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20 Whittier L. Rev. 43 (1998-1999)
Christoph Meili Tells His Story

handle is hein.journals/whitlr20 and id is 53 raw text is: CHRISTOPH MEILI TELLS IlS STORY CHRISTOPH MEILI While a resident and citizen of Switzerland, I worked as a security guard at Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), the largest Swiss private bank. My duties included theft prevention and general observation of individual conduct while within the bank. On one occasion, I entered the shredding room and observed two boxes overfilled with old books. This concerned me, since it was some- thing I had never seen before, and I could not comprehend why UBS would want to destroy these old books. I took a quick glance at the books and discovered they related to old bank records. Initially, I left the room and went downstairs, but soon felt uneasy and returned to the shredding room. Upon further investigation, I discovered that these books docu- mented bank business from 1864 to 1970. Having a basic knowledge of history of this period, my concern was heightened when I discovered the documents also contained records from the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, I was aware that efforts were being made, by and on behalf of Jews, to research the existence of assets belonging to Holocaust survivors. Additionally, I knew that the Swiss government had created a special task force, the Bergier Commission, for the exact purpose of locating these assets. Knowing that these documents were pertinent to both the search and location of these assets, I could not understand any purpose in destroying these records, and so I decided to save them. I had a number of reasons for saving these documents. One was the morality in returning to the Jews a portion of their history. For example, these documents could be placed in a Holocaust museum for the benefit of all. Another reason was that these documents were directly related to

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