In 1929, mountain film pioneer Arnold Fanck shot his global hit The White Hell of Piz Palü in southern Graubünden. The secret star of filming was the Bernina railway, a track system that could handle tough winter operation.

In 1925, the Schweizerische Maschinen- und Lokomotivfabrik in Winterthur was contracted to build ‘Krokodil’/‘Crocodile’ locomotives for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.

In May 1940, a Wehrmacht attack was imminent. At least the inhabitants of Basel thought so, and many fled to the interior of Switzerland.

Shortly before the war ended, the Nazis managed to spirit away a hoard of gold they had stashed in Bern. The trail of all this precious metal goes cold in the basement of the German embassy.

The first Jews settled in Lengnau and Endingen in the 16th century, and the country’s first synagogues were built in those villages.

In the late 19th century, La Chaux-de-Fonds was a popular destination for Jewish immigrants. This also benefited the watchmaking industry and the urban landscape, which gained the country’s largest synagogue.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Zurich attracted scores of Jewish families. They brought their culture with them to their new homeland, also building synagogues. Like the one on Freigutstrasse, for example.

With the ‘Trentino Promotion’ launched by Gottlieb Duttweiler, a first wave of young Italian women took up positions in Swiss households in 1946.