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Dutch Red Cross apologises for doing 'little or nothing' to help Jews in WWII

The Dutch Red Cross has issued “deep apologies” after a report it commissioned into its wartime conduct found that it had done “little or nothing” to help Jews in the Netherlands persecuted by Nazi occupiers.

November 2, 2017 10:01
Members of the Eindhoven Resistance, September 1944 (Wikipedia Commons)
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The Dutch Red Cross has issued “deep apologies” after a report it commissioned into its wartime conduct found that it had done “little or nothing” to help Jews in the Netherlands persecuted by Nazi occupiers.

The four-year report was undertaken by the Regina Grueter of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies. Her work has been published as a new book called "Questions of Life and Death: The Netherlands Red Cross in the Second World War".

"The central board of the Red Cross in The Hague, bluntly put… abandoned the Jewish population," Ms Grueter said regarding her research.

"On the one hand it… clearly unwillingly, carried out anti-Jewish measures of the occupiers. On the other hand, it did little or nothing to help Jews."