International Committee of the Red Cross camps, organizing relief assistance for civilian populations, and administering the exchange of messages regarding prisoners and missing persons. By the end of the war, 179 delegates had conducted 12,750 visits to POW camps in 41 countries. The Central Information Agency on Prisoners-of-War ("Zentralauskunftsstelle für Kriegsgefangene") had a staff of 3,000, the card index tracking prisoners contained 45 million cards, and 120 million messages were exchanged by the Agency. One major obstacle was that the Nazi-controlled German Red Cross refused to cooperate with the Geneva statutes including blatant violations such as the deportation of Jews from Germany and the mass murders
German Red Cross by the International Committee of the Red Cross on 25 June 1952. In the German Democratic Republic the "Deutsches Rotes Kreuz der DDR" was established on the 23 October 1952 and recognized by the International Red Cross on the 9 November 1954. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) Red Cross issued a magazine named "Deutsches Rotes Kreuz" (German Red Cross). Albert Schweitzer became an exemplary figure. The DDR Red Cross's status as a separate entity ended on 1 January 1991, when it was merged with the German Red Cross of the Federal Republic. During the First World War General Kurt W.