Author: Gerald Steinacher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191014974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
From the brink of dissolution in 1945 to the triumph of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, via the Nuremberg Trials, runaway Nazis, and furious battles with communist critics on the eve of the Cold War, this is the intriguing and remarkable story of the International Red Cross - and how it survived its ambiguous relationship with the Nazis during the Second World War. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time. Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. But they did so while defending former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials and issuing travel papers to many of Hitler's former henchmen. These actions did little to silence the ICRC's critics, who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good' neutrality of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives. In spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.
Humanitarians at War
Author: Gerald Steinacher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191014974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
From the brink of dissolution in 1945 to the triumph of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, via the Nuremberg Trials, runaway Nazis, and furious battles with communist critics on the eve of the Cold War, this is the intriguing and remarkable story of the International Red Cross - and how it survived its ambiguous relationship with the Nazis during the Second World War. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time. Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. But they did so while defending former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials and issuing travel papers to many of Hitler's former henchmen. These actions did little to silence the ICRC's critics, who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good' neutrality of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives. In spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191014974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
From the brink of dissolution in 1945 to the triumph of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, via the Nuremberg Trials, runaway Nazis, and furious battles with communist critics on the eve of the Cold War, this is the intriguing and remarkable story of the International Red Cross - and how it survived its ambiguous relationship with the Nazis during the Second World War. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time. Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. But they did so while defending former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials and issuing travel papers to many of Hitler's former henchmen. These actions did little to silence the ICRC's critics, who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good' neutrality of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives. In spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.
The Red Cross and the Holocaust
Author: Jean-Claude Favez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521415873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
This book presents a startling assessment of the role of the Red Cross in the Holocaust.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521415873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
This book presents a startling assessment of the role of the Red Cross in the Holocaust.
Dunant's Dream
Author: Caroline Moorehead
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
ISBN: 9780786706099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 780
Book Description
Chronicles the history of the Red Cross, from its nineteenth-century humanitarian origins to the complex moral dilemmas it has faced in the twentieth-century
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
ISBN: 9780786706099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 780
Book Description
Chronicles the history of the Red Cross, from its nineteenth-century humanitarian origins to the complex moral dilemmas it has faced in the twentieth-century
With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross
Author: Arnold Mostowicz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
"With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross is a description of Arnold Mostowicz's experiences in the Lodz ghetto and Nazi concentration camps. As a physician in the ghetto, and intermittently in the camps, he was a witness to and participant in events that have received little attention. For example, the book contains an account of a workers' demonstration in 1940 and a description of the Gypsy camp that the Nazis created on the edge of the ghetto. Mostowicz describes the antagonism between the Lodz Jews and the German and Czech Jews who were deported to the Lodz ghetto, and the ways in which some members of the Jewish underworld attempted to continue their illicit activities in ghetto conditions. He challenges many accepted views, particularly those of the survivors and historians who condemn Rumkowski, the 'Eldest of the Jews', as a Nazi collaborator. His memoir has the courage to confront a number of controversial issues, including ethical dilemmas that arose in the ghetto and camps. He questions the morality of his own actions in situations where the fate of others depended on his admittedly very limited power to make decisions. Through the unusual device of writing in the third person, Mostowicz invites readers to bear witness to his own and others' actions without consigning them to an absolute point of view."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
"With a Yellow Star and a Red Cross is a description of Arnold Mostowicz's experiences in the Lodz ghetto and Nazi concentration camps. As a physician in the ghetto, and intermittently in the camps, he was a witness to and participant in events that have received little attention. For example, the book contains an account of a workers' demonstration in 1940 and a description of the Gypsy camp that the Nazis created on the edge of the ghetto. Mostowicz describes the antagonism between the Lodz Jews and the German and Czech Jews who were deported to the Lodz ghetto, and the ways in which some members of the Jewish underworld attempted to continue their illicit activities in ghetto conditions. He challenges many accepted views, particularly those of the survivors and historians who condemn Rumkowski, the 'Eldest of the Jews', as a Nazi collaborator. His memoir has the courage to confront a number of controversial issues, including ethical dilemmas that arose in the ghetto and camps. He questions the morality of his own actions in situations where the fate of others depended on his admittedly very limited power to make decisions. Through the unusual device of writing in the third person, Mostowicz invites readers to bear witness to his own and others' actions without consigning them to an absolute point of view."--BOOK JACKET.
