Food parcels
A year later, the ICRC obtained authorization from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to send food parcels to internees in the concentration camps whose whereabouts it knew of. It had details concerning about 50 deportees, to each of whom it sent a parcel, and during the summer it received acknowledgements of receipt countersigned by the addressees. The ICRC subsequently managed to find out where other deportees were interned and it expanded its parcel-sending operation. By 1 March 1945, the ICRC had details on about 56,000 deportees, and by the end of the hostilities, 105,000. From the summer of 1944 onwards, the organization supplemented its individual parcels with collective shipments. In total, up to May 1945 it sent over 122,000 parcels to the concentration camps. But this operation did not succeed in reaching those deportees who were subjected to the harshest regime, nor did it give captives any protection from torture or massacres. The International Committee of the Red Cross thus continued its approaches to the German authorities, in order to visit the concentration camps. These approaches met with a categorical refusal.
In October 1943, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent a delegate named Jean de Bavier to Hungary. On 17 May 1944, Friedrich Born arrived to take his place. Powerless to prevent it, they witnessed the wave of deportations to Auschwitz of almost all the Jews living in the provinces, which was organized by the SS between 15 May and 7 July 1944.
