The Holocaust, part one

Investigate the sources

Explore these sources alongside those found in part 2 of this resource, which covers 1944 onwards.

1. Source 1: Kristallnacht, 1938

   1. 

      From GERMANY.

      Telegram (en clair) from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes (Berlin),

      D. BY TELEPHONE. 10th November, 1938.

      R 5.5p.m. 10th November, 1938

      No.663.

      IMPORTANT

      My telegram No. 661.

      I have just returned from a tour of Friedrichstrasse and city districts where Jewish shops are being smashed and looted by youths in plain clothes, followed by large and smiling crowds including soldiers and others in party uniforms. Police were taking no notice.

      Only exception was the premises of Messrs. Israel, a big department store partly British-owned which was guarded by police with fire brigade standing by. His Majesty’s Consul-General who visited these premises informs me that enormous damage has been done to stock and fittings. According to Mr. Israel store was attacked early this afternoon by a crowd which included S.S. men in uniform. Business offices owned by Jews are also being entered and smashed up apparently with impunity. Similar attacks on Jewish property are said to be taking place all over Germany.

      His Majesty’s Consul Dresden reports that a British Jew from Leipzig has asked for asylum in the Consulate as Jews in Leipzig are being beaten up. I have taken immediate steps with the Under Secretary of State for the safeguarding of British subjects.

      Chief Rabbi of Berlin has been arrested and seven synagogues have been burnt.

      The facts that these attacks began only after midnight last night and that Jewish shops and offices have been systematically signalled out indicate that this action was deliberately planned.

   2. Listen

      Telegram from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes regarding the damage dealt to Jewish properties during ‘Kristallnacht’ on 10 November 1938

      Audio transcript for "Telegram from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes regarding the damage dealt to Jewish properties during ‘Kristallnacht’ on 10 November 1938"

      Telegram from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes regarding the damage dealt to Jewish properties during ‘Kristallnacht’ on 10 November 1938. Catalogue reference: FO 371/21636

      From GERMANY.

      Telegram (en clair) from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes (Berlin),

      D. BY TELEPHONE. 10th November, 1938.

      R 5.5p.m. 10th November, 1938

      No.663.

      IMPORTANT

      My telegram No. 661.

      I have just returned from a tour of Friedrichstrasse and city districts where Jewish shops are being smashed and looted by youths in plain clothes, followed by large and smiling crowds including soldiers and others in party uniforms. Police were taking no notice.

      Only exception was the premises of Messrs. Israel, a big department store partly British-owned which was guarded by police with fire brigade standing by. His Majesty’s Consul-General who visited these premises informs me that enormous damage has been done to stock and fittings. According to Mr. Israel store was attacked early this afternoon by a crowd which included S.S. men in uniform. Business offices owned by Jews are also being entered and smashed up apparently with impunity. Similar attacks on Jewish property are said to be taking place all over Germany.

      His Majesty’s Consul Dresden reports that a British Jew from Leipzig has asked for asylum in the Consulate as Jews in Leipzig are being beaten up. I have taken immediate steps with the Under Secretary of State for the safeguarding of British subjects.

      Chief Rabbi of Berlin has been arrested and seven synagogues have been burnt.

      The facts that these attacks began only after midnight last night and that Jewish shops and offices have been systematically signalled out indicate that this action was deliberately planned.

2. Source 2: Rumours of concentration camps, 1942

   1. 

      [CYPHER].

      DEPARTMENTAL No. 1.

      FROM BERNE TO FOREIGN OFFICE.

      Mr. Norton. D. 4.48 p.m. August 10th, 1942.

      No. 2831. R. 6.25 p.m. August 10th, 1942.

      August 10th, 1942.

      yyyyyy

      Following from His Majesty’s Consul General at Geneva No. 174 (Begins).

      Following for Mr. S.S.Silverman M.P., Chairman of British Section, World Jewish Congress London from Mr. Gerhart Riegner Secretary of World Jewish Congress, Geneva.

      [Begins].

      Received alarming report stating that, in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3 1/2 to 4 millions should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid. We transmit this information with all the necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us. Our informant is reported to have close connexions with the highest German authorities, and his reports are generally reliable.

      Please inform and consult New York. (Ends].

      [INDIV].

   2. Listen

      Riegner Telegram, 1942

      Audio transcript for "Riegner Telegram, 1942"

      Riegner Telegram

      Telegram from Mr Gerhart Riegner to Mr S. S. Silverman, both of the World Jewish Congress, regarding rumours of the extermination of Jews in Concentration Camps. Catalogue reference: FO 371/30917

      [CYPHER].

      DEPARTMENTAL No. 1.

      FROM BERNE TO FOREIGN OFFICE.

      Mr. Norton. D. 4.48 p.m. August 10th, 1942.

      No. 2831. R. 6.25 p.m. August 10th, 1942.

      August 10th, 1942.

      yyyyyy

      Following from His Majesty’s Consul General at Geneva No. 174 (Begins).

      Following for Mr. S.S.Silverman M.P., Chairman of British Section, World Jewish Congress London from Mr. Gerhart Riegner Secretary of World Jewish Congress, Geneva.

      [Begins].

      Received alarming report stating that, in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3 1/2 to 4 millions should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid. We transmit this information with all the necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us. Our informant is reported to have close connexions with the highest German authorities, and his reports are generally reliable.

      Please inform and consult New York. (Ends].

      [INDIV].

3. Source 3: A Four-Power Declaration, 1942

   1. 

      Mr. Silverman and Mr. Easterman called on me this morning about the extermination of the Jews in Europe. Mr. Easterman left with me the attached document, which was handed to him last night by a member of the Polish Government. It is his only copy and I promised to have it copied and returned to him.

      Mr. Silverman said that it was now clear that whatever our view might be, the State Department accepted the substantial truth of these stories. I said that I did not think the State Department had any more evidence than we had, and that probably on their knowledge of the German character and of Nazi ideology it seemed to them that there was nothing intrinsically improbably [sic] about the story. I said that we had had no more evidence, that Mr. Norton had seen M. Reigner, but had been unable to get from him the facts upon which his evidence was based.

      Mr. Silverman said that we might take the view that there was nothing that could be usefully done at the moment. If that was our view, it meant that nothing in fact could ever be done. He said that we would be in an impossible position unless we took some steps to try and prevent this happening even if we thought that the steps would be ineffective. He asked first of all that a Four-Power Declaration should be made to the effect that the United Nations had been informed of this plan, that if it was carried out the perpetrators of it would be held responsible and would receive their due punishment, and that the German people could not escape responsibility for the acts of their government. He also suggested that some use should be made of broadcasting, not to threaten the Germans, but to encourage the Jews and to encourage those non-Jews who might be willing to give the Jews their protection. He pointed out that the deportation of Jews from France had had a good effect upon the general resistance of the French against the Germans and that apart from anything else, such a broadcast of encouragement might be an important weapon of general political warfare.

      I should be glad if the department could consider this as a matter of urgency since I promised Mr. Silverman that I would let him have our general view at the House next week. I doubt very much whether his proposals, if we were able to carry them out, would do very much good, and I think Mr. Silverman agrees. On the other hand I think that we would be in an appaling position if these stories should prove to have been true and we have done nothing about them. Silverman and his friends have been very forbearing on the whole, but I am afraid that unless we can make them some kind of gesture they will cause a lot of trouble.

      26th November, 1942

   2. Listen

      A Four Power Declaration

      Audio transcript for "A Four Power Declaration"

      A Four Power Declaration

      Request for action in response to the rumours of the plan against Jews in German territories. Catalogue reference: FO 371/30923.

      Mr. Silverman and Mr. Easterman called on me this morning about the extermination of the Jews in Europe. Mr. Easterman left with me the attached document, which was handed to him last night by a member of the Polish Government. It is his only copy and I promised to have it copied and returned to him.

