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Riegner Telegram
The Riegner Telegram was a telegraph message sent on 8 August 1942 from Gerhart Riegner, then Secretary of World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to its New York and London offices. The cable confirmed the alarming reports that had reached the West previously about the German intention to mass murder the European Jews. Riegner was office manager of the WJC in Geneva. He was indirectly informed about the German plans for the final solution by German industrialist Eduard Schulte. Through his British and American diplomatic channels (Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise of the American Jewish Congress in New York and Sydney Silverman, a Jewish Member of Parliament and Chairman of the British Section, World Jewish Congress) Riegner sent the following message to his contacts via the British Foreign Office and the State Department in Washington: [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined and such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the optical telegraph of Claude Chappe, invented in the late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the Napoleonic era. The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, initially used mostly as an aid to railway signalling. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumner Welles
Benjamin Sumner Welles (October 14, 1892September 24, 1961) was an American government official and diplomat in the Foreign Service. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1936 to 1943, during Roosevelt's presidency. Born in New York City to a wealthy, well-connected political family, Welles graduated from Harvard College in 1914. He entered the Foreign Service at the advice of Franklin Roosevelt, who was a family friend. Welles was excited by Woodrow Wilson's ideas about how American principles could reorder the international system based on liberal democracy, free-trade capitalism, international law, a league of nations, and an end to colonialism. Welles specialized in Latin American diplomatic affairs and served several posts in Washington and in the field. President Calvin Coolidge distrusted Welles because of his divorce and private sex life. He left public service and from bases in his two mans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Prosecution Book-Poland
''Special Prosecution Book-Poland'' (german: Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen, pl, Specjalna księga Polaków ściganych listem gończym) was the proscription list prepared by the Germans immediately before the onset of war, that identified more than 61,000 members of Polish elites: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, actors, former officers, and prominent others, who were to be interned or shot on the spot upon their identification following the invasion. History For nearly two years before the invasion of the Poland, between 1937 and 1939, the ''Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen'' was being secretly prepared in Germany. It was compiled by the "Zentralstelle IIP Polen" (Central Unit IIP-Poland) unit of the ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' or Gestapo ("Secret State Police") with the help from some members of the German minority in Poland. The Central Unit IIP-Poland was created by Reinhard Heydrich to co-ordinate the ethnic cleansing of all Poles in "Operation Tannenberg" and the ''Intelligenzakti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Höfle Telegram
The Höfle Telegram (or Hoefle Telegram) is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the declassified World War II archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England. The document consists of several radio telegrams in translation, among them a top-secret message sent by ''SS Sturmbannführer'' Hermann Höfle on 11 January 1943; one, to '' SS Obersturmbannführer'' Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, and one to ''SS Obersturmbannführer'' Franz Heim in German-occupied Kraków (Cracow).Public Record Office, Kew, England, HW 16/23, decode GPDD 355a distributed on 15 January 1943, radio telegrams nos 12 and 13/15, transmitted on 11 January 1943. The Telegram contains the detailed statistics on the 1942 killings of Jews in the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard including at Belzec (B), Sobibor (S), Treblinka (T), and at Lublin-Majdanek (L). The numbers were compiled and quoted by Höfle, likely from the very precise records shared with the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn''. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Responsibility For The Holocaust
Responsibility for the Holocaust is the subject of an ongoing historical debate that has spanned several decades. The debate about the origins of the Holocaust is known as functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jews, Jewish people as early as 1918, and personally oversaw its execution. However, functionalists such as Raul Hilberg argue that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives that were taken by bureaucrats in response to other policy failures. To a large degree, the debate has been settled by acknowledgement of both centralized planning and decentralized attitudes and choices. The primary responsibility for the Holocaust rests on Hitler and the Nazi Party Axis leaders of World War II#The Third Reich (Nazi Germany), leadership, but operations to persecute Jews, Romani genocide, Romani people, Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany, homosexuals and oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerstein Report
