After one of their early visits, on 11 November 1948, Red Cross officials reported dryly that POWs were exploited in the general local effort to ‘strengthen the Israeli economy’.13 This guarded language was not accidental. Given its deplorable behaviour during the Holocaust, when it failed to report on what went on in Nazi concentration camps, on which it was well informed, the Red Cross was careful in its reproach and criticism of the Jewish state. But at least their documents do shed some light on the experiences of the Palestinian inmates, some of whom were kept in these camps until 1955.
