Betty Halff-Epstein

Betty (also called Berthy or Baty) Halff-Epstein, née Epstein (born 3 January 1905 in Zurich, died 31 May 1991 in Basel) was a Swiss entrepreneur and pioneer of the second wave of the women's movement.

During the Second World War, she and her brother Max Epstein helped persecuted Jews to emigrate to the USA.

From Basel, she also provided interned prisoners in the Camp de Gurs (F) with food and utensils (see section on the Second World War).

Betty Epstein grew up in a middle-class household in Zurich with her 14-month older brother Max and her nine-year younger sister Ruth.

In 1923 she spent a year in Versailles to learn French and how to run a household as part of her training to become a grande dame.

She was not allowed to study and had to bow to her parents' wishes to be able to run a large household and to move in style on the social stage.

Due to the tense political situation in Europe, Halff-Epstein wanted to emigrate to the US, where she had relatives, after the death of her husband.

Throughout the Nazi era, Betty Halff-Epstein and her brother Max Epstein helped Jewish friends and relatives abroad.

Throughout the war, Halff-Epstein worried about her friends and relatives abroad who did not seek safety - often with fatal results.

Max Epstein had been a great support to his sister Betty after the death of Gérard Halff and a kind of a foster father to his two nieces Marlise and Lily-Anne.

After the war ended, she toyed with the idea of emigrating to Palestine or marrying a Christian man so that her daughters would never meet the same fate as the victims of the Shoah.

She herself put it this way in her farewell speech on the occasion of her resignation from office: "When we witnessed the unimaginable inferno in the last world war, even in our Switzerland, which was spared of the fate of the neighbouring countries, and my house was often a reception camp and letterbox for strangers, I made a promise to myself: To do everything in my modest power so that the Jewish people will never again be so helplessly at the mercy of their destroyers."

Her greatest merits include her great success as a business manager at a time when this role was not socially recognised for women, as well as her humanitarian commitment - whether in helping and rescuing Jews during the Second World War or in the context of her WIZO activities.