Did Six Million Really
Die?
By Richard E.
Harwood
9
THE JEWS AND
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS:
A FACTUAL APPRAISAL BY
THE RED CROSS
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 I'activité du CICR en faveur des civils detenus
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 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 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 Hoess memoirs that Eichmann was obsessed
with seizing "every single Jew he could lay his hands on." In
Slovakia, for examle, 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
govenment 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. Govermnent 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).
Index
Introduction
1. German policy toward the Jews prior to the
war
2. German policy toward the Jews after the outbreak
of war
3. Population and Emigration
4. The Six Million: Documentary Evidence
5. The Nuremberg Trials
6. Auschwitz and Polish Jewry
7. Some Concentration Camps Memoires
8. The Nature & Condition of War Time
Concentration Camps
9. The Jews and The Concentrations Camps: A Factual
Appraisal by the Red Cross
10. The truth at last: The work of Paul
Rassinier
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