The Vrba–Wetzler report is one of three documents that comprise what is known as the ''
Auschwitz Protocols
The ''Auschwitz Protocols'', also known as the ''Auschwitz Reports'', and originally published as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau'', is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was ...
'', otherwise known as the Auschwitz Report or the Auschwitz notebook. It is a 33-page eye-witness account of the
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
in
German-occupied Poland
German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration.
The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
during the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occup ...
and
Alfréd Wetzler
Alfréd Israel Wetzler (10 May 1918 – 8 February 1988), who wrote under the alias Jozef Lánik, was a Slovak Jewish writer. He is known for escaping from Auschwitz concentration camp and co-writing the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which helped halt ...
, two Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on 10 April 1944, wrote the report by hand or dictated it, in Slovak, between 25 and 27 April, in
Žilina
Žilina (; hu, Zsolna, ; german: Sillein, or ; pl, Żylina , names in other languages) is a city in north-western Slovakia, around from the capital Bratislava, close to both the Czech and Polish borders. It is the fourth largest city of Sl ...
,
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
. Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovak
Jewish Council
A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every com ...
typed up the report and simultaneously translated it into German.
The
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
had known since November 1942 that Jews were being killed ''en masse'' in Auschwitz. The Vrba–Wetzler report was an early attempt to estimate the numbers and the most detailed description of the gas chambers to that point. The publication of parts of the report in June 1944 is credited with helping to persuade the Hungarian regent,
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya ( hu, Vitéz nagybányai Horthy Miklós; ; English: Nicholas Horthy; german: Nikolaus Horthy Ritter von Nagybánya; 18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957), was a Hungarian admiral and dictator who served as the Regent o ...
, to halt the deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz, which had been proceeding at a rate of 12,000 a day since May 1944. The first full English translation of the report was published in November 1944 by the United States
War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency to aid civilian victims of the Axis powers. The Board was, in the words of historian Rebecca Erbelding, "the only time in American hi ...
.
Auschwitz Protocols
The Vrba–Wetzler report is sometimes referred to as the ''Auschwitz Protocols'', although in fact the ''Protocols'' incorporated information from three reports, including Vrba–Wetzler. Under the title "German Extermination Camps—Auschwitz and Birkenau", the ''Auschwitz Protocols'' was first published in full in English on 25 November 1944 by the Executive Office of the United States
War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency to aid civilian victims of the Axis powers. The Board was, in the words of historian Rebecca Erbelding, "the only time in American hi ...
.Gilbert (1989) 305 Miroslav Kárný writes it was published on the same day the last 13 prisoners, all women, were gassed or shot in crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The document combined the material from the Vrba–Wetzler report and two others, which were submitted together in evidence at the
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945 ...
as document no. 022-L, exhibit no. 294-USA.Conway (2002), Appendix I, 292–293, n. 3.
The ''Protocols'' included a seven-page report from Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz as chapter III to the Vrba–Wetzler report and an earlier report, known as the "Polish Major's report", written by
Jerzy Tabeau
Jerzy Tabeau (18 December 1918 – 11 May 2002), an imprisoned Polish medical student, was one of the first escapees from Auschwitz to give a detailed report to the outside world on the genocide occurring there. First reports in early 1942 had be ...
. Tabeau escaped from Auschwitz on 19 November 1943 and compiled his report between December 1943 and January 1944. This was presented in the ''Protocols'' as the 19-page "Transport (The Polish Major's Report)". Rosin and Mordowicz escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944, using the demotion they received after Vrba and Wetzler's escape a month earlier, and met up with those escapees in Slovakia to contribute to the ''Protocols.'' The full text of the English translation of the ''Protocols'' is in the archives of the War Refugee Board at the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum holds the records of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States (1933–1945). Located on the grounds of Springwood, the Roosevelt family estate in Hyde Park, New ...
in New York.