      Mr. Silverman said that it was now clear that whatever our view might be, the State Department accepted the substantial truth of these stories. I said that I did not think the State Department had any more evidence than we had, and that probably on their knowledge of the German character and of Nazi ideology it seemed to them that there was nothing intrinsically improbably [sic] about the story. I said that we had had no more evidence, that Mr. Norton had seen M. Reigner, but had been unable to get from him the facts upon which his evidence was based.

      Mr. Silverman said that we might take the view that there was nothing that could be usefully done at the moment. If that was our view, it meant that nothing in fact could ever be done. He said that we would be in an impossible position unless we took some steps to try and prevent this happening even if we thought that the steps would be ineffective. He asked first of all that a Four-Power Declaration should be made to the effect that the United Nations had been informed of this plan, that if it was carried out the perpetrators of it would be held responsible and would receive their due punishment, and that the German people could not escape responsibility for the acts of their government. He also suggested that some use should be made of broadcasting, not to threaten the Germans, but to encourage the Jews and to encourage those non-Jews who might be willing to give the Jews their protection. He pointed out that the deportation of Jews from France had had a good effect upon the general resistance of the French against the Germans and that apart from anything else, such a broadcast of encouragement might be an important weapon of general political warfare.

      I should be glad if the department could consider this as a matter of urgency since I promised Mr. Silverman that I would let him have our general view at the House next week. I doubt very much whether his proposals, if we were able to carry them out, would do very much good, and I think Mr. Silverman agrees. On the other hand I think that we would be in an appaling position if these stories should prove to have been true and we have done nothing about them. Silverman and his friends have been very forbearing on the whole, but I am afraid that unless we can make them some kind of gesture they will cause a lot of trouble.

      26th November, 1942

4. Source 4: Report from the World Jewish Congress, 1942

   1. 

      WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS

      December 1st, 1942.

      (BRITISH SECTION).

      ANNIHILATION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY.

      HITLER’S POLICY OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

      The Jews of Europe are being exterminated by the Nazis. It is not merely that atrocities are being committed against the Jews. They are being quite literally slaughtered in masses, in pursuance of a systematic plan and in accordance with a deliberate policy.

      This is Hitler’s ‘final solution of the Jewish problem of Europe’. He has openly proclaimed his design. He is now executing his policy with a diabolical fiendishness unknown in the whole history of human savagery.

      2,000,000 is the barest minimum number of Jews murdered, tortured and deliberately starved to death in Eastern Europe. The number is probably much greater.

      It is now clear that the mass deportation of Jews from France, Belgium, Holland and other Western European countries, has been for the purpose of concentrating all the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe chiefly in Poland for the purpose of facilitating their mass massacre.

      On the 27th November 1942, it was stated at the Polish National Council in London that at the beginning of last September about 1 ½ million Jews have been murdered in an organised way. About half a million were deported to the U.S.S.R. in 1940, and of the rest of the peace-time Jewish population of Poland, several hundred thousand Jews have died of starvation, disease and frightful living conditions imposed by the Nazis.

      Several hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in the Nazi occupied areas of the U.S.S.R. and in the Ukraine.

      Almost the entire Jewish population of the Baltic States have been exterminated.

      Hundreds of thousands of Jews of Roumania have been deported to Transdniestria and there massacred.

      In addition, scores of thousands of German, French, Belgian, Dutch, Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Jews have been deported to Poland and the occupied areas of the U.S.S.R. for mass slaughter.

      Many transports of Jewish deportees from Western Europe do not reach their destination. The victims, crammed into closed cattle-trucks, either die of suffocation or disease on the way or are done to death by their captors.

      It is known that at the beginning of last August train-loads of Jewish deportees reached Germany from Belgium, Holland and France. The compartments were filled with dead and living Jews crowded together.

   2. 

      POLAND HAS BECOME THE NAZI SLAUGHTER-HOUSE FOR THE JEWS OF EUROPE:

      Massacres of Jews have been going on from the first say of the German occupation. The holocaust took on a formal design, under an explicit policy, in March 1942. Himmler then gave orders for the extermination of 50% of the Jewish population of the so-called Government-General. The extermination was to be completed by the end of 1942.

      Not satisfied with the speed and extent of the mass massacres, Himmler, in July last, decreed the total destruction of all the Jews concentrated in Poland.

      It is from approximately this date that the large-scale deportations of Jews from Western Europe began. The massacres started on July 21st 1942, when German Police cars invaded the Ghettoes, shooting the inhabitants indiscriminately and at sight. On that date all the Jewish members of the Jewish Council of Warsaw were arrested on bloc as hostages.

      On July 22nd 1942, the Nazis ordered the deportation to Eastern Poland and the Ukraine of all Jews irrespective of the age and sex. The daily quota of deportees was fixed at 6,000. Later this quota was increased to 10,000. Victims were dragged from their homes or seized in the streets in organised manhunts.

      Jews were congregated in the squares. Old people and invalids were driven to cemeteries and shot in droves. Others were loaded into trucks, 150 persons being crowded into the space normally holding a maximum of 40. The trucks were then driven off. Hundreds died of suffocation.

      This process is now going on continuously. The floors of the trucks are covered with a thick layer of lime and chlorine sprinkled with water. The doors are locked. Often the trains remain on a siding for a day or two or longer. The fumes of lime and chlorine, the lack of air, water and food, cause hundreds of deaths, with the result that dead and living remain packed side by side.

      On arrival at their destination, 50% of the deportees were found dead. The remainder were taken to the special camps of Treblinka, Belzec and Selibor, where they were shot. Neither children nor babies were spared. By the end of September 1942, 250,000 Jews had been thus exterminated.

      The deportations are described by the Nazis as “the re-settlement of the Jews”. The “re-settlement” is a final one in the sense that few, if any, of the “re-settled” Jews remain alive.

      THE WARSAW GHETTO:

      In March 1942, according to official German statistics, there were 433,000 Jews packed into the Ghetto – the area walled off by the Nazis which formerly contained about 200,000 Jews.

      According to ‘Arbeitsamt’ – the official Nazi Labour journal – only 40,000 Jews are to be left in the Warsaw Ghetto. These are the highly-skilled workers who the Nazis require for their war industry.

   3. 

      For September 1942, the Nazis distributed 120,000 ration cards for the Warsaw Ghetto. In October, the number issued was only 40,000.

      The same process of elimination and massacre is going on in all the other Ghettoes of Poland. The reports state that the Ghetto of Lodz which formerly contained about 250,000 Jews has been entirely cleared of Jews.

      NAZI METHODS OF EXTERMINATION:

      Besides the Firing Squads, the Nazis are now facilitating mass executions by the use of electrocution and lethal gas chambers in which Jews are crowded and ‘eliminated’.

      An electrocution station has been installed at the Belzec Camp. Transports of deportees are de-trained near the execution place, sheds with a metal plated floor. The sheds are then locked and an electrical current passed through the metal plates. Death is almost instantaneous.

      A large digging machine for mass graves has been recently installed at Treblinka.

      In Chelm, 10,000 Jews have been gassed recently.

      The Germans have organised special Extermination Squads – Vernichtungskolonne – whose task is to round up and kill Jews on sight. The Squads fire indiscriminately into windows of Jewish houses.

      The above summary takes no account of suicides, the insanities of mothers whose children are seized or murdered, and the innumerable outrages and atrocities resulting in the deaths of many thousands of Jewish men and women.

   4. Listen

      Report from the World Jewish Congress on the annihilation of Jews in Europe, 1942

      Audio transcript for "Report from the World Jewish Congress on the annihilation of Jews in Europe, 1942"

      Report from the World Jewish Congress on the annihilation of Jews in Europe. Catalogue reference: FO 371/30923.

      WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS

      December 1st, 1942.

      (BRITISH SECTION).

      ANNIHILATION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY.

      HITLER’S POLICY OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

      The Jews of Europe are being exterminated by the Nazis. It is not merely that atrocities are being committed against the Jews. They are being quite literally slaughtered in masses, in pursuance of a systematic plan and in accordance with a deliberate policy.

