The powerlessness of the ICRC during the Nazi period

How and why the Red Cross failed in the face of humanitarian crimes against the civilian population

The ICRC monitors compliance with international humanitarian law in armed conflicts and tries to ensure that prisoners of war are treated well. The national Red Cross societies are responsible for enforcing these principles locally. During the Second World War, the German Red Cross (DRC) did, in fact, take action in response to inquiries from Geneva, and it continued to officially recognize the Geneva Convention – at least when it came to inquiries from the “West.” But since 1933, the DRC had been politically brought into line with the Nazi regime and was under the control of the Nazi Party.

Little more than a messenger service

Acting on behalf of the ICRC, the German Red Cross would investigate the whereabouts of missing persons, making inquiries with the secret police who, in turn, made inquiries in the concentration camps. The German Red Cross passed on any information obtained in this way to the ICRC, which, in turn, relayed this information to the appropriate national Red Cross societies: a long and laborious chain of communication. The ICRC could not save the millions of people in the camps. Concentration camp prisoners were not considered prisoners of war, and the ICRC insisted on its neutrality. The ICRC chose not to inform the public either. Instead, it went on sending letters to the German Reich “with the highest esteem,” while women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp were left to die. Three examples follow.

In England, the daughters of Hedwig Feinkuchen fear for their Jewish mother in Ravensbrück concentration camp and inquire about her health through the ICRC. In the case of resistance fighter Olga Benario Prestes, it is her mother-in-law who is concerned. She tries in vain to get her out of the concentration camp and into exile in Mexico via the ICRC. Both women are murdered in the Bernburg killing center, as is women’s rights activist Käthe Leichter, for whom the ICRC also sends several inquiries to the German Red Cross.

No more answers

In April 1942, the German Red Cross wrote to the ICRC, informing them that requests for “information about non-Aryans” who had been deported from the occupied territories would be refused by the competent authorities from then on and asking that the ICRC refrain from making such inquiries in future. Personal messages, parcels from relatives, and postcards had probably already stopped reaching the women long before.

This new development caused increasing unease among 21 of the 23 Committee members, as Swiss historian Jean-Claude Favez would later discover. In the fall of 1942, they supported a proposal for a public appeal against this violation of international law, but the ICRC’s President held them in check.

Parcels approved

As of November 1943, the ICRC obtained permission to send foreign food parcels and clothing to concentration camps again, primarily from Western countries. These “Liebesgaben” (literally gifts of love) were paid for by prisoners’ relatives and addressed to individual prisoners by name. It is doubtful whether the packages actually reached them. The ICRC had no access to the concentration camps and could not monitor distribution.

The Gestapo continued to make arbitrary arrests in the occupied territories. Gladys de Maublanc was arrested in Paris in January 1944 and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. On her marriage to Henri de Maublanc, she had become a viscountess and therefore a noblewoman. She was also the sister of Elisabeth Arden – already a famous cosmetics entrepreneur at the time. Concerned because she had no idea where her sister was, Elisabeth, too, turned to the ICRC. The ICRC hoped to obtain more information from the German Red Cross by referring to Gladys’s “Aryan” status. Shortly afterwards, she was taken to the “model camp” in Vittel.

Belated visits to concentration camps

From October 1944 on, the ICRC stepped up its efforts to make a first-hand assessment of conditions in the concentration camps. But it was not until early April 1945 that delegate Hans E. Meyer, who was actually a member of the German Red Cross, managed to visit the Ravensbrück concentration camp on behalf of the ICRC. He is probably the author of the following words, taken from an activity report published in German in 1947:

“My efforts proved successful despite all the difficulties, and on 5 April the trucks of the International Committee of the Red Cross left the Ravensbrück concentration camp for Switzerland with 299 French women and one Polish woman (…) Suffering from hunger and neglect, frightened and distrustful, (…) the poor creatures were a vision of horror and wretchedness. (…) They thought I was an agent in the pay of the SS who was going to take them to the gas chamber. (…) Most of them were suffering from nutritional oedema, swollen ankles and bellies.”

Rescued French women

Frenchwoman Marcelle Bonnefoy was among those rescued. Her sister near Paris had been worried about her since her disappearance in January 1943. Why she was arrested remains completely unclear. Marcelle’s eight-year-old son had been living with his aunt ever since, asking daily when his mother would finally come home. The boy’s aunt wrote a long letter to the Red Cross – and actually received a response: She is in Ravensbrück concentration camp: That was the only information she received. After her rescue, Marcelle returned to the outskirts of Paris, where she died at the age of 93.

White buses from Scandinavia rescue thousands

National Red Cross organizations operated completely autonomously – and in the case of the Swedish Red Cross, with remarkable courage. As the war neared its end, the Swedish Red Cross pushed for negotiations on the repatriation of thousands of people who had been deported from Denmark and Norway. By the end of March, the “White buses” were already bringing them home.

And the Swedish Red Cross did all it could to expand the rescue operation. It even managed to persuade Heinrich Himmler to allow more women to be rescued from the Ravensbrück concentration camp and brought to Sweden – this time with the support of the ICRC, which provided a freight train. Around 7, 000 women, mainly from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Poland, were brought to safety.

Suffering witnessed on the death marches

Meanwhile, the camp command drove the remaining women – there may have been as many as 20,000 – from Ravensbrück concentration camp on death marches towards the west. Most of them were “Easternern women,” as the commandant told ICRC delegate Albert de Cocatrix when he arrived on April 23. Cocatrix was unable to persuade the SS to hand over the camp to the ICRC before the Russian troops arrived. In his report, he wrote: “At nine o’clock the following day, the first columns of women in their striped garments stood before the Kommandantur, awaiting the departure. Further discussion was useless.”

It is impossible to know how many women died of exhaustion or were murdered on the march. Many of them were buried at the roadside, some were later exhumed and laid to rest anonymously in the cemeteries of nearby villages. Around 2,000 sick women, too weak for the march, remained in the camp and were liberated by the Red Army on April 30, 1945.

More suffering after liberation

French national Marthe Marie Mourbel was probably one of the women who were in an extremely weakened condition by the time they were liberated. She died only a few days later, on May 15, 1945, in Waren, about 60 kilometers away from the camp. In August 1944, the German Red Cross had informed her relatives via the ICRC that she was in good health. She had been arrested in Angers in the spring of 1943 because she and other teachers had helped Jewish pupils at the girls’ school where she taught philosophy. She may have met Marcelle Bonnefoy – they were deported at the same time.

Others are lucky: “Live! Marvel! Intensely! Back from hell,” Alice Lesser writes to her brother Waldemar in September 1945. The 64-year-old survived almost six years in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her daughters, who had emigrated to Brazil, had tried to stay in touch via the ICRC. Alice finally emigrated there herself in 1948 and, like many other women, never spoke about her past again.