Contents
How it was written
According to the report's first post-war Slovak edition, ''Oswiecim, hrobka štyroch miliónov ľudí'' ("Auschwitz, the tomb of four million"), published in Bratislava in 1946, the report was first written in Slovak by Vrba and Wetzler, beginning on 25 April 1944, and simultaneously translated into German by Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovakian Jewish Council in Žilina. It was written and re-written several times. Wetzler wrote the first part, Vrba the third, and they wrote the second part together. They then worked on the whole thing together. Wetzler confirmed this version of how the report was written in a letter to
Miroslav Kárný
Miroslav Kárný (9 September 1919 – 9 May 2001) was a historian and writer from Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Early life and education
Kárný was born into an assimilated Jewish family. His mother ran a shop selling candy and haberdashery and his ...
, dated 14 April 1982.Kárný (1998), 564, n. 5. Oscar Krasniansky, an engineer and stenographer, translated it from Slovak into German with the help of Gisela Steiner. They produced a 40-page report in German, which was completed by Thursday, 27 April. Vrba wrote that the report was also translated into Hungarian.Vrba (2002), 402–403. The original Slovak version of the report was not preserved. Historians studying the Holocaust today usually base their research on the German translation, which Allied forces also used when translating the report into English shortly after the end of the war.
The Vrba–Wetzler report contains a detailed description of the geography and management of the camps, and of how the prisoners lived and died. It lists the transports that had arrived at Auschwitz since 1942, their place of origin, and the numbers "selected" for work or the gas chambers. Kárný writes that the report is an invaluable document because it provides details that were known only to prisoners, including, for example, that discharge forms were filled out for prisoners who had been gassed, indicating that death rates in the camp were actively falsified.Kárný (1998), 555.
Crematoria
The report contains sketches and information about the layout of the gas chambers, describing the large room where victims were made to undress before being pushed into the gas chambers, as well as the attached crematoriums. In a deposition for the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, and in his book ''I Cannot Forgive'' (1964), Vrba said that he and Wetzler obtained the information about the gas chambers and crematoria from the ''
Sonderkommando
''Sonderkommandos'' (, ''special unit'') were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber vict ...
''
Filip Müller
Filip Müller (3 January 1922 – 9 November 2013) was a Jewish Slovak Holocaust survivor
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and i ...
and his colleagues, who worked there. Müller confirmed Vrba's story in his ''Eyewitness Auschwitz'' (1979). The report offered a description of the camp's four crematoria.
Jean-Claude Pressac
Jean-Claude Pressac (3 March 1944 – 23 July 2003) was a French pharmacist by profession, who became a published authority on the Auschwitz concentration camp homicidal gas chambers deployed during the Holocaust in World War II. He was the aut ...
, a French specialist on the gas chambers, concluded in 1989 that, while the report was wrong on certain issues, it "has the merit of describing exactly the gassing process in type II/III Krematorien as from mid-March 1943. It made the mistake of generalizing internal and external descriptions and the operating method to Krematorien IV and V. Far from invalidating it, the discrepancies confirm its authenticity, as the descriptions are clearly based on what the witnesses could actually have seen and heard."Pressac (1989), 464, Auschwitz scholar
Robert Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt (born 15 August 1955) is a Dutch author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics ...
agreed, writing in 2002: "The description of the crematoria in the War Refugee Board report contains errors, but given the conditions under which information was obtained, the lack of architectural training of Vrba and Wetzlar ic and the situation in which the report was compiled, one would become suspicious if it did not contain errors. ... Given the circumstances, the composite 'crematorium' reconstructed by two escapees without any architectural training is as good as one could expect."van Pelt (2002), 151
Impact
Background
The dates on which the report was distributed became a matter of importance within Holocaust historiography. Vrba alleged that lives were lost in Hungary because it was not distributed quickly enough by Jewish leaders, particularly Rudolf Kastner of the Budapest
Aid and Rescue Committee
The Aid and Rescue Committee, or ''Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht'' (''Vaada'' for short; name in ) was a small committee of Zionists in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944–1945, who helped Hungarian Jews escape the Holocaust during the Ger ...
.