      This is Hitler’s ‘final solution of the Jewish problem of Europe’. He has openly proclaimed his design. He is now executing his policy with a diabolical fiendishness unknown in the whole history of human savagery.

      2,000,000 is the barest minimum number of Jews murdered, tortured and deliberately starved to death in Eastern Europe. The number is probably much greater.

      It is now clear that the mass deportation of Jews from France, Belgium, Holland and other Western European countries, has been for the purpose of concentrating all the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe chiefly in Poland for the purpose of facilitating their mass massacre.

      On the 27th November 1942, it was stated at the Polish National Council in London that at the beginning of last September about 1 ½ million Jews have been murdered in an organised way. About half a million were deported to the U.S.S.R. in 1940, and of the rest of the peace-time Jewish population of Poland, several hundred thousand Jews have died of starvation, disease and frightful living conditions imposed by the Nazis.

      Several hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in the Nazi occupied areas of the U.S.S.R. and in the Ukraine.

      Almost the entire Jewish population of the Baltic States have been exterminated.

      Hundreds of thousands of Jews of Roumania have been deported to Transdniestria and there massacred.

      In addition, scores of thousands of German, French, Belgian, Dutch, Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Jews have been deported to Poland and the occupied areas of the U.S.S.R. for mass slaughter.

      Many transports of Jewish deportees from Western Europe do not reach their destination. The victims, crammed into closed cattle-trucks, either die of suffocation or disease on the way or are done to death by their captors.

      It is known that at the beginning of last August train-loads of Jewish deportees reached Germany from Belgium, Holland and France. The compartments were filled with dead and living Jews crowded together.

      POLAND HAS BECOME THE NAZI SLAUGHTER-HOUSE FOR THE JEWS OF EUROPE:

      Massacres of Jews have been going on from the first say of the German occupation. The holocaust took on a formal design, under an explicit policy, in March 1942. Himmler then gave orders for the extermination of 50% of the Jewish population of the so-called Government-General. The extermination was to be completed by the end of 1942.

      Not satisfied with the speed and extent of the mass massacres, Himmler, in July last, decreed the total destruction of all the Jews concentrated in Poland.

      It is from approximately this date that the large-scale deportations of Jews from Western Europe began. The massacres started on July 21st 1942, when German Police cars invaded the Ghettoes, shooting the inhabitants indiscriminately and at sight. On that date all the Jewish members of the Jewish Council of Warsaw were arrested on bloc as hostages.

      On July 22nd 1942, the Nazis ordered the deportation to Eastern Poland and the Ukraine of all Jews irrespective of the age and sex. The daily quota of deportees was fixed at 6,000. Later this quota was increased to 10,000. Victims were dragged from their homes or seized in the streets in organised manhunts.

      Jews were congregated in the squares. Old people and invalids were driven to cemeteries and shot in droves. Others were loaded into trucks, 150 persons being crowded into the space normally holding a maximum of 40. The trucks were then driven off. Hundreds died of suffocation.

      This process is now going on continuously. The floors of the trucks are covered with a thick layer of lime and chlorine sprinkled with water. The doors are locked. Often the trains remain on a siding for a day or two or longer. The fumes of lime and chlorine, the lack of air, water and food, cause hundreds of deaths, with the result that dead and living remain packed side by side.

      On arrival at their destination, 50% of the deportees were found dead. The remainder were taken to the special camps of Treblinka, Belzec and Selibor, where they were shot. Neither children nor babies were spared. By the end of September 1942, 250,000 Jews had been thus exterminated.

      The deportations are described by the Nazis as “the re-settlement of the Jews”. The “re-settlement” is a final one in the sense that few, if any, of the “re-settled” Jews remain alive.

      THE WARSAW GHETTO:

      In March 1942, according to official German statistics, there were 433,000 Jews packed into the Ghetto – the area walled off by the Nazis which formerly contained about 200,000 Jews.

      According to ‘Arbeitsamt’ – the official Nazi Labour journal – only 40,000 Jews are to be left in the Warsaw Ghetto. These are the highly-skilled workers who the Nazis require for their war industry.

      For September 1942, the Nazis distributed 120,000 ration cards for the Warsaw Ghetto. In October, the number issued was only 40,000.

      The same process of elimination and massacre is going on in all the other Ghettoes of Poland. The reports state that the Ghetto of Lodz which formerly contained about 250,000 Jews has been entirely cleared of Jews.

      NAZI METHODS OF EXTERMINATION:

      Besides the Firing Squads, the Nazis are now facilitating mass executions by the use of electrocution and lethal gas chambers in which Jews are crowded and ‘eliminated’.

      An electrocution station has been installed at the Belzec Camp. Transports of deportees are de-trained near the execution place, sheds with a metal plated floor. The sheds are then locked and an electrical current passed through the metal plates. Death is almost instantaneous.

      A large digging machine for mass graves has been recently installed at Treblinka.

      In Chelm, 10,000 Jews have been gassed recently.

      The Germans have organised special Extermination Squads – Vernichtungskolonne – whose task is to round up and kill Jews on sight. The Squads fire indiscriminately into windows of Jewish houses.

      The above summary takes no account of suicides, the insanities of mothers whose children are seized or murdered, and the innumerable outrages and atrocities resulting in the deaths of many thousands of Jewish men and women.

5. Source 5: The Karski Report, 1942

   This is one of a series of reports from 1939 to 1942 by resistance courier Jan Karski detailing Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland and early atrocities of the Holocaust for the Polish government-in-exile and Western Allies.

   1. 

      News is reaching the Polish Government in London about the liquidation [of] the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

      The persecution of the Jews in Poland, which has been in progress from the very first day of the German occupation, has taken on extremely acute forms since March 1942, when Himmler ordered the extermination of 50% of the Jewish population in the Government General, to be carried out by the end of 1942.

      Though the German assassins had started this work with extraordinary gusto, the results apparently did not satisfy Himmler, for during his visit to the General Gouvernement [sic] in July 1942 he ordered new decrees personally, aiming at the total destruction of Polish Jewry.

      The persecutions in Warsaw started on July 21st. 1942, when German police cars suddenly drove into the ghettos. The soldiers immediately started rushing into houses, shooting the inhabitants at sign without any explanation. The first victims belonged mostly to the educated classes. On that day almost all the members of the Jewish Municipal Council were arrested and held as hostages.

      On July 22nd. 1942 the Jewish Council was ordered to proclaim the decree of the German authorities dealing with the resettlement of all the Warsaw Jews, regardless of sex or age, in the Eastern part of Poland, with the sole exception of persons working in German factories or members of the Jewish militia. The daily quota of people to be re-settled was fixed at 6,000 and members of the Jewish Municipal Council were ordered to carry out the order under the pain of death.

      By the next day, however, on July 23rd., the German police again appeared in the Jewish Municipal Council and demanded to see the chairman, Mr. Czerniakow. After the police had left, Czerniakow committed suicide. From a note he left for his wife, it became clear that he had received an order to deliver 10,000 people the next day and 7000 daily on the following days, in spite of the fact that the quota had been fixed originally at 6,000. The victims to be delivered to the Germans are either dragged out of their homes or seized in the streets. As the zeal of the Jewish police to perform these duties against their own people was slight and did not give a guarantee of efficiency, the Germans have mobilised temporary security batallions [sic] for the man-hunts, consisting of Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. These batallions, under the command of SS men, are characterised by their utter ruthlessness, cruelty and inhumanity.

      The Jews, when caught, are driven to a square. Old people and cripples are then singled out, taken to the cemetery and there shot. The remaining people are loaded into goods trucks, at the rate of 150 people to a truck with space for 40. The floor of the truck is covered with a thick layer of lime and chlorine sprinkled with water. The doors of the trucks are locked. Sometimes the train starts immediately on being loaded, sometimes it remains on a siding for a day, two days or even longer. The people are packed so tightly that those who die of suffocation remain the crowd side by side with the still living and those slowly dying from the fumes of lime and chlorine, from lack of air, water and food. Wherever the trains arrive half the people arrive dead. Those surviving are sent to special camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Once there, the so-called ‘settlers’ are mass murdered.

