9
THE
JEWS AND
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS:
A FACTUAL
APPRAISAL BY THE RED CROSS
There is one survey of
the Jewish question in Europe during World War
Two and the conditions of Germany's
concentration camps which is almost unique in
its honesty and objectivity, the three-volume
Report of the International Committee of the Red
Cross on its Activities during the Second World
War, Geneva, 1948. This comprehensive account
from an entirely neutral source incorporated and
expanded the findings of two previous works:
Documents sur I'activité du CICR en
faveur des civils detenus dans les camps de
concentration en Allemagne 1939- 1945 (Geneva,
1946), and Inter Arma Caritas: the Work of the
ICRC during the Second World War (Geneva, 1947).
The team of authors, headed by
Frédéric Siordet, explained in the
opening pages of the Report that their object,
in the tradition of the Red Cross, had been
strict political neutrality , and herein lies
its great value. The ICRC successfully applied
the 1929 Geneva military convention in order to
gain access to civilian internees held in
Central and Western Europe by the Germany
authorities. By contrast, the ICRC was unable to
gain any access to the Soviet Union, which had
failed to ratify the Convention. The millions of
civilian and military internees held in the
USSR, whose conditions were known to be by far
the worst, were completely cut off from any
international contact or supervision. The Red
Cross Report is of value in that it first
clarifies the legitimate circumstances under
which Jews were detained in concentration camps,
i.e. as enemy aliens. In describing the two
categories. of civilian internees, the Report
distinguishes the second type as "Civilians
deported on administrative grounds (in German,
"Schutzhäftlinge"), who were arrested for
political or racial motives because their
presence was considered a danger to the State or
the occupation forces" (Vol. 111, p. 73). These
persons, it continues, "were placed on the same
footing as persons arrested or imprisoned under
common law for security reasons." (P.74). The
Report admits that the Germans were at first
reluctant to permit supervision by the Red Cross
of people detained on grounds relating to
security, but by the latter part of 1942, the
ICRC obtained important concessions from
Germany. They were permitted to distribute food
parcels to major concentration camps in Germany
from August 1942, and "from February 1943
onwards this concession was extended to all
other camps and prisons" (Vol. 111, p. 78). The
ICRC soon established contact with camp
commandants and launched a food relief programme
which continued to function until the last
months of 1945, letters of thanks for which came
pouring in from Jewish internees.
RED CROSS
RECIPIENTS WERE JEWS
The Report states that
"As many as 9,000 parcels were packed daily.
From the autumn of 1943 until May 1945, about
1,112,000 parcels with a total weight of 4,500
tons were sent off to the concentration camps"
(Vol. III, p. 80). In addition to food, these
contained clothing and pharmaceutical supplies.
"Parcels were sent to Dachau, Buchenwald,
Sangerhausen, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg,
Flossenburg, Landsberg-am-Lech, Flöha,
Ravensbrück, Hamburg-Neuengamme,
Mauthausen, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz,
Bergen-Belsen, to camps near Vienna and in
Central and Southern Germany. The principal
recipients were Belgians, Dutch, French, Greeks,
Italians, Norwegians, Poles and stateless Jews"
(Vol. III, p. 83). In the course of the war,
"The Committee was in a position to transfer and
distribute in the form of relief supplies over
twenty million Swiss francs collected by Jewish
welfare organisations throughout the world, in
particular by the American Joint Distribution
Committee of New York" (Vol. I, p. 644). This
latter organisation was permitted by the German
Government to maintain offices in Berlin until
the American entry into the war. The ICRC
complained that obstruction of their vast relief
operation for Jewish internees came not from the
Germans but from the tight Allied blockade of
Europe. Most of their purchases of relief food
were made in Rumania, Hungary and Slovakia. The
ICRC had special praise for the liberal
conditions which prevailed at Theresienstadt up
to the time of their last visits there in April
1945. This camp, "where there were about 40,000
Jews deported from various countries was a
relatively privileged ghetto" (Vol. III, p. 75).
According to the Report, "'The Committee's
delegates were able to visit the camp at
Theresienstadt (Terezin) which was used
exclusively for Jews and was governed by special
conditions. From information gathered by the
Committee, this camp had been started as an
experiment by certain leaders of the Reich . . .
These men wished to give the Jews the means of
setting up a communal life in a town under their
own administration and possessing almost
complete autonomy. . . two delegates were able
to visit the camp on April 6th, 1945. They
confirmed the favourable impression gained on
the first visit" (Vol. I, p . 642). The ICRC
also had praise for the regime of Ion Antonescu
of Fascist Rumania where the Committee was able
to extend special relief to 183,000 Rumanian
Jews until the time of the Soviet occupation.
The aid then ceased, and the ICRC complained
bitterly that it never succeeded "in sending
anything whatsoever to Russia" (Vol. II, p. 62).
The same situation applied to many of the German
camps after their "liberation" by the Russians.
The ICRC received a voluminous flow of mail from
Auschwitz until the period of the Soviet
occupation, when many of the internees were
evacuated westward. But the efforts of the Red
Cross to send relief to internees remaining at
Auschwitz under Soviet control were futile.
However, food parcels continued to be sent to
former Auschwitz inmates transferred west to
such camps as Buchenwald and
Oranienburg.