The Allies had been told on 12 November 1942 that Jews were being killed ''en masse'' in Auschwitz; the ''New York Times'' published a report to that effect on 25 November 1942."Details Reaching Palestine" ''The New York Times'', 25 November 1942, 10.
James MacDonald (25 November 1942) ''The New York Times'', 10. full text From March 1943, the Polish government-in-exile forwarded intelligence about what was happening inside the camp. But it remained an "inside story", according to historian Michael Fleming, unpublished or not published prominently, as a result of
anti-Semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
and the British
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
's refusal to confirm the reports as genuine. A document named ''Aneks 58'' from the Polish underground (which named its report ''Aneks'') was received by Britain's
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
in November 1942 and noted that, by the end of 1942, 468,000 Jews had been killed at Auschwitz.
Fleming writes: " ws of the true function of Auschwitz was effectively embargoed by British government policy." By issuing advice to newspaper owners and editors, by refusing to confirm Polish intelligence, and by insisting that Jews were simply citizens of the country in which they lived like any other citizen, the British government "was able to choreograph news of the Holocaust".
Distribution
Oscar Krasniansky of the Jewish Council, who translated the report into German as Vrba and Wetzler were writing and dictating it, made conflicting statements about the report after the war, according to Israeli historian
Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer ( he, יהודה באואר; born April 6, 1926) is a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University o ...
. In his first statement he said he had handed the report to Rudolf Kastner on 26 April 1944 during the latter's visit to Bratislava, but Bauer writes that the report was not finished until 27 April. In another statement, Krasniansky said he had passed it to Kastner on 28 April in Bratislava, but
Hansi Brand
Hajnalka "Hansi" Brand (née Hartmann; 26 August 1912 – 9 April 2000) was a Hungarian-born Zionist activist who was involved, as a member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, in efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.
Early life
Bra ...
, Kastner's lover and the wife of
Joel Brand
Joel Brand ( hu, Brand Jenő; 25 April 1906 – 13 July 1964) was a member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee (''Va'adat ha-Ezra ve-ha-Hatzala be-Budapest'' or ''Va'ada''), an underground Zionist group in Budapest, Hungary, that smuggled ...
, said that Kastner was not in Bratislava until August. It is clear from Kastner's post-war statements that he did have early access to the report, Bauer writes, but perhaps not in April. According to
Randolph L. Braham
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City U ...
, Kastner had a copy by 3 May, when he paid a visit to
Kolozsvár
; hu, kincses város)
, official_name=Cluj-Napoca
, native_name=
, image_skyline=
, subdivision_type1 = County
, subdivision_name1 = Cluj County
, subdivision_type2 = Status
, subdivision_name2 = County seat
, settlement_type = City
, le ...
(Cluj), his home town.Braham (2000), 95.
Kastner's reasons for not making the document public are unknown. Vrba believed until the end of his life that Kastner withheld it in order not to jeopardize negotiations between the Aid and Rescue Committee and
Kastner train
The Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, carrying over 1,600 Jews temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and safety in Switzerland after large ransom paid by Swiss Orthodo ...
. Vrba believed that Kastner suppressed the Vrba–Wetzler report in order not to damage these negotiations.
Kastner copied the German translation of the report to Géza Soós, a Hungarian Foreign Ministry official who ran a resistance group, writes Bauer. Soós gave it to József Éliás, head of the Good Shepherd Mission, and Éliás's secretary, Mária Székely, translated it into Hungarian and prepared six copies. These copies made their way to several Hungarian and church officials, including
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya ( hu, Vitéz nagybányai Horthy Miklós; ; English: Nicholas Horthy; german: Nikolaus Horthy Ritter von Nagybánya; 18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957), was a Hungarian admiral and dictator who served as the Regent o ...
's daughter-in-law.Bauer (1994), 157; Braham (2000), 95. Braham writes that this distribution occurred before 15 May. According to Bauer, Ernő Pető, a member of the Budapest Jewish Council, said he gave copies to Horthy's son; the papal nuntius
Angelo Rotta
Angelo Rotta (9 August 1872 – 1 February 1965) was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. As the Apostolic Nuncio in Budapest at the end of World War II, he was involved in the rescue of the Jews of Budapest from the Nazi Holocaust. He is ...