   2. Listen

      The Karski Report, 1942

      Audio transcript for "The Karski Report, 1942"

      The Karski Report

      Report on the attacks on the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Catalogue reference: FO 371/30923.

      News is reaching the Polish Government in London about the liquidation [of] the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

      The persecution of the Jews in Poland, which has been in progress from the very first day of the German occupation, has taken on extremely acute forms since March 1942, when Himmler ordered the extermination of 50% of the Jewish population in the Government General, to be carried out by the end of 1942.

      Though the German assassins had started this work with extraordinary gusto, the results apparently did not satisfy Himmler, for during his visit to the General Gouvernement [sic] in July 1942 he ordered new decrees personally, aiming at the total destruction of Polish Jewry.

      The persecutions in Warsaw started on July 21st. 1942, when German police cars suddenly drove into the ghettos. The soldiers immediately started rushing into houses, shooting the inhabitants at sign without any explanation. The first victims belonged mostly to the educated classes. On that day almost all the members of the Jewish Municipal Council were arrested and held as hostages.

      On July 22nd. 1942 the Jewish Council was ordered to proclaim the decree of the German authorities dealing with the resettlement of all the Warsaw Jews, regardless of sex or age, in the Eastern part of Poland, with the sole exception of persons working in German factories or members of the Jewish militia. The daily quota of people to be re-settled was fixed at 6,000 and members of the Jewish Municipal Council were ordered to carry out the order under the pain of death.

      By the next day, however, on July 23rd., the German police again appeared in the Jewish Municipal Council and demanded to see the chairman, Mr. Czerniakow. After the police had left, Czerniakow committed suicide. From a note he left for his wife, it became clear that he had received an order to deliver 10,000 people the next day and 7000 daily on the following days, in spite of the fact that the quota had been fixed originally at 6,000. The victims to be delivered to the Germans are either dragged out of their homes or seized in the streets. As the zeal of the Jewish police to perform these duties against their own people was slight and did not give a guarantee of efficiency, the Germans have mobilised temporary security batallions [sic] for the man-hunts, consisting of Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. These batallions, under the command of SS men, are characterised by their utter ruthlessness, cruelty and inhumanity.

      The Jews, when caught, are driven to a square. Old people and cripples are then singled out, taken to the cemetery and there shot. The remaining people are loaded into goods trucks, at the rate of 150 people to a truck with space for 40. The floor of the truck is covered with a thick layer of lime and chlorine sprinkled with water. The doors of the trucks are locked. Sometimes the train starts immediately on being loaded, sometimes it remains on a siding for a day, two days or even longer. The people are packed so tightly that those who die of suffocation remain the crowd side by side with the still living and those slowly dying from the fumes of lime and chlorine, from lack of air, water and food. Wherever the trains arrive half the people arrive dead. Those surviving are sent to special camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Once there, the so-called ‘settlers’ are mass murdered.

6. Source 6: Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, 1942

   Reinhard Heydrich was the Director of the Reich Main Security Office from 1939 and Director of the Gestapo from 1934. He was the chair of the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, where the plans for deportation and extermination of the Jews were discussed.

   Operation Anthropoid was a successful mission by British-trained members of the Czechoslovak resistance to assassinate Heydrich.

   1. 

7. Source 7: Daily Worker, February 1943

   1. 

      DAILY WORKER

      Cutting dated …17 Feb 1943 … 194

      Britain Urged To Act Now and Save Jews

      The following letter appeared in the Times yesterday: –

      We have noted with satisfaction the Joint Declaration of the United Nations vigorously protesting against the Nazi outrages upon the Jewish people.

      We desire to associate ourselves with it. But we think that present action to mitigate this barbarism now is even more essential that the assurance of penalties after Hitler’s defeat for those who have shared in the perpetration of the outrages upon the Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany.

      We suggest that the nation is eager to see the British Government take the lead in attempting to rescue as many as possible of these, the most helpless of Hitler’s victims, as they were also the first; the generous temper in which Italian settlers in Abyssinia have been repatriated to Italy should be applied to the right of the Jews to protection.

      OBLIGATION

      In the circumstances, we suggest that it is incumbent on the British Government to take the initiative in the following measures:

      1. To make representations by the United Nations to the German Government to permit Jews to leave the occupied countries of Europe.
      2. To offer the joint protection of the United Nations to Jews liberated or escaping from the occupied territories.
      3. To facilitate the transfer of Jews to and their asylum in the territories and colonies of the United Nations.
      4. To urge on neutral countries the desirability of receiving as many Jewish refugees as possible until, with victory, it is possible to consider ways and means of their permanent settlement. Where food and finance raise difficult problems for neutral countries willing to assist, the United Nations should agree to make these available to them.
      5. To make available the fullest possible facilities for the immigration of Jewish refugees into Palestine.

      We suggest that, as a prelude to these large-scale measures, the British Government should offer immediately to admit to Great Britain the largest possible number of Jewish refugees, especially children.

      We see little difficulty, given good will, in taking all the necessary precautions which the national security demands.

      We do not deny either the magnitude or the complexity of the Jewish problem. But we do not feel that the Government and nation can stand helplessly by while a whole people is ruthlessly butchered.

      Verbal sympathy is not enough. We must be prepared, whatever the action of other people, to act with resolution and magnanimity.

      HISTORIC TRADITION

      That is an attitude rooted in our historic tradition. Never was it more necessary to prove that it is still a living faith among us.

      For if we do nothing while a helpless people is assassinated, we shall breed a temper of acquiescence in the barbarism of tyrants which may become one of the unhappiest legacies of this epoch of agony. – Yours faithfully, W.G.S Adams, Phyllis Bottome, A.M. Carr-Saunders, Wyndham Deedes, P.A.M. Dirac, E.M.Forster, G.P.Gooch, R.A.Gregory, Storm Jameson, F.G.Kenyon, A.D.Lindsay, Kingsley Martin, Frederick Maurice, Gilbert Murray, Harold G. Nicolson, John Boyd Orr, Margaret Rhondda, Sankey. George Bernard Shaw, R.H. Tawney, Beatrice Webb, Wedgwood, Rebecca West.

   2. Listen

      Daily Worker, February 1943

      Audio transcript for "Daily Worker, February 1943"

      Daily Worker February 1943

      Cutting from the Daily Worker newspaper of an open letter – also published in the Times – by well-known figures appealing for action against the mistreatment of Jews in Europe. Catalogue reference: FO 371/36653.

      DAILY WORKER

      Cutting dated …17 Feb 1943 … 194

      Britain Urged To Act Now and Save Jews

      The following letter appeared in the Times yesterday: –

      We have noted with satisfaction the Joint Declaration of the United Nations vigorously protesting against the Nazi outrages upon the Jewish people.

      We desire to associate ourselves with it. But we think that present action to mitigate this barbarism now is even more essential that the assurance of penalties after Hitler’s defeat for those who have shared in the perpetration of the outrages upon the Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany.

      We suggest that the nation is eager to see the British Government take the lead in attempting to rescue as many as possible of these, the most helpless of Hitler’s victims, as they were also the first; the generous temper in which Italian settlers in Abyssinia have been repatriated to Italy should be applied to the right of the Jews to protection.

      OBLIGATION

      In the circumstances, we suggest that it is incumbent on the British Government to take the initiative in the following measures:

      To make representations by the United Nations to the German Government to permit Jews to leave the occupied countries of Europe.

      To offer the joint protection of the United Nations to Jews liberated or escaping from the occupied territories.

      To facilitate the transfer of Jews to and their asylum in the territories and colonies of the United Nations.

      To urge on neutral countries the desirability of receiving as many Jewish refugees as possible until, with victory, it is possible to consider ways and means of their permanent settlement. Where food and finance raise difficult problems for neutral countries willing to assist, the United Nations should agree to make these available to them.

