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Musée International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge

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Editor Pick

A Moving and Educational Museum

  • May 10, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by koshkha from Northampton, United Kingdom
A Moving and Educational Museum

Like many people, I've never given much thought to the Red Cross. It's the sort of organisation many of us take for granted. The 'Geneva Conventions' are similar; a phrase we all trot out whenever someone somewhere is doing something that commonsense says is naughty. When the four horsemen of the apocalypse saddle up and head off to visit some godforsaken part of the world, you can guarantee that the Red Cross will be close behind. With ignorance on this scale, our weekend in Geneva was a long overdue educational wake-up call on the history of this humanitarian organisation.

Note - Please keep in mind that whenever I refer in this review to the 'Red Cross', I mean the Red Cross AND the Red Crescent.

We took a number 8 bus from the central train station to the bus stop called Appia. From the stop it's a very short walk uphill to the 'Musee International de la Croix Rouge et Croissant Rouge' or for the Anglophones, the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
The organisation's head-quarters sit high on a hillside in a grand old white building with the letters CICR picked out on the sign on the roof. In contrast, the museum looks nothing like the building you see from the road. It's a modern construction with lots of glass and nothing to signify the organisation's long history. At the entrance you'll find a courtyard with a small Louvre-style pyramid, a statue of a group of hooded captives and a marker on the ground that was laid in the presence of Raisa Gorbachev and Nancy Reagan back in the 1980s. I assumed that's when the building was opened. Above the courtyard there are two giant flags, one with a red cross, the other with a red crescent and these are reflected in the windows.

We entered through a rotating door and found the ticket desk directly in front of us. There was a cafeteria to one side which was closed (it was a Sunday) and a temporary exhibition of photographs beyond it. On the wall behind the ticket desk was inscribed a large quotation in French which – with my limited schoolgirl French – I translated as 'Each person is responsible before all for everything'. Now how's that for sense of personal responsibility?

Admission to the exhibition is 10 Swiss Francs which is about 6 pounds, give or take a bit. There are free museums in Geneva but I honestly didn't feel that this should be one – when you visit the museum of a charity, it's appropriate to pay for the privilege. The guy on the ticket desk was very charming, asking us where we were from and in which language we wanted our guide pamphlets.

From the foyer the exhibition is down the stairs – in fact the entire museum is underground like a big bunker. The first exhibit is a sculpture with six large transparent screens printed with writings about humanitarian respect in six different languages. These are suspended like sails above a large square filled with pieces of slate. Surrounding this exhibit are giant photographs of three of the people who were involved in humanitarian efforts before the Red Cross was formed and who inspired the founder, Henry Dunant. These included nurse Florence Nightingale and surgeon Nikolai Pirogov for their work in the Crimea, and American Clara Barton who arranged medical services during the Civil War. Another slide show exhibition tells of famous historic humanitarians including Alexander the Great, the Good Samaritan and Saladdin.

Next we moved into a small cinema showing pictures about the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Fortunately we'd had a long wait to get into this part of the exhibition and we'd had plenty of time to read the blurb about the battle beforehand. If I hadn't I'm really not sure that I could have followed the thread of the show which bounces artistically around the story of how businessman Henry Dunant found himself on the scene at the time of a battle that left 40,000 killed or wounded. He mobilised local people to give basic medical support and was so moved by what he saw that he wrote about the battle in a memoir called "A Memory of Solferino" in which he proposed the setting up of an organisation to offer relief at such times. When the video finishes, the walls on which the pictures were projected draw back to reveal a brightly lit room with a statue of Dunant sitting writing at his desk. This room also contains information about the men who set up the first committee for the relief of wounded soldiers and established the First Geneva Convention.

From here we moved into a room full of items dating back to the earliest days of the Red Cross. These included early arm-bands and medical kits and gory surgical kits for battlefield amputations. There's something strange about seeing the craftsmanship that must have gone into making tortoiseshell-handled knives destined to sever mangled limbs. This room also sees the beginning of the time line that stretches all the way around the exhibition and records major events since the beginning of the Red Cross. For each year, the wall records the significant events of that year in three panels; the first shows the armed conflicts which claimed more than 10,000 lives, the second shows the natural disasters and diseases that took 1000 or more and the final panel records steps in the history of the Red Cross including the setting up of country organisations and the signing of major treaties. At the moment the time wall stops at 1991 and the Red Cross have a policy of leaving time to reflect on the major events before adding them to the wall.

