Kollerstrom and the 1948 Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Holocaust

Nicholas Kollerstrom presented the three-volume Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its Activities During the Second World War (hereafter 1948 ICRC report) as a highly relevant source on the fate of the European Jews during World War 2 and on Auschwitz even as an "authentic eyewitness account" (Kollerstrom, Breaking the Spell, p. 233) supporting his Holocaust denial. But this publication is not an "eyewitness account", last on Auschwitz, it's a report compiled by people of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1948 based on (usually not referenced) other sources. The report was never studied by Kollerstrom, it does neither really say what he claims, nor is it a historically reliable and competent source on the fate of most Jews during the war. In short, this episode illustrates the disturbingly low level of research and study in Breaking the Spell.

Kollerstrom writes:

"One could ask the same question about the International Red Cross, who visited Auschwitz and other German labour camps on a regular basis to check up on camp hygiene. Why did their bulky volume on the subject make no mention of the Holocaust? Because it didn’t happen, of course. It’s just a phantom."

(Kollerstrom, Breaking the Spell, p. 142).

Yet, some dozens of pages later, he concedes in a footnote that the "report mentions 'death camps' and 'extermination' on several occasions" (BTS, p. 218). So which one is it? Either the report "make[s] no mention of the Holocaust" or "it mentions 'death camps' and 'extermination' on several occasions". He cannot have it both ways.

Kollerstrom further claims that "[t]he three volumes clearly show that the International Red Cross never made an effort to investigate in detail any claims about death or extermination camps". The allegations on the Holocaust were all around during and after the war. So if the ICRC didn't even make "an effort to investigate" these, it couldn't have had any competence on it, to begin with. In fact, as a neutral, humanitarian, relief organization, the ICRC did not investigate atrocities on its own (it only agreed to do so if it was called by all parties, e.g. it refused to send a commission to Katyn without the Soviets' consent).

But let's break this issue down into several relevant questions, probing content, competence and reliability of the 1948 ICRC report as well what the ICRC really knew at the time.

Was the ICRC competent to verify details of the Holocaust? 

The Holocaust was not carried out in German camps and at sites actually inspected by the ICRC. Its delegates did not tour through Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau or followed the Einsatzgruppen through the occupied territories. The closest a representative got to mass extermination was when Maurice Rossel visited the commandant's office of Auschwitz main camp in late September 1944 (but not the actual extermination site Auschwitz-Birkenau further 2 km away as the crow flies). Rossel could not inspect the site and question prisoners, and he did not dare to ask the commandant's office in Auschwitz on the extermination of Jews ("Oh, this was absolutely out of the question..."), and even if he did they would have rather lied to him straight in his face instead of admitting the mass murder of people.

Hence, the ICRC couldn't have possibly verified the large scale mass extermination directly from their own inspections. They were not even given open access to concentration camps until shortly before the end of the war and - except for the cover-up site Theresienstadt - camps "exclusively reserved for Jews were not open to inspections for humanitarian purposes until the end" either (1948 ICRC report, volume 1, p. 643).

Its delegates spoke to selected prisoners, mostly non-Jews and POWs, from some non-extermination camps, whose inmates were not subjected to extermination and involved in annihilation, and who could only provide more or less vague hearsay knowledge at best, even if they did trust and speak open to the delegates.

Did the ICRC learn about the Holocaust during the war? 

The ICRC knew about the Holocaust via two channels, a) conversations and inference directly from their own delegates and b) reports passed on to them by other organizations.

In August 1942, the chief delegate in Berlin, Roland Marti, heard from POWs in Rawa-Ruska about executions of Jews by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (Favez, Das Internationale Rote Kreuz und das Dritte Reich, p. 133). The ICRC official Carl Jacob Burckhardt was supposedly informed by Gerhart Riegner in August or September 1942 on the content of the so-called Riegner telegram (Favez, p. 135). In November 1942, Burckhardt was told by the American consul in Geneva, Paul Squire, about reports that "Hitler gave a written order for the extermination of the Jews" to which Burckhardt replied that he knows from reliable Germans that Hitler ordered to make Germany "free of Jews by the end of 1942" and "since there is no place, where to sent these Jews and since the territory shall be cleared from this race, the final outcome is obvious" (Favez, p. 137). 

In November 1942, Marti reported that the weakest members of the French Jews deported to Riga have been eliminated and that 60,000 Jews were murdered in Latvia (Favez, p. 139). In April 1943, he noted that there is "neither a report nor a trace of the 10,000 Jews leaving Berlin between 28 February 1943 and 3 March 1943. It is assumed that they are dead" (Favez, p. 139, my translation; indeed, the unfit people of these transports were immediately murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau). On 8 March 1943, the ICRC received a report from the Polish Red Cross in London on the "death camps" Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor  (Favez, p. 139).