      To make available the fullest possible facilities for the immigration of Jewish refugees into Palestine.

      We suggest that, as a prelude to these large-scale measures, the British Government should offer immediately to admit to Great Britain the largest possible number of Jewish refugees, especially children.

      We see little difficulty, given good will, in taking all the necessary precautions which the national security demands.

      We do not deny either the magnitude or the complexity of the Jewish problem. But we do not feel that the Government and nation can stand helplessly by while a whole people is ruthlessly butchered.

      Verbal sympathy is not enough. We must be prepared, whatever the action of other people, to act with resolution and magnanimity.

      HISTORIC TRADITION

      That is an attitude rooted in our historic tradition. Never was it more necessary to prove that it is still a living faith among us.

      For if we do nothing while a helpless people is assassinated, we shall breed a temper of acquiescence in the barbarism of tyrants which may become one of the unhappiest legacies of this epoch of agony. – Yours faithfully, W.G.S Adams, Phyllis Bottome, A.M. Carr-Saunders, Wyndham Deedes, P.A.M. Dirac, E.M.Forster, G.P.Gooch, R.A.Gregory, Storm Jameson, F.G.Kenyon, A.D.Lindsay, Kingsley Martin, Frederick Maurice, Gilbert Murray, Harold G. Nicolson, John Boyd Orr, Margaret Rhondda, Sankey. George Bernard Shaw, R.H. Tawney, Beatrice Webb, Wedgwood, Rebecca West.

8. Source 8: Report from Poland, 1943

   1. 

      EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS IN POLAND

      According to recent reliable reports received from leaders of the underground movement in Poland, the process of extermination of the Polish Jewish population of over 3 million and of the large number of Jews deported to Poland from Germany, Austria and the occupied countries of Europe has been carried far towards its final completion.

      Although at first the Germans established a number of ghettos in various Polish cities and towns, thus deluding the Jews into the belief that they would be allowed to survive in this way, they proceeded early in 1942 with the mass extermination of the Jews and it is known that the principal ghettos, those of Warsaw, Wilno, Lwow, Krakow and Lublin have now been largely liquidated. It is known that some time in April the remnants of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, offered desperate resistance to the German military and police attempting to remove them, and that the complete destruction of the Jews in this ghetto was preceded by street

   2. 

      and house-to-house fighting lasting several days.

      The dreadful mass slaughter of the Jews in Poland is being carried out in several death camps, the largest and most notorious of which is that of TREBLINKA. The Polish Government have received a detailed description of the circumstances and methods of the mass slaughter, based on the personal accounts of several Jewish grave-diggers who succeeded in escaping from the confines of the camp and are being sheltered by the Polish underground movement.

      The Slaughter Camp of TREBLINKA.

      ‘The extermination of Jews in Poland by methods of mass slaughter continues with unabated intensity. Not only Polish Jews, but those from other occupied countries of Europe, including France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, etc., are being deported to special Death Camps and murdered by the thousand without discrimination as to age or sex.

      ‘The principal Death Camp has been established near the village of TREBLINKA situated near the main Biakystok-Warsaw Railway Line. At first, the Germans used this camp as a Penal Concentration Camp for Poles, where many thousands of them were executed in March 1942, however, the Germans proceeded to construct a special Death Camp for the mass …’

   3. Listen

      Report from Poland, 1943

      Audio transcript for "Report from Poland, 1943"

      Report from Poland

      Report of the mass execution of Jews in Poland. Catalogue reference: FO 371/34550.

      EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS IN POLAND

      According to recent reliable reports received from leaders of the underground movement in Poland, the process of extermination of the Polish Jewish population of over 3 million and of the large number of Jews deported to Poland from Germany, Austria and the occupied countries of Europe has been carried far towards its final completion.

      Although at first the Germans established a number of ghettos in various Polish cities and towns, thus deluding the Jews into the belief that they would be allowed to survive in this way, they proceeded early in 1942 with the mass extermination of the Jews and it is known that the principal ghettos, those of Warsaw, Wilno, Lwow, Krakow and Lublin have now been largely liquidated. It is known that some time in April the remnants of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, offered desperate resistance to the German military and police attempting to remove them, and that the complete destruction of the Jews in this ghetto was preceded by street and house-to-house fighting lasting several days.

      The dreadful mass slaughter of the Jews in Poland is being carried out in several death camps, the largest and most notorious of which is that of TREBLINKA. The Polish Government have received a detailed description of the circumstances and methods of the mass slaughter, based on the personal accounts of several Jewish grave-diggers who succeeded in escaping from the confines of the camp and are being sheltered by the Polish underground movement.

      The Slaughter Camp of TREBLINKA.

      ‘The extermination of Jews in Poland by methods of mass slaughter continues with unabated intensity. Not only Polish Jews, but those from other occupied countries of Europe, including France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, etc., are being deported to special Death Camps and murdered by the thousand without discrimination as to age or sex.

      ‘The principal Death Camp has been established near the village of TREBLINKA situated near the main Biakystok-Warsaw Railway Line. At first, the Germans used this camp as a Penal Concentration Camp for Poles, where many thousands of them were executed in March 1942, however, the Germans proceeded to construct a special Death Camp for the mass …’

9. Source 9: Letter to Clement Attlee, 1943

   1. 

      COPY

      The Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland, which represents the various forms of the pre-war Socialist movement in the country, addresses you on a matter which affects not only Poland.

      The destructive activities of the Germans, who have practised on us their principles of total war, have now reached the stage of creating a ‘Lebensraum’ for the Germans. They have expelled the Polish peasants from their farms and homes in the Western provinces, which have been incorporated in the Reich. There they have murdered hundreds of thousands of people. They have robbed and pillaged them. They have massacred, using the most cruel methods, 1,500,000 of Jews – Polish citizens.

      Now they have directed the same destructive acts towards the Poles on the territories of Central Poland. Already hundreds of villages have been burned – human beings and property perishing in the flames.

      Not a day passes without mass executions. There is not a town, not a village without its gallows. Lublin and Zamose, where the head of the Gestapo Blobotznik now directs the work of extermination have been most brutally ravaged; the inhabitants are being thrown out of their homes. Able-bodied men and women are deported to forced labour in Germany. The weak are sent to camps to be murdered in gas chambers.

      At the same time the whole machinery of destruction is working at high speed in the concentration camps of Oswiecim, Treblinka, Radogoszez, Majdanek, where several hundred thousand people have already been murdered. The Germans cynically declare that they must reduce the numbers of Poles because many Germans are being killed on the fronts, and equilibrium must be maintained. Whenever they suffer defeat – as for instance now in Africa – the entire weight of their atrocities falls upon our shoulders. We are being driven into such a state that the forms of self-defence so far used may at any moment be abandoned for an open rising. This, unfortunately, would have now no chance of success, for we should have to fight with our bare hands.

      Do not take this as a complaint. Long before this war broke out we had chosen with our eyes wide open, to fight against fascism. We ask you, however, to find some means of checking the totalitarian barbarity of the Germans. Warnings of retribution after the war and of punishment to be meted out to war criminals is not enough. They will not break down the criminally passive complicity of the German people, who tolerate these crimes. The German people must understand now, to-day, that they are responsible for the Nazi crimes.

      They will understand this only if reprisals for mass murders in our country are directed, not against the German army, but against centres of civilian life behind the front. We know how difficult it is for a civilised human being to decide upon such action, but to-day your scruples only serve to encourage the brutality of the invader.

      We appeal to you to-day, as we appealed for your help from our besieged capital, at the moment when our country was on the point of collapse. We implore you to use those extreme measures which may in part restrain the Nazi murderers. The world must give us immediate help if our country is to conserve the minimum of strength required for the crucial moment of deliverance. Freedom, Equality, Independence.

      The Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Masses in Poland.

