When analyzing the circumstances that allowed the extermination of six million Jews, including 1,5 million children, in addition to millions of other people, all mass murdered in the “death factories” of Nazi Germany, the question arises: where was the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - the world's leading humanitarian organization?
This is because the ICRC did nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust and remained silent when it became aware of Hitler's decision to exterminate all Jews. Before, during and after the war, the International Committee of the Red Cross was indifferent to the suffering of the Jewish People.
The organization, whose mission is to contain the barbarity of war and protect and assist its victims, was not touched when the victims were Jews. However, his actions were not limited to omission. At times, the ICRC became an accomplice, contributing to Nazi propaganda and sympathizing with the Nazis during and after the war.
In 1996, the International Committee of the Red Cross made copies of its archives from the 2nda World War; 25 microfilmed pages of secret files were handed over to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Historians have analyzed these documents and published some of their conclusions.
In 2015, Peter Maurer, president of the ICRC, speaking in Geneva to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camps, criticized his own organization's record during the 2nda World War. Maurer stated that the ICRC “failed to protect civilians and, most notably, Jews persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime.” He acknowledged that the group “failed as a humanitarian organization because it lost its moral compass.”
The organization
The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the oldest, most prominent and respected humanitarian aid organizations in the world. Founded in 1863 and headquartered in Geneva, it is a non-governmental humanitarian organization dedicated to ensuring protection and assistance to victims of war. The ICRC gave rise to several Red Cross organizations around the world.
The ICRC and the Nazis
During the 1930s, ICRC leaders viewed German Nazism as a pillar of civilization and a necessary evil in the fight against communism. Carl Jacob Burckhardt, vice-president of the ICRC and a key figure in the organization, demonstrated an affinity with Hitler's government. In 1936 he attended the Olympic Games in Berlin. The following year, Burckhardt was invited to the Nazi Party's annual rally in Nuremberg. After the war, Burckhardt became president of the ICRC, holding the position from 1945 to 1948.
Burckhardt did not sympathize with the Jews. In 1933, before the start of the war, he said in a private letter to a friend that “there is a certain aspect of Judaism that a healthy people must combat.” His anti-Semitic statements continued well after the end of the war. In 1959, in a preliminary version of his memoirs, he further claimed that the Jews had declared a fight to the death against fascism and therefore it was they, the Jews, who had desired the 2a World War.
Concentration camps
Throughout the 1930s, when it came to Jews, the ICRC delegated the matter to the German Red Cross even though it was known to be “deeply Nazified” and its leaders were participating in persecution and genocide. When Hitler's concentration camp system was initially implemented, the German Red Cross assured the ICRC that “the standard of living in the [concentration] camps was higher than that to which most prisoners were accustomed.”
As early as April 1933, the ICRC was receiving desperate letters from prisoners in German concentration camps. He received letters from Dachau, including one from a Jewish prisoner that said: “I beg you again on behalf of the prisoners - Help! Help!". Dachau was the first concentration camp established by the Nazi government. Initially, political prisoners, opponents of the Nazi regime, were sent there.
On August 19, 1938, the International Committee of the Red Cross inspected the Dachau concentration camp. Burckhardt inspected it personally. The ICRC's mission was to reassure public opinion about the living conditions and treatment of people held in the camps. In an official statement, the ICRC praised the Dachau commander for his “discipline and decency”, saying: “We must recognise, in all objectivity, that the Dachau camp is a model of its kind in terms of the way it is built and managed”. In doing so, the ICRC helped Nazi propaganda. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels praised Burckhardt when he wrote in his diary: “This man may be useful one day. It’s a shame we don’t have diplomats like him.”
The Second World War began on September 2, 1. In December 1939, the president of the ICRC tried to organize, together with the German Red Cross, a visit by ICRC delegates to the Jews of Vienna who had been deported to Poland. The request was refused. From then on, the ICRC chose not to directly address the issue of Jews. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross provided assistance and protection to Allied prisoners of war held by Nazi Germany, it did not do the same for Jewish deportees. Repeatedly, when the victims were Jewish and action was demanded from the Red Cross, the organization responded with silence or referred the issue to other organizations.
The Red Cross justified its actions by stating that the ICRC's work was based on the Geneva Convention, and that the 1929 Convention was designed for prisoners of war, so the ICRC had no authority in cases of "civilian" prisoners in concentration camps. . They claimed that the mass incarceration of Jews was an internal German matter.
Had there been an impetus to help, the ICRC could have classified the Jews who were extirpated from their countries as “prisoners of war” or expanded the scope of its humanitarian mission. During and after the war, the ICRC was involved in a range of activities that were not limited to prisoners of war. The Red Cross prided itself on shaping international law rather than relying solely on existing laws, often intervening in situations beyond its scope, asserting that alleviating human suffering in times of war was the priority. However, when it came to the suffering of the Jews, the organization chose to hide behind technical details.
