From late 1941 through 1942, with the full knowledge of the Allies, the #Nazis methodically worked out a quieter, cheaper, and more efficient manner of killing the #Jews of #Europe.
The Nazis would use a prussic acid-based pesticide called #ZyklonB (bottom left) that would be released in large gas chambers to be built in death camps, mostly in #Poland.
Using this process, the Nazis would be able to “cleanly and quietly” murder masses of Jews all at once, in a matter of minutes, and without a single shot fired.
After successful small-scale testing of Zyklon-B, the Nazis held the #Wannsee Conference in #Berlin on January 20, 1942, to discuss implementing the plan.
Surviving protocols and notes from the conference show high-ranking Nazis (including Heydrich and Eichmann, among others) discussed the use of short-term #Jewish #slave labor for the able-bodied who would be worked and starved to death, the separation of Jewish men from Jewish women at the camps, the mass deportations to the camps from across Nazi-occupied #Europe, and the mass gassing of the Jews to ensure an efficient and quiet “Final Solution to the Jewish problem.”
The less than 90-minute conference laid out the plan and gave the orders to carry it out.
With at least 1.5 million (probably more) #European Jews already dead, the Nazis had now marked for death the remaining Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, which they estimated at 5-6 million.
And so, the #gaschambers and #crematoria were built while Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of logistics for the mass deportation of Jews to the camps.
On July 15, 1942, the Nazis had made enough progress for the first deportation train to leave from #Holland to #Auschwitz (by Sept 1944, more than 100 trains would deliver more than 100,000 Jews of Holland to the death camps).
The very next day, on July 16, 1942, the occupied #French submitted to their Nazi overlords and began the roundup of #France’s Jews en masse with 13,152 Jews, including 4,051 children, in what is known as the “Vel ’d’Hiv.”
All 13,152 French Jews of all ages were transported by train to Auschwitz in southern Poland while trapped inside locked, cramped cattle cars without food, without water, and without toilets.
These “round-ups” were not quiet, and Allied sources were well-placed in Holland and France. So, the Allies knew almost immediately about the mass deportations of Jews to the east.
Meanwhile, Eduard Schulte – one of the most powerful, prominent, and successful #German industrialists, who also enjoyed a career of unrivaled political access – secretly wanted to see #Hitler and the Nazis gone from power. He kept his intentions quiet while repeatedly using his access (which included Hitler’s headquarters) to gain useful information to pass along to the Allies.
In late July 1942, Schulte was once again inside Hitler’s headquarters when he heard Nazi leadership discussing the progress of the “Final Solution” including the status of the mass deportation of Jews to the camps in the east and the preparations for mass usage of gas chambers to exterminate all remaining Jews with Zyklon-B.
Schulte decided to bring this information to Gerhard Riegner, a representative of the World Jewish Congress who was living in neutral #Switzerland on August 1, 1942.
Riegner knew Schulte was a serious man. And Riegner was able to ask around and learn that Schulte was already a trusted Allied informant who had repeatedly passed them useful and truthful information (including the exact timing of the German invasion of the Soviet Union).
So, Riegner went to his friend, Paul Chapin Squire, the #American consul in #Geneva, and asked to use the #StateDepartment’s cable facilities to send a message to #Rabbi Stephen Wise – the head of the American Jewish #Congress and the most prominent American Jew at the time who was also friendly with several government officials, and who even met with FDR from time to time.
By using the State Department cables, it ensured Riegner both that his message would be sent securely and that the U.S. State Department would be an immediate recipient of his message.
The following text comes directly from Reigner’s cable of August 11, 1942:
Received ALARMING REPORT that in #FUHRER’S HEADQUARTERS plan discussed … according to which ALL JEWS IN COUNTRIES OCCUPIED OR CONTROLLED BY #GERMANY … should after deportation and concentration in east be EXTERMINATED … to resolve once and for all the Jewish Question in Europe … Methods under discussion including PRUSSIC ACID … Informant stated to have close connections with HIGHEST GERMAN AUTHORITIES and his REPORTS … [are] RELIABLE.
By this time, the State Department already knew of the mass deportations of Jews from #Paris, Holland, #Berlin, #Vienna, and #Prague to Nazi camps in the east. And, just four days later, on August 15, 1942, they learned of another mass round-up of Jews in France with 7,000 more Jewish men, women, and children being arrested and handed over to the Germans.
The U.S. government also knew by then that a minimum of 1-1.5 million Jews had already been killed over the last year during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
In other words, the Reigner cable describing the purpose of the mass deportations of Jews eastward seemed a logical, if horrifying, explanation of the Nazis’ intentions.
The State Department then confirmed from its own intelligence sources that Riegner was “a serious and balanced individual and that he would never have come to the Consulate … if he had not had confidence in his informant's reliability.”
After sending the cable, Riegner next went to the British Consulate where he provided the same information and issued the same cable.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department discussed what to do with the information. By consensus, they decided to ignore the cable and also to suppress it to ensure it did not leak out to anyone else, and they marked it “unconfirmed information” to let everyone know it was to be ignored. Therefore, the U.S. State Department never gave the cable to Rabbi Wise.
