Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - The Red Cross
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the Armistice in a very unsatisfactory, if not to
say an erroneous fashion. The now existing
conventions for prisoners of war are not explicit as to the
time fixed for prisoners to be repatriated. Some
people are even of the opinion that the Geneva
Conventions cannot be applied today. Although the world
cannot be considered at war, the belligerent parties
have not yet concluded the peace.
In my opinion, it is a crime against humanity,
from the moral point of view, that hundreds of
thousands of prisoners of war who are still kept by
some of the Allied countries have not been permitted
to return home. One may contend that it is only
reasonable that, for example, German prisoners of
war are used for reconstruction work in the countries
which have suffered under the Nazi regime. In the
long run, however, such a concept is morally
untenable. Certainly, repatriation of German and
Austrian prisoners of war has gone on from the very
beginning. The United States, for example, has not
kept any. But there are still hundreds of thousands of.
Germans who would be glad to return to their
homeland and to their families, but who are used in forced
labor, not only in eastern Europe and Asia, but also
in some western European countries.
The Allies have promised that repatriation will
be finished before the end of 1948, but technical
considerations for the return of all prisoners of war
before that date seem to make that uncertain. It is
to be hoped that the new conventions which now are
being prepared will prevent a repetition of what is
happening now — in case the world should again
become involved in war.
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