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Book Review
Europe: Early Modern and Modern
Jean-Claude Favez. The Red Cross and the Holocaust. Edited and translated by John and Beryl Fletcher. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Pp. xxxi, 353. $39.95.
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Jean-Claude Favez's study of the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during World War II was first published in Lausanne in 1988, entitled Une mission impossible. A year later, a German translation appeared. Another ten years elapsed before this English edition was published. In the meanwhile, the traditional image of Swiss benevolent neutrality was seriously challenged, as acknowledged by the author in a specially written preface for the English version. In essence, his investigation, for which he had full access to the ICRC archives, seeks to analyze the policies adopted by this Swiss agency in tackling the highly contentious and dangerous issue of the Nazis' treatment or mistreatment of civilian prisoners, especially Jews, under their control throughout occupied Europe. For this edition, the opening chapters have been summarized and the material rearranged. But nothing of substance has been omitted, although some documents appear only in precis. A useful chronology and separate appendixes of the main documents make for easier reference. No special mention is made of the fact that in December 1996 the ICRC released microform copies of some 25,000 pages from its files, making these available for the first time to public view. |
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