Riegner telegram

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Riegner telegram forwarded on August 10, 1942

The Riegner telegram (also known as the Riegner report ) of August 8, 1942 was probably the first communication to the Allies about the beginning of the extermination of Jews in Poland ( Aktion Reinhardt ) by a credible German informant. The sender was Gerhart M. Riegner , office manager of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva . The German industrialist Eduard Schulte had informed Riegner about the so-called " final solution ". The telegram initially found no faith among the Allies.

He sent the following text to London and Washington via British and American diplomatic channels, here translated from English:

"Received an alarming report in the Führer Headquarters, the plan was discussed and considered to exterminate all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany, number three and a half to four million after deportation and consolidation in the East, in one fell swoop and thus to solve the Jewish question in Europe once and for all. Action planned for autumn. Methods including hydrocyanic acid under discussion. We are sending this information with due reservation, as we cannot verify the accuracy. Our informant is said to have close links with the highest German authorities and his reports are generally reliable. Please inform New York and ask questions. "

Although news of mass executions in Poland and on the Eastern Front in Europe had already reached England and the USA, the American State Department assessed the contents of the telegram as "wild rumors inspired by Jewish fears"; the Foreign Office did not forward the telegram at first. It was not until August 28, 1942 that it reached the head of the World Jewish Congress in New York, Rabbi Stephen Wise , who then informed Felix Frankfurter , a judge at the Supreme Court . He made sure that the report reached the White House . The Vatican and the ICRC were also informed. Both claimed that they could not verify the credibility of the report. So far it has not been conclusively clarified how the Vatican reacted to the memorandum.

However, the Interallied Declaration on the Extermination of the Jews , which was drawn up and published from December 17, 1942, made it clear that the Allies now had extensive knowledge. The then Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. told US President Roosevelt at the beginning of 1944 that “certain officials in our State Department” had failed and that it was a duty “to prevent the extermination of Jews in Germany-controlled Europe”.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The original telegram with Riegner report was issued in Geneva on 8 August. In the course of transmission via diplomatic channels, copies were made that were encrypted and then decrypted again. See Gutman, Jäckel, Longerich, Schoeps (Ed.): Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. The persecution and murder of the European Jews. Volume 2. Argon Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-87024-300-7 .
  2. ↑ Jonathan Gorsky: Pius XII. and the Holocaust In: Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith, Irena Steinfeldt: The Holocaust and the Christian World. Yad Vashem 2000, pp. 133-137 (English).
  3. ↑ Monty Noam Penkower: The World Jewish Congress Confronts the International Red Cross during the Holocaust. Jewish Social Studies 1979, pp. 229-256 (English).
  4. ^ Corrado Augias: The secrets of the Vatican p. 340 ff, CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61363-0 .
  5. ↑ World Jewish Congress welcomes opening of the Vatican archives. Jewish General , February 28, 2020.