Nazis on the Run
Author: Gerald Steinacher
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191653772
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
This is the story of how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War by fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, and the role played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers in smuggling them away from prosecution in Europe to a new life in South America. The Nazi sympathies held by groups and individuals within these organizations evolved into a successful assistance network for fugitive criminals, providing them not only with secret escape routes but hiding places for their loot. Gerald Steinacher skillfully traces the complex escape stories of some of the most prominent Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, showing how they mingled and blended with thousands of technically stateless or displaced persons, all flooding across the Alps to Italy and from there, to destinations abroad. The story of their escape shows clearly just how difficult the apprehending of war criminals can be. As Steinacher shows, all the major countries in the post-war world had 'mixed motives' for their actions, ranging from the shortage of trained intelligence personnel in the immediate aftermath of the war to the emerging East-West confrontation after 1947, which led to many former Nazis being recruited as agents turned in the Cold War.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191653772
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
This is the story of how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War by fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, and the role played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers in smuggling them away from prosecution in Europe to a new life in South America. The Nazi sympathies held by groups and individuals within these organizations evolved into a successful assistance network for fugitive criminals, providing them not only with secret escape routes but hiding places for their loot. Gerald Steinacher skillfully traces the complex escape stories of some of the most prominent Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, showing how they mingled and blended with thousands of technically stateless or displaced persons, all flooding across the Alps to Italy and from there, to destinations abroad. The story of their escape shows clearly just how difficult the apprehending of war criminals can be. As Steinacher shows, all the major countries in the post-war world had 'mixed motives' for their actions, ranging from the shortage of trained intelligence personnel in the immediate aftermath of the war to the emerging East-West confrontation after 1947, which led to many former Nazis being recruited as agents turned in the Cold War.
Above the Fray
Author: Shai M. Dromi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022668024X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
From Lake Chad to Iraq, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide relief around the globe, and their scope is growing every year. Policy makers and activists often assume that humanitarian aid is best provided by these organizations, which are generally seen as impartial and neutral. In Above the Fray, Shai M. Dromi investigates why the international community overwhelmingly trusts humanitarian NGOs by looking at the historical development of their culture. With a particular focus on the Red Cross, Dromi reveals that NGOs arose because of the efforts of orthodox Calvinists, demonstrating for the first time the origins of the unusual moral culture that has supported NGOs for the past 150 years. Drawing on archival research, Dromi traces the genesis of the Red Cross to a Calvinist movement working in mid-nineteenth-century Geneva. He shows how global humanitarian policies emerged from the Red Cross founding members’ faith that an international volunteer program not beholden to the state was the only ethical way to provide relief to victims of armed conflict. By illustrating how Calvinism shaped the humanitarian field, Dromi argues for the key role belief systems play in establishing social fields and institutions. Ultimately, Dromi shows the immeasurable social good that NGOs have achieved, but also points to their limitations and suggests that alternative models of humanitarian relief need to be considered.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022668024X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
From Lake Chad to Iraq, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide relief around the globe, and their scope is growing every year. Policy makers and activists often assume that humanitarian aid is best provided by these organizations, which are generally seen as impartial and neutral. In Above the Fray, Shai M. Dromi investigates why the international community overwhelmingly trusts humanitarian NGOs by looking at the historical development of their culture. With a particular focus on the Red Cross, Dromi reveals that NGOs arose because of the efforts of orthodox Calvinists, demonstrating for the first time the origins of the unusual moral culture that has supported NGOs for the past 150 years. Drawing on archival research, Dromi traces the genesis of the Red Cross to a Calvinist movement working in mid-nineteenth-century Geneva. He shows how global humanitarian policies emerged from the Red Cross founding members’ faith that an international volunteer program not beholden to the state was the only ethical way to provide relief to victims of armed conflict. By illustrating how Calvinism shaped the humanitarian field, Dromi argues for the key role belief systems play in establishing social fields and institutions. Ultimately, Dromi shows the immeasurable social good that NGOs have achieved, but also points to their limitations and suggests that alternative models of humanitarian relief need to be considered.
