Red Cross in the Gulag

Soviet Saturday! (4) USSR 2110, originally uploaded by 80sAustin.

The Red Cross is in a difficult position--ostensibly apolitical, but nonetheless subject to complex political pressures. The International Red Cross has publicly apologized for its silence during the Holocaust, and now, thanks to the research in Tim Tzouliadis' new book The Forsaken, the American Red Cross is being criticized for its response (or lack thereof) to reports of American POWS being held in Soviet prison camps:

The most revolting and murky twist to the story is the treatment of another wave of American captives: prisoners-of-war in Germany who had the misfortune to be freed by Soviet troops and were deported to the Gulag. Clues abounded, chiefly from defectors and former Gulag inmates who reached the West. Yet the files remained secret. Neither their fate, nor that of Americans captured during the Korean War, received attention. The American Red Cross brushed aside a request to intervene, saying that inquiries about Americans “domiciled” (hardly the right word) in NKVD camps would be a source of “annoyance, if not embarrassment”.