I'm shaking in my boots I'm so afraid.
Listen I don't know if she's exaggerating or not, but it wouldn't at all surprise me based on my own experience.
When I was a teenager I went to spend a couple of weeks with my aunt in a town near Zurich. She and her husband were Italian migrants there.
I had to post a letter so I went to the post office. I speak no German, but obviously I spoke Italian, so, knowing that Italian was one of the official languages of Switzerland, I thought it would show more respect if I used Italian rather than English to make my inquiry.
He went apoplectic, started screaming at me, his face red with anger, and told me in broken Italian that this was Switzerland and if I couldn't learn Swiss Dutch I should go back to where I came from...I'd get no service there. I was so stunned, and sufficiently shy at that age, that I asked, in English, if English could be used. Then he served me.
My aunt later found out that he had made a sexual comment about me. No matter how "mature" I may have looked, I was 13, and dressed like a convent school girl on an afternoon pass. It was unpardonable. I swear, I blame him for the fact I wore huge sweaters until I was way into my twenties.
This was a man in his fifties if he was a day. It was disgusting. It may not sound like much to you, but it was the first time I'd ever been disrespected like that for my ethnicity. In my decades in America I have NEVER, NOT ONCE been disparaged in any way because I'm Italian. On the contrary, people are always thrilled to find out I'm from Italy, and want recipes, to talk about the art or the history or their trips to Italy, or even show me their pictures.
Does this mean that I'm going to assume every Swiss German is a jerk? Clearly not. I'm not an idiot. I judge each individual individually. I treat each person the way that person treats me and other people. That includes the fact that I'm not going to sit still when people abuse either me or members of any other group.
This is an article on the anti-Italian immigrant activity in Switzerland. I was there much later, so I can only imagine how horrible it was then.
"
In 1970 there were a million immigrants in Switzerland, 54% of whom were Italians.[4] Rising friction with the indigenous majority even led to the creation of an "anti-Italians party" in 1963.[5] As every other immigrant group at the time, Italians were faced with a policy of forced integration, later satirised in the highly successful 1978 comedy film Die Schweizermacher (literally "The Swissmakers"), which went on to become the fifth most-watched film of all time in Switzerland[6]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_immigration_to_Switzerland
There were even a few cases of the murder of Italian migrants to Italy during that period.
I don't get some of you people. Do you see Italians denying that some horrible Italians are racist, shouting horrible epithets at black calcio players or black public officials? No, you don't.
Stop with the damn hypocrisy.