Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

One of these concerns was Überfremdung—“foreign overpopulation,” an expression that cropped up with growing frequency as the Great Depression fueled anxiety among Swiss citizens that foreigners might take their jobs. Another was Verujudung—“Jewification,” which Rothmund, among others, portrayed as a virus that could produce unwelcome side effects if allowed to metastasize and spread. “If we do not want to let a movement that is anti-Semitic and unworthy of our country take legitimate roots here, then we need to fend off the immigration of foreign Jews with all our power,” Rothmund warned. “We have not used the foreign registration office to oppose foreign penetration, particularly the Jewification of Switzerland, just to let ourselves be flooded by immigrants today.”