7/5/2023 0 Comments Memoires des camps![]() Unfortunately, documentary evidence is incomplete and leaves room for uncertainty. It is a question that leads to many others: what did the ICRC know of the genocide? What action did it take? What did it attempt? What could and should it have done to try to stop the genocide? How has it faced up to its past? Was failure avoidable or not? This is the question that immediately comes to mind in our dialogue with the past. What these images also drive home is the particular cruelty of the persecutors, their absolute contempt for human life and the total perversion of moral values that is evident in their organized killing.Īnd as a staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross, one is of course forced to come to terms with the failure of an organization whose mandate is to protect and assist war victims. ![]() What these images convey, first of all, is the boundless suffering of the persecuted, whose tragic itinerary started with race laws and ghettos and ended in extermination camps, leading from social exclusion to despoilment, hunger, cold, humiliation, deportation, the torment of the camps and, finally, death. ![]() ![]() Words fail us before these images, which reflect both infinite suffering and depths of horror and cruelty, just as words fail us when we visit the sites where memories of persecution and genocide are preserved: Theresienstadt, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Auschwitz… There are times for speaking, and times when one would prefer to remain silent. ![]()
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