; and the finance minister Lajos Reményi-Schneller.
The Jewish Council in Budapest did hand the report out to individuals. The Hungarian biologist George Klein, as a teenager in Budapest, was working for the Jewish Council as a junior secretary at the time. One day in late May or early June, his boss, Dr. Zoltán Kohn, gave him a carbon copy of the report, and told him that he should tell only his closest family and friends about it. Klein told his uncle, a well-known physician, who "became so angry that he nearly hit me", and asked how he could believe such nonsense. It was the same with other relatives and friends. The older ones refused to believe it, while the younger ones believed it and wanted to act. When it came time for Klein to get on the train, he chose to run instead, and that saved his life.Klein (2011), 258–263.
According to Gábor Havas, a member of the Hungarian resistance, Soos had also prepared English translations. In December, Soos made a daring escape in a stolen German airplane to help the report reach Allied lines, not knowing that it already happened. Curiously, OSS records of Soos's interrogation that have been made public do not mention the report. According to Soos's wife, Raoul Wallenberg was also trying to transport a copy to the interim Hungarian government in Debrecen when he disappeared.
According to the
USHMM
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hist ...
(United States Holocaust Museum) the US
War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency to aid civilian victims of the Axis powers. The Board was, in the words of historian Rebecca Erbelding, "the only time in American hi ...
released the report after an unusually long delay. "''In November 1944, the WRB released a report written by escapees from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, alerting Americans to the details of Nazi mass murder using gas chambers.''"
Deportations to Auschwitz continue
On 6 June 1944, the day of the
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...
, Arnošt Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz arrived in Slovakia, having escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May. Hearing about the Battle of Normandy and believing the war was over, they got drunk using dollars they had smuggled out of Auschwitz. As a result they were arrested for violating the currency laws, and spent time in jail before the Jewish Council paid their fines.Vrba (2002), 406. On 15 June, the men were interviewed by Oscar Krasniansky. They told him that, between 15 and 27 May, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at Birkenau, and that most were killed on arrival, apparently with no knowledge of what was about to happen to them.
John Conway
John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches ...
writes that Vrba and Wetzler concluded that their report had been suppressed.
Report's arrival in Switzerland, press coverage
Braham writes that the report was taken to Switzerland by
Florian Manoliu
Florian may refer to:
People
* Florian (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
* Florian, Roman emperor in 276 AD
* Saint Florian (250 – c. 304 AD), patron saint of Poland and Upper Austria, al ...
of the Romanian Legation in Bern, and given to
George Mantello
George Mantello (born György Mandl; 11 December 1901 25 April 1992), a businessman with various diplomatic activities, born into a Jewish family from Transylvania, helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust while working for the ...
, a Jewish businessman from Transylvania who was working as the first secretary of the El Salvador consulate in Geneva. It was thanks to Mantello, according to Braham, that the report received, in the Swiss press, its first wide coverage. According to
David Kranzler
David H. Kranzler (May 19, 1930 – November 29, 2007) was an American professor of library science at Queensborough Community College, New York, who specialized in the study of the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust.
Kranzler was the author of ...
, Mantello asked for the help of the Swiss-Hungarian Students' League to make around 50 mimeographed copies of the Vrba–Wetzler and other Auschwitz reports (the ''Auschwitz Protocols''), which by 23 June he had distributed to the Swiss government and Jewish groups. The students went on to make thousands of other copies, which were passed to other students and MPs.
As a result of the Swiss press coverage, details appeared in the ''New York Times'' on 4 June, the BBC World Service on 15 June, and the ''New York Times'' again on 20 June, which carried a 22-line story that 7,000 Jews had been "dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and
Oświęcim
Oświęcim (; german: Auschwitz ; yi, אָשפּיצין, Oshpitzin) is a city in the Lesser Poland ( pl, Małopolska) province of southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rive ...
uschwitz.
