Page 58 - Bulletin, Vol.82 No.1, April 2023

REMEMBERING: KLAUS NETTER (1930-2022):

FROM HOLOCAUST REFUGEE TO FIGHTER FOR

HUMAN RIGHTS

For AAFI, Odette Foudral

Klaus was probably one of the Committee members who
was the most know by the retirees living in Switzerland. He
was conversant in Swiss legislation and taxation.
Furthermore he always put the priority to defend AAFI-
AFICS’ interests by encouraging the affiliation to our
association. One committee members, Gerald Walzer,
could attend the ceremony. We also spent a few minutes to
recall what Klaus was for us during a Committee meeting.
We shall deeply miss him and his kindness.

Message from Mr. Smith :

Being ITC contact point with UNCTAD, I was blessed with an opportunity to work
closely for over two decades with Klaus Netter on several projects.

Klaus, an economist and linguist, was highly devoted and dedicated to his professional
work and always ensured that his inputs and reports are factual, qualitative and
unbiased. His commitment for welfare of UN Staff was equally strong by his close
affiliation with AFICS. B. Raj Bhandari, Former Principal Adviser, ITC-UNCTAD/ WTO

Former B’nai B’rith Geneva representative Klaus Netter dedicated his life to the United
Nations and was an important voice for human rights throughout his life

He wasn’t one to like to talk about himself. Rather, Klaus Netter was a tireless, honest
worker who never lost sight of his goal of a fairer and more peaceful world. And this
even though his own life in childhood was marked by one of the darkest chapters in
human history: In 1936, at the age of five, Klaus fled with his family to Brazil to escape
Nazi persecution.

He lost his native Germany, the country where his family had lived for generations and
was well integrated. The Nazis had revoked their German citizenship when they fled.
Klaus was to live as a stateless person for 10 years in Brazil.

Klaus first attended a Brazilian kindergarten and later an American school. He spent 11
years in South America. He then moved to the United States, first to Syracuse
University and then to Berkeley, where he studied economics. In 1958 he returned to
Germany to write his doctoral thesis.

At the beginning of the 1960s, he accepted a position at the United Nations. He
remained there until 1990 with a short interruption, during which he worked in Paris as
an economist at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. At the

56 AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 82 No. 1, 2023-04

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