Re: "Did Six Million Really Die?" - A Factual Appraisal by the Red Cross

and it as false, all false


On Jan 5, 7:33 am, "The Heretic" <baying46...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A Factual Appraisal by the Red Cross
thunderbay.indymedia.org - January 28, 2005

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'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.

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 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).

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 Höss 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 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 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. I, p . 649).

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.

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).

The above is chapter nine from the book "Did Six Million Really Die?"

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