Marcel Junod (1904-1961): centenary of a "warrior without weapons"

See picture gallery and hear audio comments on Marcel Junod.

(The following is from a speech given by Mr. Jacques Forster, ICRC Vice President, at the opening of a photographic exhibition, near Geneva on 6 May 2004, on the life and work of Dr. Marcel Junod.)

©ICRC/ref. hist-00977-27

Ethiopia 1935: Junod (r) with one of his teams. The tall man is ICRC delegate Sidney Brown

Marcel Junod was in his early thirties and working as a trainee doctor in the Vosges when, one autumn day in 1935, he was asked by the ICRC to go to Abyssinia. He accepted the offer on the spot.

"Be cautious and, above all, always remain objective", was the advice of President Max Huber, imparted in a hasty briefing at the Villa Moynier, then the ICRC’s headquarters in Geneva.

Having arrived in the country, Dr Junod was quickly introduced to the reality on the ground and the horrors of a war in which Italian fascist troops were fighting the army of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie: aerial bombardments, summary executions of prisoners, people burned and blistered by liquid mustard gas, deliberate attacks on ambulances… The land was in utter disarray and Dr Junod had many a narrow escape, for instance during the fall of Addis Ababa when, having lost his revolver, he had to fight off looters with his bare hands.

" Do agree to go - it won’t be long..."

A year later, in 1936, the Spanish civil war broke out, in what was to be the precursor of the Second World War. In his book “Warrior without Weapons”, Dr Junod recounts how he was assigned to this mission:

Max Huber, President of the ICRC: "We must find someone to go there as quickly as possible and find out what can be done…” All eyes turned to me. (….) Everyone was saying: “Do agree to go - it won’t be long. Three weeks at the most. It’s only to find out exactly what’s happening.” Those three weeks lasted three years.

After that, Marcel Junod travelled the length and breadth of the country. He was in Barcelona, which had fallen to the Anarchist Federation of Iberia, in Madrid, which was controlled by the Republicans, and then in Pamplona, which was under the Nationalists.

The needs in this fratricidal war were immense, especially regarding the protection of prisoners and civilians. Marcel Junod did his utmost to find solutions to the tragic problem of hostages - men, women and children caught up in a spiral of reprisals and executions perpetrated by all sides.

"In small groups, lives were steadily exchanged..."

©ICRC/ref. hist-02224-20a

Spain: Junod and his colleagues enabled prisoners on both sides to keep in contact with their families

Through sheer obstinacy, he managed to negotiate several exchanges of hostages in chaotic circumstances. “List for list, individually and in small groups, lives were steadily exchanged for lives” he noted soberly in “Warrior without Weapons”. Among those who escaped the firing squad was the then unknown Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler.

At the time the ICRC had no legal mandate in respect of victims of internal conflict. But for Marcel Junod it was the Red Cross spirit that mattered. Firm in this conviction, he managed now and then to gain access to political prisoners and to send news to their families in the form of Red Cross messages.

By the time the Second World War broke out, Marcel Junod had made his mark as a man of action. His sense of initiative was to stand him in good stead in overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles and negotiating openings for humanitarian action in a conflict that was also “the first total war”.

Summoned urgently by the Committee in September 1939, Marcel Junod travelled all over Europe, a continent ravaged by war.

Prisoners, families, famine

©ICRC/ref. hist-01689-16a

WW2: Junod criss-crossed Europe to visit prisoners and organize relief oeprations

He went to Berlin, then to occupied Poland, then to France in June 1940 - to Bordeaux first and then to Vichy, where he met Marshal Pétain. Wherever he went he negotiated access to prisoners of war and the exchange of letters with their families. He later set out for Lisbon and then London and Stockholm to set up the “ICRC fleet” that brought hundreds of thousands of tonnes of supplies across the Mediterranean and Atlantic. After that, in winter 1941, he travelled to the Balkans where he organized a large-scale relief operation in occupied Greece, which was suffering severe famine.

Marcel Junod was well aware of the terrible legal limits hampering the ICRC’s mission during the war - in particular the lack of protection for civilians in Nazi camps and the deadlock between the USSR and Germany on the subject of prisoners. However this did not deter him from attempting to wrest concessions of a humanitarian nature from those he dealt with. He weaved his way with daring through the many difficulties that strewed his path, and when it was time to take decisive action he did so, with incredible sangfroid - as in Berlin when he was arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of spying for the French Resistance... a misunderstanding that was rapidly cleared up!

The hardest test of all

But, without doubt, it was in Japan in 1945 that Dr Junod was to be put to the hardest test of all. At 8.15 am on 6 August 1945, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by an atomic bomb.

Marcel Junod got there on 8 September, the first foreign doctor on the spot. He brought with him 15 tonnes of medical supplies that he had managed to mobilize through his contacts with the Allies. For four days he visited hospitals, finding out what had happened, seeing things that went well beyond the scope of human imagination.

Dr Matsunaga, a gynaecologist from Hiroshima, was with him at this time, and has left the following moving account: "We climbed the hill to the Tensyukaku, the keep of Hiroshima Castle, as Dr Junod wanted to see the extent of the destruction. (...) From this vantage point we commanded a view of the entire town. It lay before us, partly sunny under the clouds, like a corpse that is almost charred and partially reduced to ash. We stood for a moment without speaking.

After a few minutes Dr Junod said: “Which way is West? Where is the epicentre? Let’s go there.” He observed the scene of devastation before us very attentively. As we went, he skirted a scorched tree that was in his path. He found the bone of a victim among the rubble and began stroking it tenderly, as if to give solace to the person who had died.”

In China for UNICEF

Nagasaki 1945: "the city centre had been flattened like the palm of a hand... it was horrific

After the war, he wrote his book "Warrior without Weapons" (original French title "Le troisième combattant"), which has since been translated into a dozen languages. He then set off again for the field, this time to China, as a representative of UNICEF, before returning to medicine and specializing in the field of anaesthesiology.

In 1952 he became a member of the International Committee and carried out more missions for the ICRC. These included organizing the repatriation of Koreans from Japan.

In 1959, Marcel Junod was elected Vice President of the ICRC. On 16 June 1961 he died of a heart attack while bringing a patient round from anaesthesia. He died as he had lived, devoted to medical work and in the service of others.

“He did not know it was impossible, so he did it!”

As a doctor and ICRC delegate, Marcel Junod has left us a precious legacy that is, essentially, the philosophy that humanitarian action must constantly adapt to changing situations and emerging needs. This emphasis on operational action not only helps to alleviate human suffering at the time but can also establish precedents that lead to advances in international humanitarian law. In his own way, Dr Marcel Junod regularly put into practice the words of Mark Twain: “He did not know it was impossible, so he did it!”

Marcel Junod’s tireless commitment to the victims of war continues to inspire and motivate us today.