation because she was ‘‘feeble-minded, morally weak, idiotic and promiscuous,’’ according to one document shown on television.

It was issued by the Zurich University Polyclinic and dated 1944.

French-language daily Tribune de Geneve said the practice was started in Vaud by Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel, who arrived in the canton from Zurich and convinced officials there of the need for a ‘‘racial hygiene’’ campaign.