![Border between France and Switzerland in Geneva, September 1943.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/titel-flucht-genf-300x225.jpg)
Finding sanctuary in Geneva
During World War II, hundreds of Jews fled from France into Switzerland via Geneva. After the border was closed in August 1942 this escape route became more difficult to navigate, but not impossible, as the stories of Lilian Blumenstein and Lili Reckendorf show.
![Border crossing at the Moillesulaz railway station in Thônex, 1943.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/grenzubergang-genf-297x300.jpg)
![Lilian and François Bondy married as soon as the war ended.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Bondy-300x184.jpg)
![Refugees in Geneva’s Varembé reception camp, 1942.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Lager-Genf-288x300.jpg)
![Heinrich Rothmund, head of Switzerland’s Fremdenpolizei, the Federal Police for Foreigners, during World War II. Portrait dating from 1954.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Rothmund-Portraet-224x300.jpg)
![File on Lili Reckendorf held by the Fremdenpolizei of the Canton of Basel-Stadt.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Lili-Reckendorf-213x300.jpg)
Anne Frank and Switzerland
The diary of Anne Frank is world famous. It’s less well known that the journey to global publication began in Switzerland. Anne, her sister and her mother all died in the Holocaust. Otto Frank was the only family member to survive. After the war, he initially returned to Amsterdam. In the 1950s, he moved in with his sister in Basel. From there, he made it his task to share his daughter’s diary with the world whilst preserving her message on humanity and tolerance for the coming generations.