The #British Foreign Office, however, made the opposite decision. While they ultimately deferred in many ways to the U.S., the British would (at least initially) not suppress or ignore the Riegner cable, and they even delivered it to the London branch of the World Jewish Congress on August 17, 1942, as requested by Riegner.
In fact, that’s the only way Rabbi Wise found out about the existence of Riegner’s cable. He received it from the London World Jewish Conference on August 28, 1942 – 17 days after Riegner had tried to send him the cable.
When Rabbi Wise read the words, “ALL JEWS,” “EXTERMINATED,” “PRUSSIC ACID,” and “RELIABLE,” his heart skipped a beat, and then he immediately got in touch with Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles – a man who had previously seemed sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
But, though he did not say so at the time to Rabbi Wise, Welles was already very familiar with the Riegner cable, and he was even among those in the State Department who approved the plan to ignore the cable, suppress the cable, and ensure the cable did not reach Rabbi Wise.
Now realizing Rabbi Wise had found out anyway, Welles immediately instructed Rabbi Wise that he was not to share this information with anyone or allow it to be leaked to the press, at least until the U.S. government could “confirm its validity.”
Meanwhile, Riegner had been pacing the wood off the floor in his home in Geneva waiting for some sort of response. Since August 13, 1942, “neutral” Switzerland had begun forcing Jews, mostly French refugees that had escaped to Switzerland, back across the border to be included in the mass deportations.
Riegner had immediately done what he thought was the best thing to do to try to save as many of the condemned Jews as possible. The complete silence that followed his cable would later be described by Riegner as “my great agony.”
Meanwhile, during this same moment in the war, mostly British troops (and, increasingly, American troops) were facing off against the Nazis’ most decorated, successful, and respected general, Erwin Rommel, in the campaign in North #Africa.
This was one of the most dangerous points in the war when the scales could have permanently tipped in the Nazis’ favor.
Rommel was closing in on the #SuezCanal and eventually the entire #MiddleEast. Such a Nazi victory could have been enough to “checkmate” the Allies by cutting off their oil supply while leaving the Germans flush with as much oil as they could ever need along with control over the means to move it.
The British and American dependence on a #Soviet victory over the Nazis was, at that time, also very much in doubt.
The Soviets were locked in the most bitter fight of their lives with the infamous Battle of #Stalingrad beginning on August 23, 1942.
The British and Americans knew that the fall of the #SovietUnion to the Nazis meant the end of the eastern campaign, and a Nazi windfall of Russia’s vast territory, resources, and military capacity.
One could argue this was the most dangerous point in the entire war.
But the Allies received other horrifying news in August 1942. Only this news was horrifying enough to the Allies to cause them to take humanitarian action.
Specifically, the Nazi-occupied Greeks were running out of food and were facing a famine of biblical proportions that could have killed upwards of 2 ½ million #Greek citizens.
The Americans and the British took decisive action to save the Greeks from starvation despite all of #Greece being occupied by the Nazis.
Even in this decisive moment, the Americans and the British gave their time and diverted their resources to ensure 35,000 tons of food would be delivered into the hands of the Greek people (and not just stolen by the Germans) every month without fail for the next two years.
Great Britain was ultimately in charge of shipping the food, and it was all paid for by the United States to the tune of $30 million per year ($60 million in total).
Remember what the Allies did to save 2 ½ million Greeks “at risk” of starvation as you continue to read about the Allies’ reaction to the continued receipt of more and more corroborating and irrefutable information and evidence of the deportation and mass slaughter of the Jews of Europe.
· What did the Allies do to help, as they did the Greeks, to save the Jews in Nazi concentration camps who were starving to death?
· What did the Allies do to save the enslaved Jews who were being worked to death?
· What did the Allies do to save the millions of Jews being marched to their deaths in the gas chambers?
The simple answer to all three questions is, “nothing.”
These Jews were not “simply” human beings “at risk” of starvation. They were Jewish men, women, children, and babies who were all marked for systematic, industrialized death by gassing simply because they were born Jewish; and both the Americans and the British knew it.
$60 million and countless diverted resources were spent just to feed the Nazi-occupied Greeks – a noble humanitarian gesture. But, in contrast, $0 was spent and no resources were diverted to save any of the condemned millions of Jews.
Even once the political pressure finally turned (after at least 4-5 million Jews were already dead) and #FDR finally acted in January 1944, his action was limited to setting up the small and dramatically understaffed War Refugee Board with the goal of saving at least some of Europe’s Jews.
After more than a year and a half in operation, the War Refugee Board received total funding in the amount of $11 million (a meager 18% of the amount the U.S. spent just feeding the Nazi-occupied Greeks).
And over the course of that same year and a half, the War Refugee Board save maybe as many as 200,000 Jews. And this is wonderful. But it does not change the fact that 6 million innocent Jewish men, women, children, and babies were dead, and they certainly did not all have to be.
In comparison, the Americans and the British fed the starving Greeks for two years and are said to have saved around 2 ½ million Greeks while a comparatively meager 200,000-300,000 Greeks were dead.