   2. Listen

      Letter to Clement Attlee, 1943

      Audio transcript for "Letter to Clement Attlee, 1943"

      Letter to Attlee

      Letter from the Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland to Attlee regarding the treatment of Jews in Europe. Catalogue Reference: FO371/34550

      Transcript

      COPY

      The Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland, which represents the various forms of the pre-war Socialist movement in the country, addresses you on a matter which affects not only Poland.

      The destructive activities of the Germans, who have practised on us their principles of total war, have now reached the stage of creating a ‘Lebensraum’ for the Germans. They have expelled the Polish peasants from their farms and homes in the Western provinces, which have been incorporated in the Reich. There they have murdered hundreds of thousands of people. They have robbed and pillaged them. They have massacred, using the most cruel methods, 1,500,000 of Jews – Polish citizens.

      Now they have directed the same destructive acts towards the Poles on the territories of Central Poland. Already hundreds of villages have been burned – human beings and property perishing in the flames.

      Not a day passes without mass executions. There is not a town, not a village without its gallows. Lublin and Zamose, where the head of the Gestapo Blobotznik now directs the work of extermination have been most brutally ravaged; the inhabitants are being thrown out of their homes. Able-bodied men and women are deported to forced labour in Germany. The weak are sent to camps to be murdered in gas chambers.

      At the same time the whole machinery of destruction is working at high speed in the concentration camps of Oswiecim, Treblinka, Radogoszez, Majdanek, where several hundred thousand people have already been murdered. The Germans cynically declare that they must reduce the numbers of Poles because many Germans are being killed on the fronts, and equilibrium must be maintained. Whenever they suffer defeat – as for instance now in Africa – the entire weight of their atrocities falls upon our shoulders. We are being driven into such a state that the forms of self-defence so far used may at any moment be abandoned for an open rising. This, unfortunately, would have now no chance of success, for we should have to fight with our bare hands.

      Do not take this as a complaint. Long before this war broke out we had chosen with our eyes wide open, to fight against fascism. We ask you, however, to find some means of checking the totalitarian barbarity of the Germans. Warnings of retribution after the war and of punishment to be meted out to war criminals is not enough. They will not break down the criminally passive complicity of the German people, who tolerate these crimes. The German people must understand now, to-day, that they are responsible for the Nazi crimes.

      They will understand this only if reprisals for mass murders in our country are directed, not against the German army, but against centres of civilian life behind the front. We know how difficult it is for a civilised human being to decide upon such action, but to-day your scruples only serve to encourage the brutality of the invader.

      We appeal to you to-day, as we appealed for your help from our besieged capital, at the moment when our country was on the point of collapse. We implore you to use those extreme measures which may in part restrain the Nazi murderers. The world must give us immediate help if our country is to conserve the minimum of strength required for the crucial moment of deliverance. Freedom, Equality, Independence.

      The Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Masses in Poland.

10. Source 10: Response from Clement Attlee, 1943

    1. 

       It is with the deepest feelings of sympathy and admiration that I have received on behalf of the British Labour Party the stirring message from the Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland.

       To British Labour it is an inspiring token of the faith of our Polish comrades in the cause of human liberty. We are deeply moved by the knowledge that despite the cruel persecution of the ruthless might of Fascism you remain united and resolute, true even in your bondage to our common ideals.

       To all British people your message is an inspiration to ever increasing effort against the enemy. We have followed with grief and horror the long martyrdom which the Polish nation has suffered at the hands of the German oppressors. We have watched with admiration the courageous resistance which your people have opposed (to) that tyranny. We are determined that by our effort and that of our Allies the evil forces which have caused your suffering shall be forever destroyed. To that end are striving the soldiers, sailors and airmen, the land workers and the factory workers of all the United Nations.

       Our air attacks on Germany, in which Polish airmen are playing so gallant and effective a part, are bringing home the horrors of war to the Germans. As our one object is to hasten the defeat of the Axis these attacks must be directed against the most important strategic objectives. With every day that passes their weight is increasing and the enemy is

    2. 

       no longer in any doubt of our ability to deal heavy blows at the very heart of his strength. Berlin, Essen, Nuremberg, Munich and other German cities are having to endure heavier attacks from the air than the Germans have inflicted upon Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade and London.

       We know how great is your sacrifice, how bitter your agony. But we know too that you will endure to the end. Already the Axis are on the defensive. Every day, by land, sea and air, the Forces of Freedom grow stronger. They are united in that struggle for Freedom which is also yours. They will not pause in their efforts till victory is won.

       (sgd.) C.R. ATTLEE.

       14th April, 1943.

    3. Listen

       Response from Clement Attlee, 1943

       Audio transcript for "Response from Clement Attlee, 1943"

       Response from Attlee

       Letter from Attlee to the Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland in response to their request for action. Catalogue reference: FO 371/34550.

       It is with the deepest feelings of sympathy and admiration that I have received on behalf of the British Labour Party the stirring message from the Central Leadership of the Movement of Working Classes in Poland.

       To British Labour it is an inspiring token of the faith of our Polish comrades in the cause of human liberty. We are deeply moved by the knowledge that despite the cruel persecution of the ruthless might of Fascism you remain united and resolute, true even in your bondage to our common ideals.

       To all British people your message is an inspiration to ever increasing effort against the enemy. We have followed with grief and horror the long martyrdom which the Polish nation has suffered at the hands of the German oppressors. We have watched with admiration the courageous resistance which your people have opposed (to) that tyranny. We are determined that by our effort and that of our Allies the evil forces which have caused your suffering shall be forever destroyed. To that end are striving the soldiers, sailors and airmen, the land workers and the factory workers of all the United Nations.

       Our air attacks on Germany, in which Polish airmen are playing so gallant and effective a part, are bringing home the horrors of war to the Germans. As our one object is to hasten the defeat of the Axis these attacks must be directed against the most important strategic objectives. With every day that passes their weight is increasing and the enemy is no longer in any doubt of our ability to deal heavy blows at the very heart of his strength. Berlin, Essen, Nuremberg, Munich and other German cities are having to endure heavier attacks from the air than the Germans have inflicted upon Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade and London.

       We know how great is your sacrifice, how bitter your agony. But we know too that you will endure to the end. Already the Axis are on the defensive. Every day, by land, sea and air, the Forces of Freedom grow stronger. They are united in that struggle for Freedom which is also yours. They will not pause in their efforts till victory is won.

       (sgd.) C.R. ATTLEE.

       14th April, 1943.

11. Source 11: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943

    Ghettos were set up by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe to separate Jews from the non-Jewish population. Here, Jews faced overcrowded living conditions, disease and starvation, many were also used as forced labour. Movement in and out was forbidden without special permits. The ghettos acted as holding point for deportation to concentration camps.

    1. 

       MESSAGE 1        

       dispatched 28.4.19[43] received 21.5.194[3]

       Today is the nineth [sic] day that the Ghetto fights back. SS and Wehrmacht formations lay siege to the ghetto. Artillery and flame throwers are employed and aeroplanes shower high explosives and incendiary bombs on 40,000 Jews who still remain in the ghetto. The Germans mine and blast blocks of houses where the residents have put up resistance. The ghetto is burning and smoke covers the whole city of Warsaw. Men, women and children who are not burnt alive are being murdered en masse. Mouths of drain pipes are blocked by German guards. The Jews fight back furiously and have killed and wounded about a thousand of the enemy. They burn factories and stores of German war industry. The Polish population marvel at the spirit of the Jewish defence. The reaction of the Germans is that of shame and rage. The Jewish fighting organisation addressed a proclamation to the people of Warsaw and the Polish workers parties paid tribute to the fighters of the ghetto. Only the power of the United Nations can offer immediate and effective help now. On behalf of the millions of Jews burnt and murdered and buried alive. On behalf of those fighting back and all of us condemned to die we call to the whole world;

       It is imperative that the powerful retaliation of the United Nations shall fall upon the bloodthirsty enemy immediately and in some distant future, in a way which will make it quite clear what the retaliation is for. Our closest allies must at last understand the degree of responsibility for such apathy in face of an unparalleled crime commited [sic] by the Nazis against a whole nation, of which the tragic epilogue is being enacted now. The heroic rising without precedent in history of doomed sons of the ghetto should at last awake the world to deeds commensurate with the gravity of the hour.