On 19 June, Richard Lichtheim of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, who had received a copy of the report from Mantello,Kranzler (2000), 104. wrote to the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to say that they knew "what has happened and where it has happened", and reported the Vrba–Wetzler figure that 90 percent of Jews arriving at Birkenau were being killed. Vrba and Oscar Krasniansky met
Vatican
Vatican may refer to:
Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum
The Holy See
* The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
Swiss legate Monsignor Mario Martilotti at the
Svätý Jur
Svätý Jur (; german: Sankt Georgen; he, Yergen; hu, Szentgyörgy; formerly ''Jur pri Bratislave'') is a small historical town northeast of Bratislava, located in the Bratislava Region. The city is situated on the slopes of Little Carpathians ...
monastery in Bratislava on 20 June. Martilotti had seen the report and questioned Vrba about it for six hours.Kárný (1998), 556–557 According to Bauer, Martilotti said he was travelling to Switzerland the next day. On 25 June Pope Pius sent a public cable to Horthy, asking that he "do everything in ... ispower to save as many unfortunate people from further pain and sorrow". Other world leaders followed suit. Daniel Brigham, ''New York Times'' correspondent in Geneva, published a longer story on 3 July, "Inquiry Confirms Nazi Death Camps", and on 6 July a second, "Two Death Camps Places of Horror; German Establishments for Mass Killings of Jews Described by Swiss".
Deportations halted
On 26 June, Richard Lichtheim of the Jewish Agency in Geneva sent a telegram to England calling on the Allies to hold members of the Hungarian government personally responsible for the killings. The cable was intercepted by the Hungarian government and shown to Prime Minister
Döme Sztójay
Döme Sztójay ( sr-cyr, Димитрије Стојаковић, 5 January 1883 – 22 August 1946) was a Hungarian soldier and diplomat of Serb origin, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1944, during World War II.
Biography
Born i ...
, who passed it to Horthy. Horthy ordered an end to the deportations on 7 July, and they stopped two days later.Rees (2006), 242–243.
Hitler instructed the Nazi representative to Hungary,
Edmund Veesenmayer
Edmund Veesenmayer (12 November 1904 – 24 December 1977) was a high-ranking German SS functionary and Holocaust-perpetrator during the Nazi era. He significantly contributed to the Holocaust in Hungary and in the Independent State of Croati ...
, to relay an angry message to Horthy. Horthy resisted Hitler's threats, and Budapest's 200,000–260,000 Jews were temporarily spared from deportation, until the pro-Nazi
Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party ( hu, Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom, , abbreviated NYKP) was a far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National ...
seized power in Hungary in a coup on 15 October 1944. Henceforth, the deportations resumed, but by then, the diplomatic involvement of the Swedish, Swiss, Spanish, and Portuguese embassies in Budapest, as well as that of the papal nuncio,
Angelo Rotta
Angelo Rotta (9 August 1872 – 1 February 1965) was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. As the Apostolic Nuncio in Budapest at the end of World War II, he was involved in the rescue of the Jews of Budapest from the Nazi Holocaust. He is ...
, saved tens of thousands until the arrival of the Red Army in Budapest in January 1945. Swiss diplomat
Carl Lutz
Carl Lutz (30 March 1895 – 12 February 1975) was a Swiss diplomat. He served as the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary, from 1942 until the end of World War II. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews during the Second World War in a ...
rescued tens of thousands of Jews (according to the Yad Vashem museum display, in the order of 50,000) with help of Moshe Krausz (then Director of the Jewish Agency’s Palestine Office in Budapest) and the Zionist Youth Underground.
Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945)He is presumed to have died in 1947, although the circumstances of his death are not clear and this date has been disputed. Some reports claim he was alive years later. 31 J ...
and others in the Swedish delegation also saved tens of thousands of Jews (according to some, between 70,000 and 100,000). As can be expected, there are varying estimates of the number of Jews rescued.
See also
*
Karski's reports
Karski's reports were a series of reports attributed to Jan Karski, an investigator working for the Polish government-in-exile during World War II, describing the situation in occupied Poland. They were some of the first documents on the Holocaus ...