The second wave of information reached the ICRC in 1944 in the course of their visits to concentration camps and the destruction of the Hungarian Jews. Jean de Bavier, previously the ICRC delegate in Budapest, noted in an internal memo of 30 May 1944, which was seen by several ICRC officials including its president Max Huber:

"On 13 May, the day before I left Budapest, I was informed by the Jewish community that a railway meeting was due to take place on 15 and 16 May concerning the conveyance of 300,000 Jews to Kassa and possibly to Poland. As far as the general public and the authorities are concerned, this movement of persons is simply a matter of providing a labour force but, since the deportees will include children and old people, the meaning of this transport is quite different. It has been stated to me, not only by the Jewish community but also by a highly placed Hungarian official, that the destination of these trains is in Poland, the up-to-date installations for putting people to death by means of gas. The Jewish community states that it has proof of the disappearance, by the same means, of their fellow Jews in Poland"

(Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, p. 126)

On 26 June 1944, the president of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation Koechlin wrote a letter to the ICRC that 300,000 to 400,000 Hungarian Jews had already been murdered, to which it replied that "a detailed report on the situation in Upper Silesia was recently sent to us by a Jewish organization. The report corresponds to others which we have received from various sources. I hardly need to say that I myself am deeply shocked by these reports, even though it is not possible to verify their contents...We have been concerned with the plight of the Jews for many months....We have recently realized with deep regret that the willingness to help has come too late" (Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, p. 174 and 182).

Also on 26 June 1944, the ICRC delegate in charge of the activities on concentration camps, Johannes Schwarzenberg, sent the reports of the Auschwitz escapees Jerzy Tabeau, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba to the head of the Swiss Alien Police Heinrich Rothmund with the comment that "from all atrocity reports, and we have legions, it is the one most precise and provides information on the process of the gassing of Jews (page 11 etc.)". Even the (discrete) antisemite Rothmund was "anew shocked, how 'careless' certain elements handle the fate of the decent German people" (Schwarzenberg, Erinnerungen und Gedanken eines Diplomaten im Zeitwandel 1903-1978, p. 271 and 272, my translation).

Already in 1944, details of deportation and mass extermination of Jews were published by a Swiss protestant aid organization in an entire book containing reports on the Holocaust. The information on the deportation and murder of the Hungarian Jews were further spread by the press in the ICRC's homeland Switzerland. According to the Israeli historian Arieh Ben-Tov:

"The Auschwitz report and the report on the Hungarian deportation were printed throughout the Swiss press (following the Exchange Telegraph report). It was the first breakthrough tolerated by the censorship, which was of course due to the changed military situation. Within 18 days more than 300 reports and articles about the extermination of the Hungarian Jews were published."

(Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, p. 126)

Also in 1944, the ICRC delegate Maurice Rossel learnt of rumours on homicidal gassing in Auschwitz from a British POW in Teschen...

"Spontaneously, the British main man of confidence in Teschen asked us if we knew about the 'shower room'. It is rumored that there is a very modern shower room in the camp, where the detainees would be gassed in series. The British man of confidence, through his Auschwitz Kommando, tried to obtain confirmation of this fact. It was impossible to prove anything. The protective custody prisoners themselves have not talked about it.

Once again, coming out of Auschwitz we have the impression that the mystery remains well guarded." 

(Report of 29 September 1944 on Maurice Rossel's visit in Auschwitz, my translation)

...and more severe from a prisoner in Ravensbrück concentration camp who previously passed through Auschwitz:

"These are information on Auschwitz known in Ravensbrück. This infamous camp, where almost only Jews are interned, is a 90% extermination camp. Mrs. Salomon, born Helene Langevin, daugther of the physicist, has made the following statement:

1) Every prisoners passing through Auschwitz gets his number tattooed in blue on his arm.

2) Gas chambers: Mrs. Salomon has experienced terrible scenes herself, heard the screams of several groups of prisoners. The unfortunates selected for the gas chamber are forced into a special block and know what awaits them. They are left here for a time, so they slowly starve until they are taken away in groups and gassed. These are mostly sick, elderly and children

(Report from Maurice Rossel of 14 October 1944 on his visit in Ravensbrück, from Favez, Das Internationale Rote Kreuz und das Dritte Reich, p. 145, my translation)

Does the 1948 ICRC report not mention the Holocaust? 

In the contrary, the report does mention the Holocaust. It is evident (and not "ambiguous" as Kollerstrom would like it to have, see Breaking the Spell, p. 218) that Jews were systematically exterminated by the Germans and sent to "death camps":

"Under National Socialism, the Jews had become in truth outcasts, condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution and systematic extermination...They were penned into concentration camps and ghettos, recruited for forced labour, subjected to grave brutalities and sent to death camps, without anyone being allowed to intervene in those matters which Germany and her allies considered to be exclusively within the bounds of their home policy. "(Volume 1, p. 641)

"In Germany and the countries occupied by her, or under her domination, especially Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Jugoslavia 1, no other section of the population endured such humiliation, privation and suffering. Deprived of all treaty protection, persecuted in accordance with the National-Socialist doctrine and threatened with extermination, the Jews were, in the last resort, generally deported in the most inhuman manner, shut up in concentration camps, subjected to forced labour or put to death." (Volume 3, 513)

(Report of the International Committee Of The Red Cross On Its Activities During The Second World War)

Does the report never hint at any human gas chambers? 

