Sanctuary by Bureaucracy: The Pragmatic Warmth of the Alpine Border

A photograph taken on April 4, 1944, in Cortaccio above Brissago captures a telling moment of wartime history. Seven exhausted refugees stand before a Swiss soldier. At the front crouches Sydney Short, a New Zealander flying for the British Royal Air Force, making the Victory sign. Behind that brief gesture lay an arduous ordeal: shot down over North Africa, imprisoned near Modena, and freed following the armistice of September 8, 1943. With the aid of Italian partisans, Short traversed Milan, reached the Cannobio valley, and endured a steep, fifteen-to-sixteen-hour night march through frigid mountain terrain without proper gear to reach the Swiss border.

Yet the warmth of the reception in Ticino was always a matter of administrative classification. For Short, the state apparatus functioned smoothly enough. Registered in Bellinzona, he spent six months interned in Bern before returning to Allied lines to continue fighting. Allied aviators and military deserters were processed with bureaucratic routine, representing manageable obligations for authorities in Bern.

For others, the high Alpine frontier was far less accommodating. Between September 1943 and August 1945, around 30,000 refugees crossed into the southern canton, including 263 recorded along the narrow, treacherous stretch between Mount Gridone and Cortaccio. But official Swiss benevolence had strict boundaries. While former Allied military personnel generally gained entry, civilians, partisans, and Jewish families were routinely pushed back at the line. Carlo Bava’s father and uncle, fleeing the fascist reoccupation of Cannobio in September 1944, were initially rejected at the border and forced to hide in a barn, dependent on a local farmer for food until another crossing could be managed.

Eight decades later, Short’s son Grant and two granddaughters traveled from New Zealand to retrace the trail, guided by historian Raphael Rues after discovering old letters and photos. Short himself had kept silent about those months. Reopening that past reveals how the Swiss order navigated the surrounding storm: not through universal humanitarian open-heartedness, but through a cold, calculated selectivity that managed risk at the mountain pass while relying on Italian partisans and farmers to handle the human fallout on the other side.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com