*
Witold'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 ...
*
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. S ...
* Bauer, Yehuda (1994). ''Jews for Sale? Nazi–Jewish Negotiations 1933–1945''. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* _________ (2002). ''Rethinking the Holocaust''. Yale University Press.
* Braham, Randolph L. (2000). ''The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary''. Wayne State University Press; first published in 1981 in two volumes.
* _________ (2011). "Hungary: The Controversial Chapter of the Holocaust", in
Randolph L. Braham
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City U ...
and
William vanden Heuvel
William Jacobus vanden Heuvel (April 14, 1930 – June 15, 2021) was an American attorney, businessman, author and diplomat of Belgian descent. He was known for advising Robert F. Kennedy during the latter's campaigns for Senate in 1964 and Presi ...
(ed.). ''The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary''. New York: Columbia University Press.
* Conway, John (2002). "The Significance of the Vrba-Wetzler Report on Auschwitz-Birkenau", in Vrba, Rudolf. ''I escaped from Auschwitz''. Barricade Books.
* _________ (1997) "The First Report about Auschwitz" Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Annual 1, Chapter 7.
*Dwork, Debórah and Van Pelt, Robert Jan (2002). ''Holocaust: A History''. W.W. Norton & Company.
*Fleming, Michael. (2014a) "Allied Knowledge of Auschwitz: A (Further) Challenge to the 'Elusiveness' Narrative" ''Holocaust and Genocide Studies'', 28 (1), 1 April, 31–57.
*Fleming, Michael (2014b). ''Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Gilbert, Martin (1989). "The Question of Bombing Auschwitz", in Michael Robert Marrus (ed.). ''The Nazi Holocaust: The End of the Holocaust''. Part 9. Walter de Gruyter.
* Hilberg, Raul (2003). ''The Destruction of the European Jews''. Yale University Press; first published 1961.
* Kárný, Miroslav (1998). "The Vrba and Wetzler report", in Berenbaum and Gutman, ''op. cit.''
* Klein, George (2011). "Confronting the Holocaust: An Eyewitness Account", in Braham and vanden Heuvel, ''op. cit.''
* Kranzler, David (2000). ''The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's Finest Hour''. Syracuse University Press.
*Lévai, Jenö (1987). ''Eichmann in Hungary: Documents''. Howard Fertig.
*Phayer, Michael (2000). ''The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
* Pressac, Jean-Claude (1989) ''Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers'' The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation.
* Rees, Laurence (2006). ''Auschwitz: A New History''. PublicAffairs.
*Świebocki, Henryk (ed.) (1997). ''London has been informed. Reports by Auschwitz Escapees''. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
*Szabó, Zoltán Tibori (2011). "The Auschwitz Reports: Who Got Them, and When?" in
Randolph L. Braham
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City U ...
and
William vanden Heuvel
William Jacobus vanden Heuvel (April 14, 1930 – June 15, 2021) was an American attorney, businessman, author and diplomat of Belgian descent. He was known for advising Robert F. Kennedy during the latter's campaigns for Senate in 1964 and Presi ...
. ''The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary''. Columbia University Press.
* van Pelt, Robert Jan (2002). ''The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
*_________ (2011). "When the Veil was Rent in Twain", in
Randolph L. Braham
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City U ...
and
William vanden Heuvel
William Jacobus vanden Heuvel (April 14, 1930 – June 15, 2021) was an American attorney, businessman, author and diplomat of Belgian descent. He was known for advising Robert F. Kennedy during the latter's campaigns for Senate in 1964 and Presi ...
''op. cit''.
* Vrba, Rudolf (2002). ''I Escaped from Auschwitz''. Barricade Books, 2002. First published as ''I Cannot Forgive'' by Sidgwick and Jackson, Grove Press, 1963 (also published as ''Escape from Auschwitz'').
German Historical Institute The German Historical Institutes (GHI), german: Deutsche Historische Institute, (''DHI'') are six independent academic research institutes of the Max Weber Foundation dedicated to the study of historical relations between Germany
Germany, ...