Höfle telegram

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deciphered Höfle's radio message from January 11, 1943

The so-called Höfle telegram is a radio message with which Hermann Höfle from the staff of SS and Police Leader Lublin , Odilo Globocnik , reported figures on the Jewish victims who were murdered in the Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps up to the end of 1942 were. The source was not published until 2001. Previously published research on the number of victims in these camps must be compared.

Source transmission

The intercepted radio message was deciphered five days later by the British interception service in Bletchley Park , but its meaning was not recognized. Stephen Tyas discovered the decrypted copy of the radio message in a collection that the British National Archives (then: Public Record Office) had released in 2000 and recognized its meaning. The document was first published in a trade journal in 2001.

On January 11, 1943, the British listening service was able to pick up two radio messages from the German police station in Lublin with the callsign OMQ. From the first radio message, only the first part could be properly received and identified as a secret Reich matter with the addressee “To the Reich Security Main Office , for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann , Berlin”. It is not clear why the radio message addressed to Eichmann was sent to the Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA) with the recipient identification OMX : "Possibly as a copy for information purposes or for forwarding to Eichmann."

The second radio message, also classified as a "Secret Reichssache", followed five minutes later. It was addressed to the [Deputy] Commander of the Security Police in Cracow, Franz Heim ; The SS and Police Leader Lublin is listed as the sender, and Sturmbannführer [Hermann Julius] Höfle is mentioned by name. This radio message - decrypted and written down by British evaluators - is known as the “Höfle telegram”.

Since both radio messages originated from the same point at a short time apart, the historian Peter Witte suspects that they had the same content.

content

The subject of the so-called “Höfle Telegram” states “14-day report for the Reinhart deployment” and provides the following data, letters and numbers:
“Fs. Access until 31.12.42 “
L [= Lublin / Majdanek ] 12761, B [= Belzec ] 0, S [= Sobibor ] 515, T [= Treblinka ] 10335
together 23611.
“ Stand…. [Gap: per? ] 12/31/42 ”
L [= Lublin / Majdanek] 24733, B [= Belzec] 434508, S [= Sobibor] 101370, T [= Treblinka] 71355 [lies: 713555]
together 1274166

interpretation

In connection with the aforementioned Reinhardt campaign, the letters can be broken down and identified with the known extermination camps. The numbers mentioned are the number of murdered Jews: The last-mentioned sum of 1,274,166 is also listed in the Korherr report , which compiled statistical information on the “ final solution to the Jewish question ”. A sentence in which the word " special treatment " was deleted on Himmler's instructions contains exactly this number: " 1,274,166 Jews were smuggled through the camps in the Generalgouvernement ..."

Other figures in the Höfle telegram also appear plausible or can be confirmed by other sources. The last transport before the closure of the Belzec extermination camp is documented on December 11, 1942. In 1971, Wolfgang Scheffler determined in a trial report for Belzec a number of victims of 441,442 and his calculation is roughly in the range of the number 434,508 mentioned in the radio message. The lower number of 515 people who were murdered in Sobibor in the second half of December agrees with the information that no more than one deportation train arrived during the period in question . As a total number for 1942 in Sobibor, Scheffler's minimum estimate of 102,577 does not deviate too far from the information in the Höfle telegram.

What is new is the information that the Lublin-Majdanek camp was apparently also temporarily involved in the Reinhardt campaign. Witte and Tyas point to more than 38 labor camps located near Lublin that were closed by the end of 1942. Jews were probably taken from there to Majdanek and murdered without being registered in the camp beforehand. The two historians state that research is needed on this. A recent research on the Lublin / Majdanek camp considers this interpretation by Witte / Tyas to be inconsistent. Historian Barbara Schwindt considers it unlikely, given the circumstances, that a large number of victims were murdered and cremated there at the end of December 1942.

The number given for Treblinka is incorrectly reproduced: When decoding or writing down, the last digit has apparently been omitted. The total shown is only possible if instead of 71,355 a six-digit number, e.g. B. 713,550, because the number of victims for Treblinka at the time of the telegram could not have been much lower than that - earlier estimates indicated numbers between 730,500 and 763,000 for the end of 1942, which were obvious times.

The source - also reprinted as VEJ 9/204 - is considered reliable.

literature

  • Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas: A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during "Einsatz Reinhard" 1942 . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, 2001, 3, ISSN  8756-6583 , pp. 468-486, on the Internet Num. 15, Vol. 3 .
  • Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Functional change in the context of the "final solution". Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3123-7 , (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2004).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see keyword Höfle (accessed on November 26, 2008)
  2. ↑ Peter Witte / Stephen Tyas: A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during 'Einsatz Reinhard' 1942 In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 (2001) V 3, pp. 468-486, on the Internet Num. 15, Vol. 3 .
  3. ↑ Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 9: Poland: Generalgouvernement August 1941–1945 , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71530- 9 , p. 570 in note 4.
  4. ↑ Franz Heim was Eberhard Schöngarth's deputy - Witte / Tyas: A New Document ... p. 480, note 5.
  5. ↑ For the writing of Reinhard [t] see “… together 12741662” Die Zeit 03/2002
  6. ^ Robert Kuwałek: Bełżec . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 357ff.
  7. ↑ Witte / Tyas: A New Document ... p. 473 with note 22.
  8. ↑ Witte / Tyas: A New Document ... p. 472, note 17.
  9. ^ Witte / Tyas: A New Document ... p. 473.
  10. ↑ Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek Concentration and Extermination Camp - Functional Change in the Context of the “Final Solution”. Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3123-7 , pp. 183-186
  11. ^ Witte / Tyas: A New Document ... p. 472 with note 18: Yitzhak Arad assumes 763,000 for April 1943.
  12. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews , reviewed special edition in one volume, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56681-3 , pp. 859 f.