Charles Huber was born on 30 January 1893 in Altstetten, a small municipality later incorporated into the city of Zurich. He completed his compulsory schooling in 1907 and went on to study business in upper secondary school, earning his diploma in 1911 at the age of 18. Charles was hired almost immediately by Bühler AG, an industrial company with operations in numerous countries.
For his first eight years with Bühler Group, Charles worked as a clerk in the company’s Naples, Rome and Milan branches. He then managed the Naples branch, covering southern Italy, Malta and Tunisia, from 1920 to 1928. For the following 12 years, he was the general manager for the company’s Middle East operations. In 1941, after some 30 years, Charles left Bühler and joined the ICRC.
In May 1941, as the Second World War expanded around the globe, Charles took up his first position with the ICRC, as a delegate in Simla, British India. In this posting, which lasted until the end of 1944, he was responsible for organizing the delegation’s work, negotiating with military and civilian authorities on behalf of prisoners of war and civilian internees, forwarding assistance to war victims,
and mediating among various parties. He was also involved in the exchange of American and Japanese civilian internees in Goa in October 1943.
In March 1945, Charles was sent to Washington DC as the head of delegation, where one of his main tasks was to visit prisoners of war and civilian internees held across the country. With the end of the war and the release of untold numbers of civilian and military detainees, Charles’ knowledge and experience, not to mention his language skills – German, French, Italian, English and Modern Greek – were needed in Europe. His final assignment, as head of delegation in Vlotho, Germany, started in June 1946. On the evening of 19 November 1946, while returning to Vlotho, the car Charles was riding in collided with a truck. He was killed on the spot, while the other passenger, English doctor Isabel Margaret MacGillivray, later died of her wounds; the driver was seriously injured as well. Charles was 53 years old.
Charles worked dutifully to alleviate the hardship suffered by the prisoners and internees he came into contact with around the world during the Second World War. And he was highly respected by the detainees – as well as by the authorities he negotiated with on their behalf – for his selflessness.