NO EVIDENCE OF
GENOCIDE
One of the most
important aspects of the Red Cross Report is
that it clarifies the true cause of those deaths
that undoubtedly occurred in the camps towards
the end of the war. Says the Report: "In the
chaotic condition of Germany after the invasion
during the final months of the war, the camps
received no food supplies at all and starvation
claimed an increasing number of victims. Itself
alarmed by this situation, the German Government
at last informed the ICRC on February 1st, 1945
. . . In March 1945, discussions between the
President of the ICRC and General of the S.S.
Kaltenbrunner gave even more decisive results.
Relief could henceforth be distributed by the
ICRC, and one delegate was authorised to stay in
each camp . . ." (Vol. III, p. 83). Clearly, the
German authorities were at pains to relieve the
dire situation as far as they were able. The Red
Cross are quite explicit in stating that food
supplies ceased at this time due to the Allied
bombing of German transportation, and in the
interests of interned Jews they had protested on
March 15th, 1944 against "the barbarous aerial
warfare of the Allies" (Inter Arma Caritas, p.
78). By October 2nd, 1944, the ICRC warned the
German Foreign Office of the impending collapse
of the German transportation system, declaring
that starvation conditions for people throughout
Germany were becoming inevitable. In dealing
with this comprehensive, three-volume Report, it
is important to stress that the delegates of the
International Red Cross found no evidence
whatever at the camps in Axis- occupied Europe
of a deliberate policy to exterminate the Jews.
In all its 1,600 pages the Report does not even
mention such a thing as a gas chamber. It admits
that Jews, like many other wartime
nationalities, suffered rigours and privations,
but its complete silence on the subject of
planned extermination is ample refutation of the
Six Million legend. Like the Vatican
representatives with whom they worked, the Red
Cross found itself unable to indulge in the
irresponsible charges of genocide which had
become the order of the day. So far as the
genuine mortality rate is concerned, the Report
points out that most of the Jewish doctors from
the camps were being used to combat typhus on
the eastern front, so that they were unavailable
when the typhus epidemics of 1945 broke out in
the camps (Vol. I, p. 204 ff)- Incidentally, it
is frequently claimed that mass executions were
carried out in gas chambers cunningly disguised
as shower facilities. Again the Report makes
nonsense of this allegation. "Not only the
washing places, but installations for baths,
showers and laundry were inspected by the
delegates. They had often to take action to have
fixtures made less primitive, and to get them
repaired or enlarged" (Vol.III, p.
594).
NOT ALL WERE
INTERNED
Volume III of the Red
Cross Report, Chapter 3 (I. Jewish Civilian
Population) deals with the "aid given to the
Jewish section of the free population," and this
chapter makes it quite plain that by no means
all of the European Jews were placed in
internment camps, but remained, subject to
certain restrictions, as part of the free
civilian population. This conflicts directly
with the "thoroughness" of the supposed
"extermination programme", and with the claim in
the forged Hoess memoirs that Eichmann was
obsessed with seizing "every single Jew he could
lay his hands on." In Slovakia, for examle,
where Eichmann's assistant Dieter Wisliceny was
in charge, the Report states that "A large
proportion of the Jewish minority had permission
to stay in the country, and at certain periods
Slovakia was looked upon as a comparative haven
of refuge for Jews, especially for those coming
from Poland. Those who remained in Slovakia seem
to have been in comparative safety until the end
of August 1944, when a rising against the German
forces took place. While it is true that the law
of May 15th, 1942 had brought about the
internment of several thousand Jews, these
people were held in camps where the conditions
of food and lodging were tolerable, and where
the internees were allowed to do paid work on
terms almost equal to those of the free labour
market" (Vol. I, p. 646). Not only did large
numbers of the three million or so European Jews
avoid internment altogether, but the emigration
of Jews continued throughout the war, generally
by way of Hungary, Rumania and Turkey.
Ironically, post-war Jewish emigration from
German-occupied territories was also facilitated
by the Reich, as in the case of the Polish Jews
who had escaped to France before its occupation.
"The Jews from Poland who, whilst in France, had
obtained entrance permits to the United States
were held to be American citizens by the German
occupying authorities, who further agreed to
recognize the validity of about three thousand
passports issued to Jews by the consulates of
South American countries" (Vol.I, p. 645). As
future U.S. citizens, these Jews were held at
the Vittel camp in southern France for American
aliens. The emigration of European Jews from
Hungary in particular proceeded during the war
unhindered by the German authorities. "Until
March 1944," says the. Red Cross Report, "Jews
who had the privilege of visas for Palestine
were free to leave Hungary" (Vol. I, p. 648).
Even after the replacement of the Horthy
Government in 1944 (following its attempted
armistice with the Soviet Union) with a
govenment more dependent on German authority,
the emigration of Jews continued. The Committee
secured the pledges of both Britain and the
United States "to give support by every means to
the emigration of Jews from Hungary," and from
the U.S. Govermnent the ICRC received a message
stating that "The Government of the United
States . . . now specifically repeats its
assurance that arrangements will be made by it
for the care of all Jews who in the present
circumstances are allowed to leave" (Vol. I, p .
649).
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