Knowledge of the Final Solution
On January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, an elegant castle on the outskirts of Berlin, the leaders of the Third Reich opted for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” that is, the mass extermination of European Jews. All countries under Nazi occupation were required to adhere to this policy. The meeting was to be kept confidential, as Hitler's Germany did not want its “policy” towards the Jews to become public.
After examining Red Cross documents, historians concluded that the international humanitarian organization had known about the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” since the spring of 1942. Yet it failed to alert the world and help and protect millions of victims.
The International Committee of the Red Cross did nothing to intervene, did not publicly condemn the existence of the death camps or the decision to exterminate all Jews, nor did it ask the German government to respect the human rights that the ICRC supposedly defended.
On November 7, 1942, when questioned by Paul Squire, US consul, Carl Burckhardt confirmed the existence of an order issued by Hitler to make the Reich “Judenfrei” or “Jew-free.” Burckhardt added that since there was no place the Jews could go, this could only mean “one thing.”
The ICRC justified itself, saying it remained silent because publicizing the death camps would not change anything. And if they had gone public with what they knew, they would have lost the ability to inspect prisoner of war camps on both sides of the world. front. However, if such a respected organization had spoken out at the very beginning of the Holocaust, perhaps millions of lives could have been saved.
theresienstadt
In 1941, Theresienstadt was established in the Czechoslovak city of Terezín as a ghetto and transit camp for Jews on their way to concentration camps. Theresienstadt was used as a propaganda tool to disguise the deportation of Jews to concentration camps and extermination camps. How can we justify the deportation of elderly Jews who could no longer do manual labor? And where were the most prominent Jews – the intellectuals and artists – sent? The Nazis claimed that these Jews were being sent to the “spa town” of Terezín to “retire” to “safety.”
In November 1942, many American newspapers published reports that two million Jews had already been murdered. The genocide of the Jews was too great to be kept secret. After the deportation of 476 Danish Jews to Theresienstadt in October 1943, the Danish government – including King Christian – pressured the Nazis to allow the Danish Red Cross to visit the Danish deportees to see how they were being treated and to inspect the ghetto. German diplomats wanted to maintain a good relationship with Denmark. They also wanted to refute leaked reports about the true conditions and functions of the camps and ghettos that were being established throughout Europe.
In late 1943, the Germans authorized a visit by the Danish Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross and ordered the Danish Red Cross team to SS, in Theresienstadt, to “prepare” for the visit. After much procrastination, the Nazis scheduled their visit for June 23, 1944. Two delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross visited the ghetto.
It was all a big farce. Before the Red Cross visit, 7.503 Jews – the weak and sick – were deported to reduce the number of people in the camp, which was overcrowded. The ghetto was renovated to portray an atmosphere of normality. The prisoners were put to work “beautifying” the ghetto; they planted gardens, painted housing complexes and renovated sheds. Under orders, prisoners developed and practiced cultural programs to entertain visitors and convince them that the “Senior Citizens' Colony” was real. Delegates attended a football game, a children's theater performance and met with prisoners who had been instructed on how to act and what to say. After the visit, deportations to Auschwitz and other extermination camps resumed. Prisoners who met with the Red Cross were deported to Auschwitz in attempts to remove any evidence of the hoax.
After the visit, the Red Cross wrote “positive reports” about the concentration camp at Terezín, citing the good treatment of Jews in the German camps. As the world already knew the truth about concentration camps and ghettos, the ICRC ended up being seen as naive or complicit in cruel fiction.
One of the ICRC delegates in Theresienstadt, Maurice Rossel, continued to defend his views many decades later. In 1979, Rossel was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for his epic documentary Shoah, where he again stated that he had confirmed the excellent conditions on the field and would probably do so again today. After his visit to Theresienstadt, Rossel visited Auschwitz and said he did not realize it was a killing center.
Of the approximately 140 Jews transferred to Theresienstadt, 88 were deported to concentration camps, where they faced almost certain death. The terrible conditions in the ghetto accelerated the deaths of many in Theresienstadt; 35.440 Jews died in the ghetto due to disease and starvation. By 1942, the death rate inside the ghetto was so high that the Germans built a crematorium with the capacity to cremate approximately 200 bodies per day. 15 thousand children passed through Theresienstadt. Approximately 90% of these children died in extermination centers.
At the end of the War
The ICRC began helping Jews when it became clear that the tide had turned and that the Allies were winning the war. In July 1944, the mass murder of Jews was being reported in the pages of the The New York Times, and the US government was putting pressure on the organization, making it clear that it would not tolerate the ICRC's lack of action.
Humanitarian aid to Jews remained limited and consisted mainly of sending food packages to some camps and ghettos. These packages were funded by Jewish organizations and delivered by the Red Cross. Eventually, 12 food packages were delivered to Jews, especially in the last months of the war.
