Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 156–157:
About the ICRC, little good can be said. They refused to provide any protection for Jews since they accepted the [Axis] designation of them as stateless criminals.²³⁵ According to ICRC President Max Huber they could not be seen to be ‘intruding into the domestic policy’ of the [Axis].²³⁶
There were discussions throughout August 1942 about the murder of Jewish civilians yet at the ICRC executive of 14 October 1942 the pro-[Axis] former foreign minister of Switzerland, Philip Etter, ‘opposed even the anodyne Huber draft’ calling for the humane treatment of civilians, not even Jews, ‘arguing that it could be interpreted as a violation of neutrality.’ Etter’s view prevailed.²³⁷
In the Netherlands the Dutch Red Cross made no effort to communicate with deported Jews although they did send an ambulance to the Eastern front ‘to comfort the Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers.’²³⁸
The attitude of the ICRC only changed at the very end of the war in Hungary. Louis de Jong condemned the ICRC for its ‘almost total lack of concern for the Jews’ disasters.’²³⁹
Click here for the citations.
235 Arthur Morse, p. 38, While Six Million Died, London: Secker Warburg, 1968
236 Ibid., pp. 325–8.
237 Laqueur, The Terrible Secret, pp. 62-3.
238 Mason, Testing Human Bonds Within Nations, p. 338.
239 Louis de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, pp. 862–4 cited by Mason, Imponderables of the Holocaust, p. 105.
That really is all that I wanted to share with you today.
Click here for events that happened today (January 13).
1935: A plebiscite in Saarland shows that 90.3% of those voting wish to join the Third Reich: an early success that the German Fascists made in their quest for empire.
1940: The Reich’s Navy Operations Division reported that while Norway presented strategic importance, the Wehrmacht should not invade the neutral country if there was little risk of a British violation of Norwegian neutrality. Berlin postponed the attack on France and the Low Countries, and Fascist submarine U‐20 torpedoed Swedish(!) steamer Sylvia northeast of Aberdeen, Scotland, sinking it within a minute and massacring all twenty of the crew.
1941: An Axis submarine base at Lorient, France suffered an Allied bombing, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria stalled in response to Berlin demand’s that it officially join the Axis.
1942: First use of an aircraft ejection seat by an Axis test pilot in a Heinkel He 280 jet fighter. As well, Tirpitz passed through the Kiel Canal and arrived at Brunsbüttel at the canal’s western end to refuel, departing for Wilhelmshaven later. Axis bombers attacked Lowestoft, Suffolk and Redcar, Yorkshire in England during daylight hours; they also conducted minor attacks over Aberdeenshire, Scotland and the Shetland Islands.
Likewise, the Third Reich’s 18th Motorised Division at Staraya and the Third Reich’s 9th Army at Rhzev duelled with the Red Army, maybe around the same time that Axis aircraft struck Ambon or Imperial Naval General Staff arranged a meeting with the Bureau of Naval Construction to discuss the construction of submarines capable of carrying attack aircraft.
1943: Three transports arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, each containing 1,210 Jews from Berlin (1,083 of whom the Axis quickly massacred), 750 Netherlandish Jews (88 men and 101 women were registered, and the remaining 561 exterminated), and two thousand Jews of Zambrów ghetto in Poland (148 men and 50 women were registered, and the remaining 1,802 exterminated)… I have no words.
1944: U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. received the ‘Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews’, exposing U.S. State Department’s efforts to avoid directly helping Jewish refugees. I can only assume that the Axis appreciated having more targets sent their way. On a less unpleasant note, the Axis lost the high ground north of Cervaro, and Essen, Duisburg, Aachen, and Koblenz all suffered an Allied assault, but the Empire of Japan launched landing ship № 127.
1945: The 3rd Panzer Army in Pillkallen struggled against the Allies while S‐13 patrolled off the coast of Kolberg, and the Axis’s Armeegruppe E finished its withdrawal from Greece and Albania. The Axis also lost at least seventy Germans when Norwegian saboteurs destroyed the Jørstad Bridge near Snåsa.
2012: Guido Dessauer, Axis aerospace engineer, expired.
2014: Waldemar von Gazen, Axis general and lawyer, died.