       Signed: Central committee of the Jewish Labour Movement. The Jewish National Committee in Poland.

       MESSAGE 2

       dispatched: May 11th, 1943- received May 21st 194[3]

       The heroic resistance of the ghetto of Warsaw continues with but a few strongholds holding out. The Jewish fighting organisation shows supreme agility and courage.  Mr. Klepfisch, an engineer, who was one of the pillars of the armed resistance, member of the bund, died like a hero. German cruelties are gruesome. Many are burnt alive, while thousands are being shot or taken away to camps, members of the presidency of the Jewish communal council were shot. They were: Lichtenbaum, Wielikowski, Sztolcman, Szereszewski Stanislaw. A few thousand remained underground and in the store-houses of the ghetto. The store-house defences are being overcome after stiff resistance the same goes for the shelters. The Germans are shelling and setting on fire one block of houses after another. Explosions and fires […]

    2. Listen

       Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943

       Audio transcript for "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943"

       Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

       Description of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April/May 1943 as the Germans attempted their ‘liquidation of the Ghettos’. Catalogue reference: FO 371/34550.

       Transcript

       MESSAGE 1        

       dispatched 28.4.1943 received 21.5.1943

       Today is the ninth day that the Ghetto fights back. SS and Wehrmacht formations lay siege to the ghetto. Artillery and flame throwers are employed and aeroplanes shower high explosives and incendiary bombs on 40,000 Jews who still remain in the ghetto. The Germans mine and blast blocks of houses where the residents have put up resistance. The ghetto is burning and smoke covers the whole city of Warsaw. Men, women and children who are not burnt alive are being murdered en masse. Mouths of drain pipes are blocked by German guards. The Jews fight back furiously and have killed and wounded about a thousand of the enemy. They burn factories and stores of German war industry. The Polish population marvel at the spirit of the Jewish defence. The reaction of the Germans is that of shame and rage. The Jewish fighting organisation addressed a proclamation to the people of Warsaw and the Polish workers parties paid tribute to the fighters of the ghetto. Only the power of the United Nations can offer immediate and effective help now. On behalf of the millions of Jews burnt and murdered and buried alive. On behalf of those fighting back and all of us condemned to die we call to the whole world;

       It is imperative that the powerful retaliation of the United Nations shall fall upon the bloodthirsty enemy immediately and in some distant future, in a way which will make it quite clear what the retaliation is for. Our closest allies must at last understand the degree of responsibility for such apathy in face of an unparalleled crime committed by the Nazis against a whole nation, of which the tragic epilogue is being enacted now. The heroic rising without precedent in history of doomed sons of the ghetto should at last awake the world to deeds commensurate with the gravity of the hour.

       Signed: Central committee of the Jewish Labour Movement. The Jewish National Committee in Poland.

       MESSAGE 2

       dispatched: May 11th, 1943- received May 21st 1943

       The heroic resistance of the ghetto of Warsaw continues with but a few strongholds holding out. The Jewish fighting organisation shows supreme agility and courage.  Mr. Klepfisch, an engineer, who was one of the pillars of the armed resistance, member of the bund, died like a hero. German cruelties are gruesome. Many are burnt alive, while thousands are being shot or taken away to camps, members of the presidency of the Jewish communal council were shot. They were: Lichtenbaum, Wielikowski, Sztolcman, Szereszewski Stanislaw. A few thousand remained underground and in the store-houses of the ghetto. The store-house defences are being overcome after stiff resistance the same goes for the shelters. The Germans are shelling and setting on fire one block of houses after another. Explosions and fires

12. Source 12: Letter to Winston Churchill, 1943

    This is a letter from Lucyna Tomaszewska, a Pole living in the UK, to Winston Churchill. Her comments are pertinent, especially about the bombing campaign on Auschwitz, which was rejected by the British. Her English seems very fluent, however, we do not know if she worked for the government.

    1. 

       Copy. (C 8857/34/55). 173, Park West, Edgware Road, London, W.2.

       July 26th, 1943.

       Sir,

       In your message to the Poles on the death of General Sikorski you said that your thoughts are with us and that you will not forget us. It is from these words which you addressed to us that I draw courage to write to you today.

       News has been given on the wireless tonight about the mass murders carried out by the Germans in the district of Lublin in Poland. At the death camps of Majdanek and Treblinka a monstrous operation has begun, aimed at the destruction of hundreds of thousands of human beings who, no matter how valiant, are today absolutely unable to defend themselves or to put up any effective resistance. This means that Hitler is pursuing his policy of extermination of the Polish nation, a policy which he has so far carried out with appalling results and unpunished.

       I am writing to beg you to stop German bestialities in Poland. May I take the liberty of suggesting the two measures by means of which this result could be achieved.

       1. To send a force of Allied bombers to destroy the death camps at Treblinka and Majdanek. Those camps have been built and fitted specially for mass executions (gas and steam chambers in which several thousand people can be killed daily), it would take the Germans several months to rebuilt them, during which period many thousands human beings could be saved.
       2. Immediate retaliation. I know, this is a method equally strange to the British nation as to any decent minded people, but it is the sole and only one the Germans can and will understand. If they were told that a hundred of their villages will be razed to the ground by the Allied bombers, unless mass murders in Poland or in any other occupied country, are stopped, they would stop. And if they were made to pay with the blood of their own civilians for the crimes they have committed. they would not commit them again. We know that the culprits will be punished when the Allied Nations have won this war, but by that time they will have murdered thousands and thousands more of their victims whose lives could still be saved, if the Germans were made to pay for their crimes now.

       I beg you, Sir, to forgive me for writing to you personally in this matter but, like all other Poles both in this country and at home, I firmly believe in the friendship and sympathy with our nation which you have always expressed in your speeches and I know that you will not want to leave those helpless victims in Poland to their horrible fate. The Polish authorities in Great Britain will, no doubt, seek assistance of the Allies to stop mass murders at Treblinka and Majdanek but the official negotiations always take time, while thousands are being killed every day at those death camps. In writing to you, Sir, I hope that/

       The Right Honourable
       Winston Churchill,
       The Prime Minister of Great Britain.

    2. 

       that as Leader of the United Nations, you will be in a position to act immediately in order to save those people. They are the future soldiers, ready and only waiting for weapons to take up fighting. When the time comes, they will prove themselves among the best Allied soldiers. But if the death camps at Treblinka and Majdanek are allowed to continue their work of mass slaughter, those soldiers will all be killed by the Germans before they even had a chance to fight.

       For the Polish Nation their death, the death of thousands and thousands people, will constitute a calamity from which it will take it a very long time to recover. This is why I have taken the liberty of writing to you, Sir, in hope and all earnestness, that you will help us.

       I have the honour, etc.,

       (Sgd.) Lucyna H. Tomaszewska. (Miss)

    3. Listen

       Letter to Winston Churchill, 1943

       Audio transcript for "Letter to Winston Churchill, 1943"

       Letter to Churchill

       Letter to Churchill requesting action against the persecution of Jews in Europe. Catalogue reference: FO 371/34550.

       Copy. (C 8857/34/55). 173, Park West, Edgware Road, London, W.2.

       July 26th, 1943.

       Sir,

       In your message to the Poles on the death of General Sikorski you said that your thoughts are with us and that you will not forget us. It is from these words which you addressed to us that I draw courage to write to you today.

       News has been given on the wireless tonight about the mass murders carried out by the Germans in the district of Lublin in Poland. At the death camps of Majdanek and Treblinka a monstrous operation has begun, aimed at the destruction of hundreds of thousands of human beings who, no matter how valiant, are today absolutely unable to defend themselves or to put up any effective resistance. This means that Hitler is pursuing his policy of extermination of the Polish nation, a policy which he has so far carried out with appalling results and unpunished.

