Marcel Junod
Marcel Junod (born May 14, 1904 in Neuchâtel , † June 16, 1961 in Geneva ) was a Swiss doctor. After studying medicine and briefly working as a surgeon, he became a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In this capacity he served in Ethiopia during the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935/1936), in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and in Europe and Japan during the Second World War (1939-1945). He wrote a book entitled “Fighters on both sides of the front” about his experiences on these missions . After the war he initially worked for the UN children's aid organization UNICEF as a representative in China. He returned to Europe in 1950 and made a decisive contribution to the establishment of a department for anesthesiology at the Cantonal Hospital in Geneva. A few years later he became the first professor of anesthesiology at the University of Geneva . He was co-opted as a member by the ICRC in 1952 , and was vice-chairman of the committee from 1959 until his death.
Life
childhood and education
Marcel Junod was born the fifth of seven children to Richard Samuel Junod (1868–1919) and Jeanne Marguerite Bonnet (1866–1952). His father worked as a pastor for the Independent Protestant Church of Neuchâtel, first in mining villages in Belgium and later in poorer communities near Neuchâtel and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. Marcel Junod spent his childhood here. After the death of her husband, his mother and children returned to their hometown of Geneva. This enabled Marcel Junod and his two younger sisters to adopt Geneva citizenship. With the support of her sister, his mother opened a pension to earn a living for herself and her children.
Until his graduation in 1923, Marcel Junod attended the Collège de Genève in Geneva, the same school that the Red Cross founder Henry Dunant had graduated from in the mid-19th century. During his school days he was already one of the directors of the aid movement for Russian children that existed in Geneva at the time. Thanks to the generous financial support of his uncle Henri-Alexandre Junod , he was able to study medicine in Geneva and Strasbourg, according to his wishes and inclinations, and in 1929 obtained his doctorate in medicine. He decided to specialize in surgery and accordingly worked as an assistant doctor at the Cantonal Hospital in Geneva and from 1931 to 1935 at a hospital in Mulhouse (France), where he completed his training as a specialist and worked as the head of a surgical clinic.
Assignments as a delegate for the ICRC
Abyssinia War 1935/1936
Immediately after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Marcel Junod received a call from a friend in Geneva on October 15, 1935. He suggested that he work as a delegate of the ICRC in Ethiopia. Encouraged by his chief physician at the Mulhouse hospital, he accepted the offer and shortly afterwards traveled to Addis Ababa with Sidney Brown , a second ICRC delegate. He remained in action as an ICRC delegate in Ethiopia until the end of the Italian-Ethiopian War in May 1936.
Due to his experience in legal issues relating to the Red Cross activity, Sidney Brown was mainly responsible for building a workable and operational national Red Cross society. Marcel Junod's activities focused on the work on site, especially the support and coordination of the foreign Red Cross ambulances operating in the country. These were provided by the national societies of Egypt, Finland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. While the Ethiopian Red Cross, recognized by the ICRC only immediately before the war began, accepted the ICRC's offer of help, the Italian Red Cross declined any support from the ICRC.
One of the most serious experiences of Marcel Junod during this war was several attacks on ambulances of the Red Cross by the Italian armed forces and by Ethiopian gangs. In the bombing of the Swedish ambulance on December 30, 1935 alone, 28 Red Cross workers and patients were killed and 50 people wounded. In addition, he witnessed a number of other events during this war, which was characterized throughout its course by extreme differences in the technical and personnel equipment of the armed forces involved and their medical services. These include the bombing of the city of Dessie by the Italian air force, the use of the warfare agent yperite (mustard gas) against the Ethiopian population in the cities of Dagabur and Sassabaneh, and the sacking of Addis Abeda in the last days of the war.
Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
In July 1936 the ICRC was looking for a delegate for a fact-finding mission to Spain, where the civil war had broken out immediately before . The choice fell again on Marcel Junod. A planned duration of around three weeks turned into a deployment of over three years. In the course of the war, the ICRC expanded its mission in Spain to up to nine delegations in the various regions of the country. Marcel Junod became the lead delegate for the entire mission.
The work of the Red Cross in this conflict was made more difficult by the fact that the Geneva Conventions, as the legal basis for ICRC activities, were not relevant to civil war situations. As a solution to this problem, Marcel Junod proposed to form a commission made up of representatives of the ICRC and the Red Cross societies of the parties involved in the conflict. Above all, this commission should take care of the release of women and children, the establishment of neutral international zones and the compilation of complete lists of prisoners. In the turmoil of the war, however, this proposal was never implemented.
