Is it possible that the Red Cross collaborated with the Swiss banks in confiscating property of Holocaust victims? There is no proof, but Jewish Agency Chairman Avraham Burg is now publicly hinting at such a possibility.
, Burg says: "We have our suspicions that humanitarian organizations listed the names of Holocaust victims in the concentration camps, and proffered them to the banks so that the banks could confiscate their deposits".
Burg does not name names but he, and his colleagues at the other large Jewish organizations, could only be referring to the Red Cross. At the end of the war, Rd Cross representatives were allowed to enter several Nazi concentration camps. Especially famous are the visits by Swedish Count Bernadotte, as part of the desperate attempt by Heinrich Himmler to receive the Allies’ blessing to succeed Adolf Hitler.
Red Cross activities at the end of World War II have not yet been totally clarified, but in the past years it has become increasingly clear how helpless it was in aiding Holocaust victims. Its representatives could not have been eyewitnesses to the systematic slaughter of European Jewry, but Red Cross leaders knew, at least from the end of 1942, about Eastern Europe’s concentration camps. The organization refrained from alerting world public opinion, but did attempt to offer aid to those being transported eastwards, and to intervene on behalf of Jews in several countries that were satellites of Nazi Germany.
The Red Cross’ relations with Nazi Germany are even more shrouded in mystery. Last year, the office of Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-NY) published several US intelligence
documents from World War II which claimed that several Red Cross officials were closely tied to Nazi Germany. Among the various reports, it turns out that Paul Buckhard, Red Cross representative to Naples in 1944 and head of the Red Cross at the end of the war, was trailed by US agents. He was suspected of being a little too close to his Nazi contacts. The head of the Danish Red Cross was called "one of the worst Nazis in the country". However, since this was only raw intelligence, it is not clear how accurate these reports were.
To date, the Red Cross has admitted to only one act of active collaboration with Nazi Germany. In the organization’s Geneva archives, proof was found that one of its representatives in Turkey smuggled property from Germany to Switzerland via Turkey. It isn’t clear whether the property was stolen or not. The Red Cross emphasized that the man acted on his own accord; he was fired when his actions became known.
The suspicions raised by Burg are especially serious and will require in-depth investigations. The Internal Commission of Experts headed by Prof. Jean Francoise Bergier, which has been commissioned to investigate Switzerland’s policies during the Second World War, appears to be the right body to undertake such a study; though its slowness and fuzzy work make it hard to pin much hope on the committee. Therefore, it seems that if the Jewish organizations wish to examine these suspicions, they will have to do so themselves.
It will not be easy. The question is, will the organization and the local authorities be open to such an investigation? It is reasonable to assume that only international pressure can uncover the truth.