The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a new book that pulls together evidence from previously unpublished documents.
The Red Cross has previously acknowledged that its efforts to help refugees were used by Nazi war criminals to escape because administrators were overwhelmed, but the new research suggests that the numbers escaping were much higher than previously thought.
Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The documents include ICRC travel documents issued to thousands of Nazi war criminals and members of Nazi organisations among hundreds of thousands of documents.
They throw significant new light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others were able to evade capture by the allies.
By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents issued, Steinacher says his research reveals that such was the chaos after the war ended, Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947.
The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the run: How Hilter's henchmen fled justice – are particularly significant in offering an insight into Vatican thinking because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed.
The Vatican has consistently refused to comment on the incidents.
Steinacher believes the Vatican's help was based on a hoped-for revival of European Christianity and dread of the Soviet Union. But through the Vatican Refugee Commission and a few priests and bishops, even war criminals not seeking pardon were pardoned and knowingly provided with false identities.
The ICRC, overwhelmed by millions of refugees, relied substantially on Vatican Refugee Commission references and on the often cursory Allied military checks in issuing ICRC travel papers, known as 10.100s.
Though aware – as correspondence between ICRC delegations in Genoa, Rome and Geneva show – that Nazis were getting through, they believed that they were primarily helping innocent refugees.
"Although the ICRC has acknowledged that it served as an accessory … and has publicly apologised, its action went well beyond helping a few people," said Steinacher.
Steinacher says the documents indicate that the ICRC, mostly in Rome or Genoa, issued at least 120,000 of the 10.100s, and that 90% of ex-Nazis fled via Italy, mostly to Spain, and North and South America – notably Argentina. Former SS members often mixed with genuine refugees and were able to present themselves as "stateless" ethnic Germans to gain transit papers. Jews trying to get to Palestine via Italy were sometimes smuggled over the border with escaping Nazis.
Steinacher says that individual ICRC delegations issued war criminals with 10.100s "out of sympathy for individuals … political attitude, or simply because they were overburdened". Stolen documents were also used to whisk Nazis to safety.
He said: "They were really in a dilemma... It was difficult. It wanted to get rid of the job. Nobody wanted to do it."
The ICRC refused to comment directly on Steinacher's findings. However, the organisation says on its website: "The ICRC has previously deplored the fact that Eichmann and other Nazi criminals misused its travel documents to cover their tracks."
No comments:
Post a Comment