Despite the difficulties arising from the unclear legal situation, Marcel Junod succeeded in convincing the parties involved in the conflict to sign a number of agreements and, above all, to save a large number of lives by negotiating prisoner exchanges. Before the fall of Barcelona , he obtained the release of 5,000 prisoners whose lives were acutely threatened by the fighting over the city. He also organized research and the exchange of information about missing persons and prisoners using Red Cross cards, around five million of which had been exchanged by the end of the Spanish Civil War.
Second World War 1939–1945
After the outbreak of the Second World War , Marcel Junod was summoned to Geneva by a letter from the ICRC and relieved of his duties as a medical officer in the Swiss Army in order to reassign as a delegate. He began his mission on September 16, 1939 in Berlin and for a long time remained the only ICRC delegate in Germany and in all areas occupied during the further course of the war. Just eleven days later, on September 27th, he visited a camp with Polish prisoners of war for the first time. In June 1940, through a visit to France, he succeeded in preventing the threatened shooting of French prisoners of war, which was planned by the German side in retaliation for the mistakenly assumed execution of captured German paratroopers. In addition, he again organized the exchange and forwarding of information about prisoners of war, this time with the support of the ICRC's central office for prisoners of war in Geneva.
The focus of his work during this war was the monitoring of compliance with the Geneva Conventions in the prisoner-of-war camps and the provision of food and medical aid to the civilian population in need in the occupied territories. Working on behalf of the civilian population was not part of the ICRC's tasks and competencies as defined by the Geneva Conventions. This fact was taken into account with the conclusion of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Time of War) in 1949. For the logistical support of the activities of the ICRC for the benefit of the civilian population during the Second World War, Marcel Junod implemented the first use of Red Cross ships, which carried out the neutral transport of aid supplies with special, widely visible markings. These ships were provided by Belgium (“Caritas I”, “Caritas II” and “Henri Dunant”), Turkey (“Kurtulus”, “Dumlupinar”) and Sweden (“Hallaren”, “Stureborg”). Despite being clearly marked as a Red Cross transport, the "Stureborg", on the way with an international crew, was sunk on June 9, 1942 by a bomb hit by an Italian plane.
In December 1944, Marcel Junod married Eugénie Georgette Perret (1915–1970), an employee of the ICRC Central Office for Prisoners of War. After a break as an ICRC delegate from 1943 to 1944, during which he worked at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, among other things, he was sent by the ICRC to Japan in June 1945 while his wife was expecting a child. Its original mission was to visit the prisoners of war interned in Japan and to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions in the Japanese camps. On August 9th, he arrived in Tokyo.
After the US atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, Marcel Junod organized the evacuation of the prisoner-of-war camps and the rescue of the often seriously ill prisoners by the Allies Armed forces. On August 30th, through some photos and a telegraphic report, he received a description of the conditions in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped for the first time. He then put together a relief mission for Hiroshima and was the first foreign doctor to reach the city on September 8, along with an American investigative committee, two Japanese doctors and 15 tons of medical supplies. He spent five days there, visiting all the hospitals, supervising the distribution of relief supplies and providing medical help himself. The photos from Hiroshima that he made available to the ICRC were among the first pictures of the city to reach Europe after the atomic bomb was dropped.
Life after World War II
His mission in Japan and other countries in Asia lasted until April 1946 before he could return to Switzerland. He did not therefore experience the birth of his son Benoit in October 1945. After his return, Marcel Junod wrote his book “Le Troisième Combattant” (English title “Warrior Without Weapons” ), which was published in German in 1947 under the title “Fighters on both sides of the front” , and in which he describes in a very personal way his experiences during his missions for the ICRC (further publications in Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian). This book is therefore sometimes referred to as the “bed reading of all young ICRC delegates”.
From January 1948 to April 1949, at the invitation of the then UNICEF Director Maurice Pate , he was active as a representative of the United Nations Children's Fund in China, but had to break off his work due to illness. Because of this illness, he became unable to stand for long periods of time. As a result, he had a work for the World Health Organization WHO as well as refuse to give up his job as a surgeon. He looked for and found a new specialization in anesthesiology that enabled him to work while sitting. His training as an anesthetist took him to Paris and London, among others. In 1951 he returned to Geneva, where he initially opened his own practice. After more than 15 years, he was working with it for the first time since his time at the hospital in Mulhouse. In 1953 he succeeded in convincing the management of the Cantonal Hospital in Geneva to set up a department for anesthesiology, of which he later became head. In addition, he was now able to devote himself to research work, the results of which he presented in several conference papers and publications.