Forgotten Victims
Author: Mitchel G Bard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429720459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, and yet the US State Department failed to help them. Consequently many suffered and some died. Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many American and, in particular, Jewish American soldiers were captured and
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429720459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, and yet the US State Department failed to help them. Consequently many suffered and some died. Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many American and, in particular, Jewish American soldiers were captured and
Last Days of Theresienstadt
Author: Eva Noack-Mosse
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299319601
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
In February of 1945, during the final months of the Third Reich, Eva Noack-Mosse was deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt. A trained journalist and expert typist, she was put to work in the Central Evidence office of the camp, compiling endless lists—inmates arriving, inmates deported, possessions confiscated from inmates, and all the obsessive details required by the SS. With access to camp records, she also recorded statistics and her own observations in a secret diary. Noack-Mosse's aim in documenting the horrors of daily life within Theresienstadt was to ensure that such a catastrophe could never be repeated. She also gathered from surviving inmates information about earlier events within the walled fortress, witnessed the defeat and departure of the Nazis, saw the arrival of the International Red Cross and the Soviet Army takeover of the camp and town, assisted in administration of the camp's closure, and aided displaced persons in discovering the fates of their family and friends. After the war ended, and she returned home, Noack-Mosse cross-referenced her data with that of others to provide evidence of Nazi crimes. At least 35,000 people died at Theresienstadt and another 90,000 were sent on to death camps.
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299319601
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
In February of 1945, during the final months of the Third Reich, Eva Noack-Mosse was deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt. A trained journalist and expert typist, she was put to work in the Central Evidence office of the camp, compiling endless lists—inmates arriving, inmates deported, possessions confiscated from inmates, and all the obsessive details required by the SS. With access to camp records, she also recorded statistics and her own observations in a secret diary. Noack-Mosse's aim in documenting the horrors of daily life within Theresienstadt was to ensure that such a catastrophe could never be repeated. She also gathered from surviving inmates information about earlier events within the walled fortress, witnessed the defeat and departure of the Nazis, saw the arrival of the International Red Cross and the Soviet Army takeover of the camp and town, assisted in administration of the camp's closure, and aided displaced persons in discovering the fates of their family and friends. After the war ended, and she returned home, Noack-Mosse cross-referenced her data with that of others to provide evidence of Nazi crimes. At least 35,000 people died at Theresienstadt and another 90,000 were sent on to death camps.
Rena's Promise
Author: Rena Kornreich Gelissen
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807093130
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
An expanded edition of the powerful memoir about two sisters' determination to survive during the Holocaust featuring new and never before revealed information about the first transport of women to Auschwitz In March 1942, Rena Kornreich and 997 other young women were rounded up and forced onto the first Jewish transport of women to Auschwitz. Soon after, Rena was reunited with her sister Danka at the camp, beginning a story of love and courage that would last three years and forty-one days. From smuggling bread for their friends to narrowly escaping the ever-present threats that loomed at every turn, the compelling events in Rena’s Promise remind us that humanity and hope can survive inordinate brutality.
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807093130
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
An expanded edition of the powerful memoir about two sisters' determination to survive during the Holocaust featuring new and never before revealed information about the first transport of women to Auschwitz In March 1942, Rena Kornreich and 997 other young women were rounded up and forced onto the first Jewish transport of women to Auschwitz. Soon after, Rena was reunited with her sister Danka at the camp, beginning a story of love and courage that would last three years and forty-one days. From smuggling bread for their friends to narrowly escaping the ever-present threats that loomed at every turn, the compelling events in Rena’s Promise remind us that humanity and hope can survive inordinate brutality.
The Crosses of Auschwitz
Author: Geneviève Zubrzycki
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226993051
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond Poland’s borders, Geneviève Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland’s statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the significance of Catholicism in defining “Polishness” and the role of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity. Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish identity also exists pride in the Polish people’s long history of suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may become.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226993051
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond Poland’s borders, Geneviève Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland’s statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the significance of Catholicism in defining “Polishness” and the role of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity. Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish identity also exists pride in the Polish people’s long history of suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may become.