In May 1944, the ICRC finally intervened on behalf of Hungarian Jews – the last large Jewish population to be deported to the extermination camps. A small ICRC delegation belatedly arrived in Budapest, where they joined other humanitarians – most notably, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg – in an effort to save the few who remained alive.
Although the Hungarian government had introduced anti-Semitic laws and drafted young Jews into slave labor, the government had not given in to German demands for the deportation of its Jewish population. In March 1944, German troops occupied Hungary and soon began the deportation of most of the country's 800 Jews to Auschwitz.
The ICRC in Budapest soon followed the Swedish example and distributed letters of protection to Jews, placing Jewish hospitals, clinics, hostels and soup kitchens under the organization's protection. In June 1944, the ICRC finally broke its silence by writing a letter to the Hungarian dictator Miklós Horthy, who was interceding on behalf of the Jews. At that time, 400 Hungarian Jews had already been murdered. The beneficiaries of the ICRC's belated intervention were relatively few compared to the millions who died in the camps.
after the war
The anti-Semitic bias and moral failure of the International Committee of the Red Cross continued after the war. The organization that was supposed to be the guardian of humanity had failed the Jews and the free world. The ICRC began to feel the pressure. “The Jews will cause us problems. Its influence is great in Anglo-Saxon countries,” said an ICRC memorandum prepared for a conference in London in the summer of 1946, in which Jewish humanitarian organizations were expected to participate.
Escape from the Nazis
After the war, hundreds of thousands of people found themselves without valid travel documents and, many of them, without means of personal identification. To deal with this issue, the United Nations created the International Refugee Organization (OIR). The OIR only served those who it considered “genuine” refugees, refusing to help those who might have committed war crimes or collaborated with the Axis countries – Germany, Italy and Japan.
The International Refugee Organization supported and protected citizens of Allied countries, Jews and victims of the Nazi regime, regardless of their nationality. It used rigorous screening methods to eliminate collaborators and criminals who attempted to falsify their identities and war records. Evidence of collaboration was often easy to find and could sometimes be identified on the applicants' own bodies – such as the applicant's tattoos. SS, for example.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, initially without an international mandate, began issuing its own travel documents to help those excluded by the OIR. He decided to intervene in what he considered a “humanitarian emergency” in relation to refugees not recognized by the allies. Many Germans and other “unrecognized” refugees were trying to leave Europe and did not have travel documents.
The ICRC conducted virtually no screening procedures and made its travel documents available to virtually any applicant. These documents made it possible for large numbers of Nazis, war criminals, and collaborators to emigrate and never have to answer for their actions during the war. Names on passports were invariably fictitious and a person could obtain several travel documents under different pseudonyms.
The ICRC's position was that “political conviction” was not a reason to exclude anyone; therefore, Nazis obtained documents as easily as anyone else. A former ICRC official in Rome stated: “After all, we were an 'aid' organization, not detectives.” ICRC vice-president Jean Pictet stated unequivocally: “Guilty people are not excluded from this assistance if they need it.”
The ICRC's refugee policy was constantly attacked by the press and allied governments. By August 1946, the ICRC was already being accused of helping Nazis. Evidence of travel document fraud was leaked through internal ICRC channels and confidential diplomatic meetings.
Several government agencies, notably the US State Department, pressured ICRC leaders to rectify the situation, warning that the organization's reputation could be compromised. The United States, unlike most countries, did not recognize ICRC travel documents as valid for entry into their country.
It was not surprising to discover that these documents were used in the escape of thousands of former Nazi collaborators and members of the SS, including great Nazi executioners such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie.
In 2007, Argentina handed over to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires the travel document used by Adolf Eichmann – one of the main architects of the “Final Solution” – to flee Europe and enter Argentina, after the 2nda World War. A judge found the document in a dusty court file. The document had been issued by the ICRC.
The Red Cross claims the documents were inadvertently provided to the Nazis among the tens of thousands of people who received travel documents from the organization. However, internal correspondence between Red Cross delegations in Genoa, Rome and Geneva shows that the organization was well aware that the Nazis were taking advantage of these documents.
Nuremberg Trials
The same “humanitarians” who remained silent in the face of the genocide, spoke out openly and publicly in defense of Nazis. When the war ended, the Allies decided to hold Nazi leaders responsible for the war and the Holocaust. On November 20, 1945, the Allied court was installed in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, which, at the end of the world conflict, tried the Nazi leaders for their war crimes and crimes against humanity, with an emphasis on the murder of millions of Jews. . Nazi war criminals had a right that they themselves never granted to their victims: the right to defense.
The ICRC leadership was highly critical of the Nuremberg trials. Burckhardt, for example, called these trials “Jewish revenge” disguised as Allied justice. For many in the ICRC, the Nuremberg trials could call into question both their personal allegiances and the humanitarian organization's neutrality.