In 1946 he was to be awarded the United States Medal of Liberty for his service to Allied soldiers in Japan . However, this was not possible due to a provision that prohibited Swiss citizens from accepting foreign awards while they were serving in the Swiss Army. Four years later he received the "Prince Karl of Sweden" gold medal for peace for his humanitarian work. On October 23, 1952, he was appointed a member of the ICRC and in 1959 was elected vice-president. At the beginning of 1953 he moved to Lullier (municipality of Jussy), a small village near Geneva, in order to find peace and compensation for the double burden of his profession as a doctor and his work for the ICRC. During this time he often spent his holidays in Spain with friends in Barcelona whom he had met during his service in the Spanish Civil War. His functions as member and vice-president of the ICRC took him to Budapest, Vienna, Cairo and the International Red Cross Conference in New Delhi in 1957. In the same year, the Red Cross Society of North Korea asked the ICRC to mediate in negotiations with the South Korean Red Cross to reunite families. For this reason, Marcel Junod traveled to Seoul in September 1959 for talks. Further trips on behalf of the committee led him in 1960 to several visits to national Red Cross societies in the Soviet Union, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and the USA. In December 1960 he was appointed professor of anesthesiology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Geneva.
On June 16, 1961, Marcel Junod died of the consequences of a massive heart attack that he suffered while working as an anesthetist during an operation. The ICRC received over 3,000 expressions of condolences from around the world. On September 8, 1979, Marcel Junod was the only person to receive a memorial in the Hiroshima Peace Park . Since 1990, a memorial service has been held there in his honor every year on the anniversary of his death. Posthumously in the same year he was awarded the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure . On September 13, 2005, 60 years after the end of his mission in Hiroshima, a similar memorial was inaugurated in Geneva by the city and cantonal administrations.
Works (selection)
- Fighters on both sides of the front. Europa Verlag, Zurich and Vienna 1947 (German first edition), ICRC, Geneva 1982
- Le Troisième Combattant. Ringier & Cie, Zofingen 1947 (French first edition), ICRC, Geneva 1982
- Warrior without weapons. Jonathan Cape, London 1951 (English first edition), ICRC, Geneva 1982
- The Hiroshima Disaster. ICRC, Geneva 1982
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean-Marie Thiébaud: L'Ordre du Trésor sacré (Japon). In: Editions L'Harmattan. L'Harmattan, December 2007, accessed July 27, 2009 (French).
literature
- Charles Wassermann: Heroes without weapons. The Red Cross in twelve wars. Mosaik-Verlag, Hamburg 1965
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger (ed.): Warriors without weapons. The International Committee of the Red Cross. Eichborn, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-8218-4500-7 (contains excerpts from Marcel Junod: Fighters on both sides of the front )
- André Durand : History of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Volume 2: From Sarajevo to Hiroshima. Henry Dunant Institute, Geneva 1984, ISBN 2-88-044009-2 .
- Caroline Moorehead : Dunant's dream - War, Switzerland and the history of the Red Cross. HarperCollins, London 1998, ISBN 0-00-255141-1 (hardcover); HarperCollins, London 1999, ISBN 0-00-638883-3 (paperback edition)
- David P. Forsythe: The Humanitarians. The International Committee of the Red Cross. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-61281-0 .
- Rainer Baudendistel: Force versus law - The International Committee of the Red Cross and chemical warfare in the Italo-Ethiopian was 1935-1936. In: International Review of the Red Cross. 322/1998. ICRC, pp. 81-104, ISSN 1560-7755
- François Bugnion: Remembering Hiroshima. In: International Review of the Red Cross. 306/1995. ICRC, pp. 307-313, ISSN 1560-7755
- Maggie Black: The children and the nations: The story of Unicef. Unicef, New York 1986, ISBN 9-21-100302-4 .
- The Third Combatant. Marcel Junod. In: Meir Wagner, Moshe Meisels, Andreas C. Fischer (Ed.), Graham Buik (Ed.): The Righteous of Switzerland: Heroes of the Holocaust. Ktav Publishing House, Jersey City, NJ 2000, ISBN 0-88125-698-6 , pp. 114-118
Web links
- Lucienne Hubler: Junod, Marcel. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Literature by and about Marcel Junod in the catalog of the German National Library
- Genealogy of the Junod Families of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) - Dr Marcel Junod (1904–1961) (English)
- Marcel Junod (1904–1961): centenary of a "warrior without weapons" (English)
- Marcel Junod (1904–1961): the Red Cross doctor who personified "the spirit of the thing" (ICRC picture collection) (English)
- Telegram from Fritz Bilfinger to Marcel Junod on August 30, 1945 about the conditions in Hiroshima (PDF file) (English; 68 kB)
- ICRC reprint the English, French and Spanish editions of "Warrior without Weapons" (english)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Junod, Marcel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss doctor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neuchâtel |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 16, 1961 |
| Place of death | Geneva |