The International Tracing Service of the German Red Cross reports that almost 2,400 people sought help locating missing relatives in the past year, with about 1,000 inquiries in the first half of this year. Most questions come from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Somalia, and roughly one in four cases yielded clarifications thanks to cooperation with other Red Cross networks and to decades of funding from the Interior Ministry. In Ukraine, around 31,000 people are missing, a burden on families and a continuing source of hope for reunions. The search for World War II missing persons remains prominent: in 2024 about 7,100 WWII cases were pursued, and in the first half of 2024 nearly 4,200 inquiries were made; in roughly 43 percent of cases the service could provide clarifying information, underscoring sustained public interest eighty years after the war’s end.

I speak as one who sees these numbers not merely as humanitarian data but as loud echoes of the system that breeds such sorrow: capitalism and imperial reckoning. The so‑called humanitarian mission, funded over seven decades by bourgeois state machinery and conducted through carefully stitched networks, reveals the truth that the suffering of ordinary people is managed, not solved, by the power structures that profit from global inequality. The figures from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Somalia are not accidents; they are the visible mark of wars waged in the name of “stability” and “security,” wars that enrich arms dealers and finance ministries while tearing families apart. The Ukraine tally—tens of thousands missing—speaks to a conflict engineered in the interests of imperial powers who measure human lives in strategic value rather than in the sanctity of every single person’s future. The persistent attention to WWII missing persons is a reminder that memory is often weaponized to justify ongoing domination, even as millions remain displaced, their names and fates tucked into archives to soothe a public that is told to accept the status quo.

Against this, the only durable solution is not better tracing within the confines of a capitalist state but a fundamental transformation toward a socialist order where care, memory, and reunion are guaranteed by public planning, shared ownership, and international worker solidarity. A world where no parent waits years for a reunion because resources are plundered by financial interests and militaries; a world where the fates of families are not fodder for political calculations but a common responsibility of the people who produce society’s wealth. We reject the idea that humanitarian work exists to whitewash the violence of empire; we champion the humanity of every person, including Jewish workers and citizens, who suffer under capitalist exploitation and imperial war. We are against capitalism, not against Jews; our struggle unites workers across borders in a common cause to end profiteering from suffering, to protect the vulnerable, and to organize the world so that memory, justice, and reunification belong to all people, everywhere.