In August 1949, Burckhardt and Max Huber sent a letter to US President Harry S. Truman, asking him to overturn or suspend the conviction of Ernst von Weizsäcker in Nuremberg. The former president and current president of the Red Cross alleged that Weizsäcker had assisted the ICRC on several occasions during the war. Weizsäcker was a high-ranking Nazi diplomat who served as State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry of Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1943.
In the case of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Burckhardt argued that a statesman in great danger deserved help. Ribbentrop was a German politician, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 and one of the main figures of the Third Reich.
Nazis seeking and obtaining testimony from ICRC officials again demonstrated the close relationship of the International Committee of the Red Cross with the Third Reich.
Magen David Adom
Founded in 1930 in Tel Aviv, Maguen David Adom (Red Star of David) is Israel's national emergency medical and disaster service. Until 2006, Maguen David Adom only had the status as an “observer” within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
For decades, Maguen David Adom was denied membership in the International Red Cross Movement. The Red Cross did not accept adding the red Star of David to the symbols that represent assistance and aid to the injured and sick in emergency situations. And Maguen David Adom refused to replace the star with the cross. These symbols are used to protect both victims and those who come to their aid. The Red Cross said adding more symbols would lead to confusion over which emblems protect aid workers.
In addition to the Red Cross symbol, in 1929 the organization approved the use of two additional symbols – the red crescent, used by Muslim countries, and the red lion and sun, a symbol used by Iran until 1980. The red crescent was introduced by the Empire Ottoman claiming that a cross could offend the sensibilities of Muslims. A limitation was then imposed on the acceptance of any other emblems.
The change regarding Maguen David Adom came when the American Red Cross began to pressure the international organization, even withholding its annual contributions. In 2000, Dr. Bernadine Healy, then president of the American Red Cross, gave a speech in Geneva denouncing “a betrayal of the sacred principles of this movement” in its policy toward Israel. “This is something we must correct, so that the exclusion of Maguen David Adom is not perceived as partial, biased, discriminatory or politically motivated,” she said. Healy also met privately with Cornelio Sommaruga, then president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. As Healy recalls, Sommaruga said, “Let’s forget the niceties. That is terrible. It's a delicate and complicated issue that you don't understand. If I have to admit the Star of David, then I have to admit the swastika!”
In 2006, Maguen David Adom was finally recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross as a national aid society of the State of Israel under the Geneva Conventions and became a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
7 October
On the day of the October 7 pogrom, after Hamas invaded Israel and murdered approximately 1.200 people, kidnapped around 250 people, including women, children, a baby and elderly people, raped and mutilated women, beheaded people and burned babies, the ICRC issued a press release calling on “all parties to respect their legal obligations under international law. Civilians and healthcare professionals must be respected and protected at all times.” That was all the Red Cross could say about the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The statement also included “all parties” even before Israel could respond to the attacks. The ICRC failed to condemn a terrorist group that systematically violates the Geneva Conventions and the principles of international humanitarian law. However, soon the press releases, which did not show empathy for the Jewish victims, again citing neutrality, came out in favor of the Palestinians.
According to a report by UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization whose mission is to monitor the performance of the United Nations, and the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, the International Red Cross has adopted an extremely biased approach to the Hamas war. -Israel on your social networks. From October 7th to November 28th, 2023, of the 187 tweets published by the main Red Cross accounts on Twenty-nine tweets (16%) criticized both sides and only 7% of those tweets criticized Hamas.
The posts talk about the suffering of Palestinians, but do not mention the suffering of Israeli civilians on October 7th or after. There are no posts, images, graphics or videos highlighting the damage suffered by Israel on October 7, nor are there posts about the tens of thousands of rockets fired toward Israel. There were some references to hostage taking. The bias in this content feeds the anti-Semitic narrative, distorts facts and influences public perception.
If all this were not enough, the ICRC has completely failed in its core mission, which was to secure the release of the hostages. The Red Cross was unable to even visit them or provide them with the necessary medicines. Inaction continued even after reports of torture, sexual abuse, lack of food and medical care. On 23 December 2023, ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric went so far as to blame Israel, telling Channel 12 that “both” Hamas and Israel were responsible for the ICRC's failure to gain access to the hostages.
Since the capture of hostages by terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7, their families have incessantly appealed to the Red Cross to help them in some way. However, when it comes to Jewish victims and the State of Israel, it appears that the ICRC has again chosen silence.
REFERENCES
Steinacher, Gerald, Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust
'Overwhelmingly' Biased Against Israel, article published on December 11, 2023 on the website https://unwatch.org
Fallout at the Red Cross, article published on December 24, 2001 on the newspaper's magazine website The New Yorker,
https://newyorker.com/magazine
