[Logo]
COMITE INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX-ROUGE

Geneva, 10 May 1979
Fpe/grt

Dear Madam,

We have pleasure in acknowledging receipt of your letter of 12 April concerning the victims of the Second World War, together with the enclosed booklet. We did already have a copy of this document, which is not the only one of its kind. Indeed, the ICRC and several National Societies, in particular, the American Red Cross, have received a great deal of correspondence on this matter.

The booklet in question supports its false allegations by two abridged quotations taken from two documents published by the ICRC:

"Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its activities dueing the Second World War" (3 volumes)

"The work of the ICRC for civilian detainees in German Concentration Camps" (1 volume)

These two documents, which we are sending you under separate cover, contain the basic information which the ICRC possesses on the victims of the Second World War.

Unfortunately, we are not able to provide you with the figures you are seeking, since the ICRC has never tried to compile statistics on the victims of the war and has never certified the accuracy of the statistics produced by a third party. In fact, the basic aim of the ICRC is to come to the aid of victims of armed conflicts and not to act as a commission of enquiry or a statistics service.

With regard to the figure of 300,000 victims quoted on page 28 of the document you sent us, on 19 January 1955 the newspaper "Die Tat" published an article (of which a photocopy is enclosed) giving figures for the victims of the Second World War, including that of 300,000.

As you will see upon reading this article, first, the figure of 300,000 was not given by the ICRC and, secondly, it refers only to the _German_ victims (Jews and non-Jews) of the concentration camps. The authors of the booklet have therefore doubly falsified their information, by claiming that the figure relates to all the Jewish deportation victims and by naming the ICRC as its source.

Finally, for your information, we are sending a copy of the ICRC information bulletin "The ICRC in Action" of 12 December 1975, the last page of which mentions the work of the ICRC in concentration camps.

We hope this information will be of use to you.

Yours faithfully,
s/
R. Gaillard-Moret
Head of Documentation and Dissemination

The original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

[ Index ]

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor