International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent
Collection tracing humanitarian aid from a nineteenth century battlefield to today's conflict zones.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva begins with an unlikely detail: a grocery order of lemons, sugar and camomile bought by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant after he stumbled onto the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859. It follows the local women who at first refused to nurse enemy soldiers, and the phrase that changed their minds. From there it traces how that instinct grew into the organization headquartered next door, including the wartime parcels of chocolate, tinned coffee and powdered milk that moved through Geneva's warehouses toward prisoner of war camps. Some of those parcels began their journey as far off as Lisbon and Gothenburg.
This audio guide was created using AI.