The Gerstein Report was written in 1945 by Kurt Gerstein, ''Obersturmführer'' of the ''Waffen-SS'', who served as Head of Technical Disinfection Services of the SS in World War II and in that capacity supplied the hydrogen cyanide-based pesticide Zyklon B from Degesch (''Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung'') to Rudolf Höss in Auschwitz and conducted the negotiations with the owners. On 18 August 1942, along with Rolf Günther and Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Gerstein witnessed the gassing of some 3,000 Jews in the extermination camp of Belzec in occupied Poland. The report features his eyewitness testimony. It was used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials. When Gerstein surrendered to the French Commandant in the occupied town of Reutlingen on 22 April 1945, he was sent to the town of Rottweil where he was placed under "honorable captivity" and given accommodation in the Hotel Mohren. There he composed his report, first in French and then in German. Personal details ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korherr Report
The Korherr Report is a 16-page document on the progress of the Holocaust in German-controlled Europe. It was delivered to Heinrich Himmler on March 23, 1943, by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the '' SS'' and professional statistician Dr Richard Korherr under the title ''die Endlösung der Judenfrage'', in English the ''Final Solution to the Jewish Question''.Richard Korherr'' DIE ENDLÖSUNG DER EUROPÄISCHEN JUDENFRAGE'' Der Inspekteur für Statistik beim Reichsführer SS, Berlin, 1943. NS-Archiv.de in German. Commissioned by Himmler, Korherr calculated that, from 1937 to December 1942, the number of Jews in Europe had fallen by 4 million. Between October 1939 and December 31, 1942 (see, page 9 of the Report), 1.274 million Jews had been "processed" at the camps of the General Government (Occupied Poland) and 145,000 at the camps in ''Warthegau'' (location of Kulmhof). The decrease of Soviet Russian Jews from the territories overrun in Operation Barb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katzmann Report
The Katzmann Report (or the Final Report by Katzmann) is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials (USA No. L-18, Exhibit-277) and numerous other proceedings against war criminals abroad. It is a leather-bound report by '' SS-Gruppenführer'' Fritz Katzmann, German SS and Police Leader (SSPF) in the District of Galicia, entitled "Lösung der Judenfrage im Distrikt Galizien" (The Solution of the Jewish Question in the District of Galicia), submitted on June 30, 1943 to his superior officer, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) "Ost" (East), '' SS-Obergruppenführer'' Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger. It describes part of Operation Reinhard. The Katzmann Report was published in German and illustrated with photographs of the systems of persecution. A Polish translation of the report was published in the 1950s, but was subject to communist censorship and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pilecki's Report
Witold's Report, also known as Pilecki's Report, is a report about the Auschwitz concentration camp written in 1943 by Witold Pilecki, a Polish military officer and member of the Polish resistance. Pilecki volunteered in 1940 to be imprisoned in Auschwitz to organize a resistance movement and send out information about the camp. He escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943. His was the first comprehensive record of a Holocaust death camp to be obtained by the Allies. The report includes details about the gas chambers, "''Selektion''", and sterilization experiments. It states that there were three crematoria in Auschwitz II capable of cremating 8,000 people daily. Pilecki's Report preceded and complemented the ''Auschwitz Protocols'', compiled from late 1943, which warned about the mass murder and other atrocities taking place at the camp. The ''Auschwitz Protocols'' comprise the '' Polish Major's Report'' by Jerzy Tabeau, who escaped with Roman Cieliczko on 19 November 1943 an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raczyński's Note
Raczyński's Note, dated December 10, 1942, and signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Raczyński, was the official diplomatic note from the government of Poland in exile regarding the extermination of the Jews in German-occupied Poland. Sent to the foreign ministers of the Allies, it was the first official report on the Holocaust to inform the Western public about these crimes. It identified Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór by name as extermination camps. It was also the first official speech of one of the governments of Nazi-occupied Europe in defense of all Jews persecuted by Germany – not only citizens of their country. History The note was written by Polish diplomat, Edward Raczyński, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Polish Exile Government in London, based on documents transported in the form of microfilm (materials prepared by the Jewish Affairs Department of the Polish Home Army Headquarters) to London by courier Jan Karski and confirmed by his certificate, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Cornides
Wilhelm Cornides (20 July 1920 – 15 July 1966) was a Wehrmacht sergeant in World War II, serving in the General Government territory. He was the author of the ''Cornides Report'', which contains his account of the extermination of Jews at Belzec during the Holocaust. In December 1946 Cornides became the founder of ''Europa-Archiv'' (renamed ''Internationale Politik'' in 1995), the first post-war magazine in Allied-occupied Germany. In 1955 he was instrumental along with Theodor Steltzer, Minister-President of Schleswig Holstein and former member of the dissident Kreisau Circle, in founding the German Council on Foreign Relations (''Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik'', DGAP). Through his mother Cäcilie (Cilla) von Oldenbourg, Cornides was a member of the Oldenbourg family, owners of ''Oldenbourg Verlag'' publishers; a German publishing house founded in 1858 by Rudolf Oldenbourg. Holocaust witness On 30 August 1942, during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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