What do we find at the origin of the work which does most honour to mankind, at the roots of a movement which has been spread across the world for the past hundred years? There is of course one man, Henry Dunant, but there is also a book. A slight volume which was soon to stir the hearts and consciences of Europe from end to end, by its fluent style, its stark reality and its warmhearted appeal. This was A Memory of Solferino.

The Central Tracing Agency in Geneva has always had, amongst many other tasks in time of war, that of tracing the graves of missing military personnel. If we are more especially considering the Second World War, we can see that this activity began for the Central Prisoners of War Agency (its official title at that time), when hundreds of thousands of regimental enquiries were opened for French prisoners of war in Germany, in order to discover the fate of French military personnel missing during the summer of 1940.

On September 17, 1962, two representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Jean-Jacques Muralti and Mr. Joseph Gasser, were authorised to visit the thirty-four Europeans detained in the Maison-Carrée prison near Algiers. They spoke freely and without witnesses with these prisoners, whose nominal roll was then transmitted to the French authorities by the ICRC. From their visit they brought messages destined for the families of the detainees.