The Höfle Telegram (or Hoefle Telegram) is a cryptic one-page document, discovered in 2000 among the

declassified Declassification is the process of ceasing a protective classification, often under the principle of freedom of information. Procedures for declassification vary by country. Papers may be withheld without being classified as secret, and event ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

archives of the

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...

in Kew, England. The document consists of several radio telegrams in translation, among them a top-secret message sent by ''SS

Sturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Sturmbannführer'' (; ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, and the NSFK. The rank originated from German shock troop units of the First World War ...

'' Hermann Höfle on 11 January 1943; one, to '' SS

Obersturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Obersturmbannführer'' (Senior Assault-unit Leader; ; short: ''Ostubaf'') was a paramilitary rank in the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) which was used by the SA ('' Sturmabteilung'') and the SS (''Schutzstaffel''). The rank of ''Oberstu ...

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
'' Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, and one to ''SS Obersturmbannführer'' Franz Heim in German-occupied

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

(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 Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...

including at Belzec (B), Sobibor (S),

Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...

(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 The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...

''. Even though the Holocaust railway transportation records were notoriously incomplete as revealed by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes against the Polish Nation, the quoted numbers shed a new light on the evidential standard of proof for the scope of the crimes committed by the SS. The telegram gave train arrivals in the prior fortnight, as well as cumulative arrivals until 31 December 1942, for the extermination camps during the deadliest phase of the "

Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...

Background

Ostbahn Krakau shuttle train Warschau-Treblinka

All Holocaust trains were run by the ''Deutsche Reichsbahn''. The SS paid German Railways the equivalent of a third class ticket for every prisoner transported via the Holocaust trains (''Sonderzüge'') to the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard from

Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities fur ...

and

Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland Ghettos were established by Nazi Germany in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland after the German invasion of Poland. Yitzhak Arad, ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.''Biuletyn ...

.Types of Ghettos. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
/ref> Children under four went free. The payment was collected from the SS by the German Transport Authority on behalf of the ''

Reichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...

'' according to a schedule, at a cost of 4

Pfennig The 'pfennig' (; . 'pfennigs' or ; symbol pf or ₰) or penny is a former German coin or note, which was the official currency from the 9th century until the introduction of the euro in 2002. While a valuable coin during the Middle Ages, ...

per track kilometer. The actual

waybill A waybill ( UIC) is a document issued by a carrier giving details and instructions relating to the shipment of a consignment of goods. Typically it will show the names of the consignor and consignee, the point of origin of the consignment, its d ...

s did not include the number of prisoners in each cattle car because calculations were predetermined. The standard means of delivery was a 10 metre long

covered goods wagon A covered goods wagon or van is a railway goods wagon which is designed for the transportation of moisture-susceptible goods and therefore fully enclosed by sides and a fixed roof. They are often referred to simply as covered wagons, and this is ...

, although third class passenger carriages were also used with

train ticket A train ticket is a ticket issued by a railway operator that enables the bearer to travel on the operator's network or a partner's network. Tickets can authorize the bearer to travel a set itinerary at a specific time (common for long-distance ...

s paid by the Jews themselves, when the ''SS'' wanted to keep up the "resettlement to work in the East" myth. The Deutsche Reichsbahn manual, which was used by the ''SS'' for making payments, had a listed carrying capacity of each trainset setup at 50 boxcars, each loaded with 50 prisoners. In reality, boxcars were crammed with up to 100 persons and routinely loaded from the minimum of 150% to 200% capacity for the same price. Notably, during the mass deportation of Jews from the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

in 1942, trains carried up to 7,000 victims each, which reduced the cost to the SS by more than half. According to an expert report established on behalf of the German "Train of Commemoration" project, the receipts taken in by the state-owned ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' for mass deportations in the period between 1938 and 1945 reached a sum of US $664,525,820.34.

Translation

The Höfle Telegram is a decoded message, encrypted at source by the German Enigma machine. A missing "5" is added in the table, and is considered to be the correct figure, because only the number 713,555 yields the correct total of 1,274,166, and also the

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 statis ...

of 1943 substantiates that the total number of 1,274,166 Jews subjected to "special treatment" ( Sonderbehandlung) in the

General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...

district of German-

occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...

is correct to the last incongruous digit. The British decoded version of the Telegram would almost certainly be a transcription error, since British security clearly did not realise what this message was about (see above). It is unlikely that the numerical mistake would have been noticed by them at the time. Admittedly the interception and decoding was not 100% accurate (see reproduction).

Importance of the document

According to the

US National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

and the Holocaust historians, "it appears the British analysts who had decrypted the message missed the significance of this particular message at the time. No doubt this happened because the message itself contained only the identifying letters for the extermination camps followed by the numerical totals. The only clue would have been the reference to Operation Reinhard, the meaning of which – the plan to eliminate Polish Jewry that was named after the assassinated SS General

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

– also probably was unknown at the time to the codebreakers at

Bletchley Bletchley is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated in the south-west of Milton Keynes, and is split between the civil parishes of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford and West Bletchley. Bletchley is best know ...

." The Höfle's radio telegram is one of two evidential proofs making use of the very precise figures, suggesting their common origin; the other one is the

to Himmler by professional statistician Dr Richard Korherr from January 1943. Both of them quote exactly the same number of Jews "processed" during Operation Reinhard. Apart from providing identical totals as of December 31, 1942, the Höfle Telegram also indicates that the camp at Lublin (Majdanek) was part of

Odilo Globocnik Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globocnik (21 April 1904 – 31 May 1945) was an Austrian Nazi and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. He was an official of the Nazi Party and later a high-ranking leader of the SS. Globocnik had a leading role in Operation Re ...

's Operation Reinhard, a fact that historians previously had not fully realised.

Notes

Citations

External link