The Swarovski family were huge supporters of national socialism and Hitler throughout the 30s and 40s. I think it was in 38 or 39 there was a torchlight procession in the Austrian town where their crystal plant was in where something like 500 workers attended and were later encouraged by the company for their torchlit Nazi march. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, the company not only praised Hitler for his economic successes, they sent him gifts and their best regards signed by the company president on Hitler’s 49th birthday. But to make matters even worse, even though the head of the company had back pedaled at the end of war when he was on trial for being a major supporter of the Nazi party, in 1947 (2 years after Germany’s defeat and exposure of their crimes against humanity) the head of the Swarovski family publicly stated that he was still, “An enthusiastic member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party).”

Apparently this company has omitted their timeline from 1931 to 1949 on their website. However, they’ve yet to publicly state they no longer hold or want to hold any ties to the NSDAP. They’ve talked about how they’re not happy with their company history, but they tend to dodge any questions regarding their plans to distance themselves from their WW2 years. Stating things like this in 2018, when asked about the historical study conducted by historian Dietrich Stiefel on the company’s founder as a “step towards dealing with our history in a very serious and proactive manner.”, the Swarovski’s response was, “Swarovski is a company that generally tries to keep the owner’s personal stories out of the public eye because it does nothing for the business.” To my knowledge, the company has not made any public denouncement of national socialism or has ever made any real effort to publicly distance themselves from their Nazi past.

In 1994, German historian Horst Schroeder wrote a book about Swarovski’s past, but was denied access to the company’s archives. One would think that if the Swarovski’s were really concerned about cutting off their Nazi ties and distancing themselves from their past that they’d want to have that information made public so they could move on. But apparently not.

So what exactly are the Swarovski’s trying to hide? We’ll more than likely never really know. Which is tragic. But the really tragic thing about this whole mess is that most of the people who now know all of this about this company will still buy their crystals and proudly display them as luxury items.