Kollerstrom claims that "in all its 1,600 pages the Report never hints at any human gas chambers" (Breaking the Spell, p. 218). Leaving aside that this point lacks relevance, as the report is not a historical study of German camps, it is not even correct:

"At 7 a.m. the first group of one hundred women arrived - it was a terrible and pathetic sight to see these poor creatures, famished, dirty, frightened and suspicious - they could not believe they were to be set free, and took me for an agent of the SS, sent to fetch them for the gas chamber."

(Report of the International Committee Of The Red Cross On Its Activities During The Second World War, Volume 1, p. 625)

Is the 1948 ICRC report a neutral, objective historical study of what happened to the Jews?

The report is not a historical study of what happened to the Jews in World War 2, but it's a personal account on the activities of a relief organization. As such, it would focus on the positive actions of the organization and if it went on suffering, it would first of all detail those which the organization managed to decrease. It would, however, not necessarily focus on suffering they did not, could not or failed to cope with. In contrary, this might be something to flush down the memory hole. The Holocaust is precisely one of the issues the International Committee of the Red Cross failed on most. It could not really help hundreds of thousands of Jews from its sphere of activity who were murdered by the Germans.

The 1948 ICRC report turns out to be a poor historical source on the fate of the Jews before the systematic mass extermination was halted. For instance, it does not even mention the deportation of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews in summer 1944 despite ICRC delegates being in the country at the time. In fact, it is this significant omission in the report that made the Holocaust denier Arthur Butz erroneously believe that these people were not deported at all (Butz, The Hoax of the 20th century, p. 186).

Actually, the ICRC was informed about the deportation of the Jews in summer 1944, see de Bavier's internal memo of 30 May 1944 quoted above and on 30 June 1944 Schwarzenberg explained to Riegner that the International Committee has "unfortunately no possibilities to protest towards the corresponding authorities, because they refuse any discussion on the question of the deportation of the Jews, as they regard this as an internal problem, on which the International Committee has no right to interfere" (Favez, Das Internationale Rote Kreuz und das Dritte Reich, p. 444, my translation). The ICRC knew about the mass murder of the Hungarian Jews - at latest - when the testimony of Auschwitz escapees (Jerzy Tabeau, Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler, Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz) was passed on among political, religious and relief organizations. This testimony was compelling evidence at the time (whatever Revisionists think about it today), and the ICRC obtained further confirmation through their own channels such as from the female prisoner in Ravensbrück. 

After the war, the available evidence and reports on the Holocaust drastically increased even further. Therefore, if its most terrible details didn't make it into the 1948 ICRC report on their WW2 activities, it was considered as irrelevant, inconvenient or its authors were helplessly incompetent. Take your pick, but in either case, it withdraws the report any historical reliability and authority on mass extermination, i.e. if and to what extent the Holocaust is described in the report is little relevant to the question if it occurred.

In fact, around the year 2000, there was a series of Revisionist articles precisely on the historical reliability of the report on the deportation of Hungarian Jews (Butz vs Graf and Mattogno). Mattgono concluded that "the report of the International Red Cross on Hungary has no historical value" (Mattogno, Die Deportation ungarischer Juden von Mai bis Juli 1944, my translation; an English translation of this article was published here). Graf attributed "this report’s defects" to "incompetent persons" - not the most plausible explanation, that the person who wrote the detailed passage on the ICRC's help of the Hungarian Jews after the transports to mass murder in summer 1944 didn't know anything of what happened just a few months earlier, but then Graf is not the most competent Revisionist either -, whereas Mattogno explained it as deliberate deception out of "deadly embarrassment that they did not speak about it at the time and that they did do anything to prevent this terrible tragedy". Hence, Kollerstrom's naive trust in the report has been smacked down by his fellow Revisionists long ago. It's not really surprising that Kollerstrom didn't study any more serious literature on the subject, but what is not much less worrying is that he didn't even check out relevant Revisionist publications.

If the ICRC knew about the Holocaust, then why didn't it publicly protest against it? 

According to its perspective, the ICRC did not publicly protest and try to exert their influence on the Germans because it did not want to risk the ongoing relief activities for other groups of people and it was considered fruitless anyway. The ICRC president Huber explained his position to the president of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation Koechlin on 5 July 1944: 

"We know from experience that in the case in question, we would achieve virtually nothing with a protest, no matter how strong it might be, and, moreover, our humanitarian work in other fields would only be jeopardized thereby." 

(Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, p. 174)