Meanwhile, the small group of Jews in Washington and London who were “in the know,” but who were sworn to secrecy, waited in nervous limbo to hear something, anything, from their governments about the truth of the Reigner cable and what great plans the Allies might have to help save the Jews of Europe.
They waited. And their days of waiting turned into weeks. Then their weeks of waiting turned into months.
During these months of waiting, the U.S. government was receiving report after report from all different sources – each one confirming the fate of Europe’s Jews, and each one ignored and suppressed along with the Riegner cable.
The deafening silence continued.
As one example, on August 26, 1942 (two days before Rabbi Wise even received the Riegner cable), U.S. ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile and a close personal friend of FDR, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., wrote an 8-page, single-spaced memorandum directly to President Roosevelt, which he marked as having the “highest importance.”
Biddle wrote in painstaking detail of the deportations of Europe’s Jews and of Hitler’s Final Solution that would see the entire Jewish people annihilated. A few sentences from his memo sent directly to FDR follows:
"There is no precedent for such organized wholesale dying in all Jewish history, nor indeed in the whole history of mankind."
"This war is not being waged with bombs and guns alone, nor will the nature of the coming world be determined only by the outcome of battles. The victory of morality is the issue in this war. Should we succeed in no more than mitigating the enemy's foul design against his most hated victim it would amount to partial victory."
The memo was ignored. The memo was suppressed.
Shortly thereafter, the U.S. government received confirmation from another source who had just returned from a different European country.
Dr. Donald A. Lowrie was a well-respected American with close contacts in the federal government, and he had just returned from assignment in the unoccupied portion of southern France doing work for the #YMCA.
Lowrie had seen the deportation process of the Jews first-hand that was being performed by French #Vichy collaborators. And he understood those Jews were likely being shipped to their deaths.
Lowrie recalled with tears the way the Nazis tried to calmly reassure the French Jewish adults that they were merely being resettled to the east where there would be more room for them to live and more food for them to eat; and they were told their children would join them shortly, and together they could start new lives.
Then, Lowrie broke down as a recalled the agony on the faces of the Jewish parents who were tempted to believe the Nazis, but who were also terrified both of leaving their children behind and of helping the Nazis by bringing their children along to the likely certain death they faced.
The Jews who wanted to believe the Nazis, believed them. After all, it had been well-established for the prior 1,000 years that Jews were commonly expelled from their host European nations – it had happened many dozens of times, and each time the Jews managed to start over again.
But the French Jews were not stupid, and all of them had heard the rumors. They all knew of the Nazis’ brutality and their desire to rid the world of every Jew.
Deep down, most of them – whether they admitted it to themselves or not – knew that the only thing awaiting them to the east was death.
Lowrie recalled watching as these French Jewish parents agonizingly debated which fate was more likely and what to do with their children. Lowrie would later write that he would “never forget the moment when these truckloads of children left the camps with parents crying in one last gaze to fix an image to last an eternity.”
Lowrie’s story was ignored. Lowrie’s story was suppressed.
Meanwhile, all throughout these months of silence during August, September, October, and November of 1942, Riegner continued to receive further details on the fate of the Jews from reliable first-hand witnesses. Each time, he went to the U.S. Consulate and delivered a cable with the new information.
Every cable was ignored. Every cable was suppressed.
Next came information directly to the U.S. government from yet another trusted source. Specifically, a minister stationed in Berne, Switzerland named Leland Harrison ensured delivery of four sworn statements from direct eyewitnesses to the extermination of Jews every day in the death camps by the thousands using Zyklon-B gas.
After nearly four months of ignoring and suppressing the details of the Jews’ extermination, the U.S. government finally realized that the details were coming in too quickly and from too many different sources in too many different countries. The U.S. could not suppress the information any longer.
On November 24, 1942, Welles asked Rabbi Wise to come to his office, which he did at once.
Mr. Welles sat Rabbi Wise down and confirmed the truth of the systematic slaughter of every Jew in Europe was happening.
Specifically, he told Rabbi Wise, the U.S. government had received enough documents and information (some of which he held in his hand as he spoke) that, “I regret to tell you … that these [documents] confirm and justify your deepest fears.”
Welles told a stunned silent Rabbi Wise, “For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these [documents] to the press, but there is no reason why you should not. It might even help if you did.”
No longer actively suppressing the information about the Jews’ extermination, the American government was still not ready to officially admit to it.
So, Rabbi Wise sat for a moment in thought. He wondered how many hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis as he sat quietly waiting to hear back from the U.S. government. And then he realized that even after all that time, the only thing the U.S. government was prepared to do was “permit him” to tell the press what he knew.
Rabbi Wise hastily called for a press conference where he announced that the State Department had confirmed to him that all of Europe’s Jews were in the process of being systematically slaughtered. He also reported his belief that at least 2 million European Jews were already dead (the number was actually much higher by then), and that at least 4-5 million more were in immediate peril.
The following day, on November 25, 1942, newspapers across the U.S. finally informed the American public that the Nazis were systematically murdering every Jew in Europe using gas chambers in death camps located mostly in Poland.
headline read, “Two Million Jews Slain.” But this news was not big enough to make it above the fold. It was not even front-page news. The Washington Post did what so many others did. They buried the story on page 6.