In the next section there's a large symbolic display of the prisoner of war (POW) records from World War One – bank after bank of archive boxes with hand written labels, contain the details of 2 million prisoners. WWI had been the beginning of the Red Cross's involvement with POWs as they hadn't previously been protected by the Geneva Conventions. Similarly we learned in a later section that the Red Cross had been unable to intervene with the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War since the Geneva Conventions at that time had not covered civilians.

It's not as easy as it perhaps should be to follow your way around the exhibition and I'm sure I was hopping back and forth in time between the various displays and could have used a few guiding arrows to keep me on track. I had the familiar sense of not going in the right direction which assaults me every time I set food in an IKEA – another organisation with a big cross but not so honourable in its work. We learned about the two world wars through old film footage and displays. There were Red Cross postcards from both conflicts showing how the nurses of the service had been portrayed as a cross between ministering angels and erotic temptresses. We also saw pictures of people packing up their Red Cross parcels to send to soldiers and marvelled at the logistical support that must have been required to get a box of soap and socks to your loved one. We saw vintage film footage of the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of World War II which led to the Geneva Convention of 1949 which enabled the organisation to intervene and support civilians.

It's not all war and conflict though; nature has a pretty long history of making life rotten too. We saw footage of volcanic eruptions, land slides, famines and epidemics, all of which must have kept the Red Cross busy.

The final section of the exhibition brought us to modern times under five themes – overcome, improve, rehabilitate, protect and link. Each theme had a room to illustrate the organisation's work with 'Overcome' showing a store room with all the typical materials that the Red Cross provide after a disaster. 'Improve' covered areas such as their work with AIDS sufferers and homeless people. The 'Rehabilitate' room was particularly moving, containing a selection of false legs and a frame for helping people to learn to walk as well as posters helping people to identify landmines and explosives. 'Protect' is an 8 foot by 6 foot which represents a cell where they found 17 prisoners all crammed in together in contravention of human rights legislation. Finally the 'Link' room has walls that are literally covered in thousands of photos of numbered children from Rwanda all of whom needed to be reunited with their families after the genocide.

Our visit took about an hour in total – perhaps an hour and a half. We were very moved by what we saw and felt a lot less ignorant coming out than we were going in. I'd definitely recommend a visit if you find yourself in Geneva.

From journal Geneva on the Cheap - May 2009

Editor Pick

International Rec Cross & Red Crescent Museum

  • July 22, 2001
  • Rated 4 of 5 by xine from Santa Monica, California
As a student of human rights and humanitarian affairs, I really enjoyed visiting the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, and would encourage anyone interested in such issues to visit the museum. Even if you don't know much about humanitarian affairs, you're bound to learn a lot by the end of your visit. The subject matter is a bit depressing, but I found the visit quite informative and thought-provoking even though it's not exactly an up-lifting experience.

I spent about 2 hours at the museum, but you could easily spend more time if you watch every single video. There was also a concert right outside the entrance the day I was there.

The museum is divided into eleven areas which I've summarized from the museum's guide:
1 - Preserving life by the written word: Founded by Henry Dunant, the Red Cross is concerned with preserving human life. Six panels with text from the Bible, Koran, Islam, etc. represent the need to preserve human life.

2 - Preserving life by acts of mercy: Background on Florence Nightingale and Nikolai Pirogov who tended to those wounded in the Crimean War. Background on Clara Barton who cared for those wounded in the Civil War.

3 - The Battle of Solferino (24 June 1859): A panoramic slide show/film that reconstructs the Battle of Solferino. After the show ends, the screen lifts up and takes you into Area 4, the Foundation of the Red Cross: Background on Henry Dunant and drafting of the First Geneva Convention.

5 - Towards universality (1864-1914) - Film to show the Red Cross' involvement in armed conflicts.

6 - The First World War and prisoners of war (1914-1918) - Files of over 2 million prisoners of war are housed in the museum. They are still referred to today.

7 - The First World War (1914-1918) - Video depicting Red Cross assistance during WWI.

8 - Between the wars (1919-1939) - Film showing the Red Cross' activities in providing social assistance and disaster relief during peacetime.

9 - The Second World War (1939-1945) - Film clips showing Red Cross assistance during WWII.

10 - From 1945 to the 1980s

11 - Today: Displays of the latest news from the field and more films and interviews.

There are computers in the main entrance near the Cafe Dunant which allow you to learn more about the Red Cross through their interactive program.

The museum is every day except Tuesday from 10:00 to 5:00 pm. Free for children under 12. To get there from Cornavin (the main train station), take the 8 or F bus to Appia or the V or Z to Ariana.

From journal Living in Geneva

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