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intercepted British messages on Hungarian Jews deportations of Letter of July 5, 1944
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1944-07-05 Intercepted Warnings: Nazi Letter Forwards Report on the Extermination of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau

On July 5, 1944, Horst Wagner, head of Jewish affairs at the German Foreign Office, sent critical information in a letter to SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Security Police and SD. Wagner shared an intercepted radio message between the British Embassy in Bern and the Foreign Office in London. According to the intercepted communication, a Hungarian official had reported that “nearly half of the total 800,000 Jews in Hungary have already been deported” and were “being sent to the death camp at Birkenau near Oswiecim in Upper Silesia.” The message urged immediate military action – “bombing of the railway lines from Hungary to Birkenau” and “strikes on the facilities of the death camps” to disrupt the extermination operations.

Kinna Report of December 16, 1942 on Auschwitz
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1942-12-16 Kinna’s Report on Auschwitz Extermination Policy: “According to RSHA orders, Poles, unlike Jews, must die a natural death”

In late 1942, several thousand Poles were deported from Zamosc, Poland, following Nazi racial classifications that determined their fate. This process was part of Himmler’s directive on November 12, 1942, to make Zamosc the “first German settlement area in the Generalgouvernement”. Those deemed racially “inferior” were sent to Auschwitz, with a transport of 644 individuals departing Zamosc on December 10, 1942. On December 16, SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Kinna from the migration central offic, wrote a report on the transport. He summarized his conversation with Auschwitz deputy commandant Hans Aumeier, who disclosed that “Imbeciles, idiots, cripples, and sick people must be removed from the camp promptly through liquidation to unburden the camp. This measure, however, encounters complications, as per RSHA orders, Poles, unlike Jews, must die a natural death.”

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1942-05-16 Police Radio Message Reporting Escape of Six Jews Near Kulmhof (Chełmno) Extermination Camp

Radio message from the Gendarmerie District Ostrowo to the Gendarmerie post in Adelnau, dated May 16, 1942. The message reported that “six Jews escaped from a transport in Eichstätt”. Eichstätt, known in Polish as Dąbie, is the closest town to Kulmhof (Chełmno) extermination camp, approximately 6 km southeast of Chełmno nad Nerem.

Memo of 17 February 1943
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1943-02-17 A Memo on Missing Equipment for Auschwitz’s Crematorium 2 “Gas Cellar” (Gaskeller)

Memo on a telephone call on 17 February 1943 between Topf engineers Karl Schultze and Fritz Sander, in which Sander noted that the “ventilation blower No. 450 for the gas cellar” (Gaskeller) of the crematorium 2 in Auschwitz- Birkenau could not be located. Schultze requested that the blower should be produced on an expedited basis and dispatched, as it “is urgently required” in Auschwitz.

Letter dated February 3, 1944
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1944-02-03 Eichmann’s Letter to Himmler on Sonderkommando 1005 at Fort Kauen: “Avoid Insight into the Sonderkommando’s Operation”

On February 3, 1944, Eichmann’s office dispatched a letter, signed by the head of the RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The letter sought a decision regarding the handling of SS and police personnel implicated in the escape of Jewish prisoners from Sonderkommando 1005 at Fort Kauen (Kaunas in Lithuanian). Kaltenbrunner asked that “the matter be concluded within our jurisdiction”, keeping the the SS and police judiciary out of it to prevent “another group of persons gaining insight into the operation of the Sonderkommando”. Led by Paul Blobel, Sonderkommando 1005, was tasked with the responsibility of erasing evidence of Nazi atrocities in the East by exhuming and incinerating bodies from mass graves.

Memo dated April 5, 1943
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1943-04-05 Nazi Foreign Office Official Acknowledges Mass Shootings of Jews in Riga

The memo dated April 5, 1943, from Adolf Windecker (Representative of the Foreign Office to the Reich Commissioner for the Eastern Territories) discusses the “treatment of Jews of foreign nationality in the Eastern Territories.” It specifies that all Jews confined to ghettos cannot be deported to other countries due to “significant security police concerns.” Windecker acknowledges the large-scale killings in Riga noting that “many thousands of the local and Reich German Jews in the Riga area have been shot over time.” As a result, he questions the feasibility of using any Jews for exchange purposes, as he fears that doing so would “be exploited abroad as evidence of the executions carried out here.”

Event Report USSR No. 101 on Babi Yar
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1941-10-02 The Einsatzgruppen Event Report USSR No. 101: Execution of “33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941”

On October 2, 1941, Office IV of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) issued Event Report USSR No. 101 (Ereignismeldung UdSSR Nr. 101). Einsatzgruppe C reported on the massacre at the Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) near Kiev that Paul Blobel’s Sonderkommando 4a “executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941”. Meanwhile, Einsatzgruppe D stated that “between September 16 and 30, 22,467 Jews and Communists were executed, bringing the total to 35,782”.

Intercepted Telegram of January 11,1943 by Herman Höfle
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1943-01-11 The Höfle Telegram: A Report On The Death Toll of Operation Reinhard

On 11 January 1943, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, coordinator of Operation Reinhard(t), sent top-secret telegrams on its death toll to SS officials Adolf Eichmann at the RSHA in Berlin and Franz Heim at the Security Police in Kraków. These messages – intercepted by the British – provide precise data on the mass deportations – totaling 1,274,166 Jewish victims – to the extermination camps at Belzec (B), Sobibor (S), Treblinka (T), and the Majdanek / Lublin (L) concentration camp by the end of 1942.

Report of June 22, 1943 on Unfit Jews, Exhumation and Cremation at Kulmhof (Chełmno)
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1943-06-22 Nazi Secret Service Classified Report: Unfit Jews, Exhumation and Cremation at Kulmhof (Chełmno)

On June 22, 1943, the Forschungsstelle A Litzmannstadt – a local intelligence branch under Hermann Göring’s Secret Service – issued a classified report on the dissolution of the Kulmhof (Chełmno) extermination camp by April 1, 1942. The camp served a destination for “Jews unfit for labor from the Warthegau, especially from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto”. The document further notes that”the police guards there were ordered to exhume the Jews buried in a small forest near Kulmhof and to burn them in specially constructed ovens”.

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