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>Chapter IX
 9. THE JEWS AND THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS, A FACTUAL APPRAISAL BY THE RED 
CR6SS
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    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 l'activite' du CICR en faveur des civils detencus 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 Frederic 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 German 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 Report of the ICRC 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, Schutzhaftlinge), who were 
arrested for political or racial motives because their presence was 
considered a danger to the State or the occupation forces" (Vol. Ill, 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. III, 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.
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>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, 
Flbha,
>Ravensbruck, 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. 1, 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 Commmee, 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 6, 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.
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>NO MENTION OF GAS CHAMBERS
  One of the most important aspects of the Report of the ICRC 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 1, 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 .I." (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 15, 1944 against "the barbarous aerial warfare of the 
Allies'' (Inter Armet Caritns, p. 78). By October 2, 1944, the ICRC had 
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 whatsoever of 'gas chambers'. The original 1946 edition 
did not even talk of 'extermination' or 'death camps' but after the 
emotional impact of the Nuremberg trials the Red Cross felt compelled to 
introduce into the expanded 1948 Report several, very cursory references 
to 'death camps' (Vol. 1 p. 641) and 'extermination camps' (Vol. I p. 645).
    However, no means of'extermination' is indicated. In all its 1,600 
pages the three-volume Report does not even mention such a thing as a 
'gas chamber'. It acknowledges that Jews, like many other wartime 
nationalities, suffered rigours and privations, but' its complete silence 
on the subject of'gassings' is ample refutation of the 'Holocaust' legend.
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>NOT ALL WERE INTERNED
   Volume III of the Report of the ICRC, 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 example, where Eichmann's assistant Dieter Wisliceny 
was in charge, the Report states that "A large proportian 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 15, 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 recognise the validity of about three thousand 
passports issued to Jews by the consulates of South American countries" 
(Vol. 1, 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. 1, 
p. 648). Even after the replacement of the Horthy Government in 1944 
(following its attempted armistice with the Soviet Union) with a 
government 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. Government 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. 
1, p. 649).
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