- A Factual Appraisal Of The 'Holocaust' By The Red Cross
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- The Jews And The Concentration Camps:
- No Evidence Of Genocide
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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.
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- This comprehensive account from an entirely neutral source
incorporated and expanded the findings of two previous works: Documents
sur l'activité du CICR en faveur des civils détenus 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.
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- Red Cross Recipients Were Jews
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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 Evidence Of Genocide
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- 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 toward 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).
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- Not All Were Interned
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- 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 Höss memoirs that Eichmann was obsessed with seizing "every
single Jew he could lay his hands on."
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- In Slovakia, for example, 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).
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- 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).
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- 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 government more dependent on German authority, the
emigration of Jews continued.
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- 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. I, p . 649).
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- Biedermann agreed that in the nineteen instances that
"Did Six Million Really Die?" quoted from the Report of the International
Committee of the Red Cross on its Activities during the Second World War
and Inter Arma Caritas (this includes the above material), it did so accurately.
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- A quote from Charles Biedermann (a delegate of the International
Committee of the Red Cross and Director of the Red Cross' International
Tracing Service) under oath at the Zündel Trial (February 9, 10, 11
and 12, 1988).
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- The above is chapter nine from the book "Did Six
Million Really Die?"
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- For the entire book "Did Six Million Really Die?",
click here.
- http://www.vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/03/122056.php
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- Comment
- From 'Interesting'
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- From the above account, it would appear that those in
charge of the barbarous Allied civilian bombing of Germany, thus attacking
the civilian infrastructure (which is a war crime), are primarily responsible
for the murder of hundreds of thousands of gays, gypsies, political dissidents,
Jews, etc. in the concentration camps of wartime Germany due to disease
and starvation.
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- Comment
- William Landsford
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- By 1944, most of Germany was already at or near starvation,
and disease among the civilian population was a severe problem. Transportation
and the food supply were in tatters from the unceasing bombing of the US
and UK on German civilian targets and infrastructure. Read some biographies
of Germans who survived the war. Many Germans died of disease...typhus
was very common. One account of a young boy about age 12 at the time
described how he was so malnourished he became sickly and then infected
with typhus. He was put in a hospital ward with dozens of other typhus
victims. Incredibly, he described how a cart with a gas bottle was wheeled
into the ward and zyklon gas was actually turned released in an effort
to kill all lice, etc, while all the patients were in their beds. A remarkable
story of survival. It can be heard in the Rense Archives...the program
date is August 1, 2005.
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