       I am writing to beg you to stop German bestialities in Poland. May I take the liberty of suggesting the two measures by means of which this result could be achieved.

       To send a force of Allied bombers to destroy the death camps at Treblinka and Majdanek. Those camps have been built and fitted specially for mass executions (gas and steam chambers in which several thousand people can be killed daily), it would take the Germans several months to rebuilt them, during which period many thousands human beings could be saved.

       Immediate retaliation. I know, this is a method equally strange to the British nation as to any decent minded people, but it is the sole and only one the Germans can and will understand. If they were told that a hundred of their villages will be razed to the ground by the Allied bombers, unless mass murders in Poland or in any other occupied country, are stopped, they would stop. And if they were made to pay with the blood of their own civilians for the crimes they have committed. they would not commit them again. We know that the culprits will be punished when the Allied Nations have won this war, but by that time they will have murdered thousands and thousands more of their victims whose lives could still be saved, if the Germans were made to pay for their crimes now.

       I beg you, Sir, to forgive me for writing to you personally in this matter but, like all other Poles both in this country and at home, I firmly believe in the friendship and sympathy with our nation which you have always expressed in your speeches and I know that you will not want to leave those helpless victims in Poland to their horrible fate. The Polish authorities in Great Britain will, no doubt, seek assistance of the Allies to stop mass murders at Treblinka and Majdanek but the official negotiations always take time, while thousands are being killed every day at those death camps. In writing to you, Sir, I hope that as Leader of the United Nations, you will be in a position to act immediately in order to save those people. They are the future soldiers, ready and only waiting for weapons to take up fighting. When the time comes, they will prove themselves among the best Allied soldiers. But if the death camps at Treblinka and Majdanek are allowed to continue their work of mass slaughter, those soldiers will all be killed by the Germans before they even had a chance to fight.

       For the Polish Nation their death, the death of thousands and thousands people, will constitute a calamity from which it will take it a very long time to recover. This is why I have taken the liberty of writing to you, Sir, in hope and all earnestness, that you will help us.

       I have the honour, etc.,

       Signed Lucyna H. Tomaszewska. (Miss)

13. Source 13: The Hoefle Telegram, 1943

    This is an extract from a document that consists of several radio telegrams. They were sent by SS Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on 11 January 1943 to SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin and SS Obersturmbannführer Franz Heim in German-occupied Kraków.

    Herman Hoefle was the deputy of Odilo Globocnik during Operation Reinhard – the plan to exterminate the Jewish population of occupied Poland.

    The telegram was decoded by British codebreakers at Bletchley Park in January 1943. The message used letter codes (L, B, S,T) and numbers. At the time it was not realised that it referred to the total number of murders for the Operation Reinhard death camps: Lubin-Majdanek; Belzec; Sobibor; Treblinka.

    The word ‘arrivals’ in the telegram means the number of those killed.

    1. 

       13/15 OLQ de OMQ 1005 83 234 250

       State secret! To the commander of the Security Police, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer HEIM, KRAKAU. Re: 14-day report operation REINHARD. Reference: radio telegram from there

       Recorded arrivals until December 42, L 12761, B 0, S 515, T 10335, totalling 23611. Situation 31 December 42, L 24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355, totalling 1274166. SS and police leader of Lublin, HOFLE, Sturmbannfuhrer

    2. Listen

       The Hoefle Telegram, 1943

       Audio transcript for "The Hoefle Telegram, 1943"

       Extract of a larger coded telegram reporting on movements of Jews to death and concentration camps. Catalogue reference: HW 16/23.

       13/15 OLQ de OMQ 1005 83 234 250

       State secret! To the commander of the Security Police, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer HEIM, KRAKAU. Re: 14-day report operation REINHARD. Reference: radio telegram from there

       Recorded arrivals until December 42, L 12761, B 0, S 515, T 10335, totalling 23611. Situation 31 December 42, L 24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355, totalling 1274166. SS and police leader of Lublin, HOFLE, Sturmbannfuhrer

Background information

In unleashing the Second World War, the Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of around 50 million people, including civilians and soldiers. The Nazis and their allies committed genocide against Europe’s Roma, murdered millions of Catholic Poles and Soviet Prisoners of War, and caused death and destruction throughout occupied Europe. The genocide of the Jews that has come to be known as the Holocaust was both intertwined with and separate from these other killings.

For the Nazis, murdering the Jews was part of a vast scheme for the racial reorganisation of Europe, which would create a pan-European Germanic empire with ‘Nordics’ at the top of the hierarchy, Slavs at the bottom, and Jews eliminated. At the same time, the Nazi obsession with the Jews was different from the way it regarded other ‘races’: Jews were both hated and feared and – at least at the level of the Nazi leadership – were regarded as the masterminds behind a vast world conspiracy that aimed to destroy the ‘Aryan race’.

Many of the regimes that allied themselves with Nazi Germany – especially Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Vichy France and Hungary – found that the Nazis’ anti-Jewish obsession chimed with their own aspirations for creating ethnically homogeneous nation states. Even if they were not as driven by antisemitism as the Nazis, such regimes made use of the atmosphere created and licence granted by the Nazis to fulfill their own ambitions. As a result, as it played out across Europe, the Holocaust was so far-reaching because of the role played by collaborators, from states to institutions such as auxiliary police battalions, to individuals.

As the documents in this important collection show, the murder of the Jews was a complex series of interrelated events. There was not one single, unidirectional policy that saw Jews everywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe ghettoised and then deported to death camps. Rather, the experiences of different Jewish communities were very different, depending on what sort of occupation regime they lived under, the attitude of local administrations, the extent of SS penetration in the area, military circumstances, the Germans’ need for labour – especially towards the end of the war – and other factors such as possibilities for escape, hiding or resistance. What we call ‘the Holocaust’ was a continent-wide crime: a series of vastly different experiences for all involved, united by the fact that everywhere the Nazis aimed to kill Jews as and when they could.

The complexity of the Holocaust means that documents such as the Riegner telegram or the Lichtheim telegram are all the more remarkable, since they show that some concerned contemporaries were trying to make sense of what the Nazis were doing to Europe’s Jews. Plans of the Auschwitz and Treblinka camps, reports from the Warsaw ghetto and from Polish representatives in London, all show that knowledge of the murders was circulating. Nevertheless, it was only in July 1944, when most of the Jews of Hungary (the last remaining large Jewish population group in Europe outside of Russia) had already been murdered, that Churchill could write that ‘we are in the presence of one of the greatest and most horrible crimes ever committed.’ In other words, how to interpret the documents remains a matter of historical debate: do they show that the Allies understood that the Nazis intended to wipe out the Jews and that therefore they should have done more to save them? Or should they not be read in isolation but placed in the broader context of wartime issues, which might reveal that they were received and understood piecemeal, so that no real comprehension of the extent of Nazi plans prevailed? In the presence of images such as Violette Le Coq’s drawings of Ravensbrück (in The National Archives because they were used as evidence at the 1946 Ravensbrück trial), such questions might seem irrelevant. But beyond the fact that the Nazis killed six million Jews, more or less destroying an ancient civilisation, only questions such as these, which rely on documents such as those held at The National Archives to establish interpretations and meanings, can help us in some measure to grapple with the enormity of the Nazis’ crimes.

Further information

Related resources

Teaching resource

The Holocaust, part two

This resource contains records from the years 1944 to 1946 about the systematic persecution and murder of Jewish people by Nazi Germany, and its perpetrators.

Related education sessions

Education session

The Holocaust

This thought-provoking workshop at The National Archives looks at what British government documents can tell us about what happened in the Holocaust.

External links

holocaust.org.uk

The collection of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum

The National Holocaust Museum holds a collection of artefacts relating to the Holocaust.

het.org.uk

Holocaust Educational Trust

The Holocaust Educational Trust works to ensure that people from every background are educated about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today.