Paul Grüninger

Paul Grüninger (27 October 1891 - 22 February 1972) was a Swiss police commander in St. Gallen. He was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial foundation in 1971. Following the Austrian Anschluss, Grüninger saved about 3,600 Jewish refugees by backdating their visas and falsifying other documents to indicate that they had entered Switzerland at a time when legal entry of refugees was still possible. He was dismissed from the police force, convicted of official misconduct, and fined 300 Swiss francs. He received no pension and died in poverty in 1972.

Paul Grüninger attended a teacher preparatory school from 1907 to 1911. He also played football semi-professionally. In 1913 he joined SC Brühl and was part of the squad that won the 1915 Swiss first division title. Following completion of the military service, in 1919 he joined the police corps of the canton of St. Gallen.

Paul Grüninger was the police commander of the Canton of St. Gallen that borders with Germany and Austria. Following the annexation of Austria by the German Nazi regime, Switzerland had closed its border also to Jewish people arriving without proper entry permits, and in October 1938 negotiations between Switzerland and Nazi Germany led to the stamping of the infamous "J" in passports issued to Jewish people. As the situation worsened and the number of refugees who tried to illegally enter Switzerland crossing the so-called green border to be secure from the Holocaust increased, the then 47-year-old Swiss official decided in summer 1938 not to send back the refugees to their country where violent antisemitism was the official state policy, facing the consequences of breaching the explicit instructions of his government and suffering the consequences. Moreover, in order to legalize the refugees' status, he falsified the refugees' visas, so that their passports showed that they had arrived in Switzerland before March 1938, when immigration to Switzerland had been restricted. The manipulations of dates enabled the newly arrived Jewish refugees to be treated as legals, and they had to be taken to the Diepoldsau camp. There, aided by the Jewish organizations, the refugees awaited their permits for temporary stay in Switzerland or their departure to a final destination. Grüninger turned in false reports about the number of arrivals and the status of the refugees in his district, and impeded efforts to trace refugees who were known to have entered Switzerland illegally. He even paid with his own money to buy winter clothes for needy refugees. The German authorities informed the Swiss authorities of Grüninger's exploits, and he was dismissed from the police force in March 1939.

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