Policy

Short version of KOrherr report
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1943-04-19 / The Short Version of the Korherr Report: “European Jewry has probably lost almost half of its total population”

On April 19, 1943, SS statistician Richard Korherr submitted a shortened version of his Korherr Report – the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” – to the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, for presentation to Adolf Hitler. In the report, Korherr estimated that “the reduction of Jewry in Europe from 1937 to the beginning of 1943 is to be estimated at 4½ million” and noted that “only part of the deaths of Soviet-Russian Jews in the occupied eastern territories could be recorded, while those in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.” He concluded that “European Jewry since 1933 has probably lost almost half of its total population,” of which “only about half has flowed to other continents.”

Letter dated April 10, 1943
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1943-04-10 / Himmler’s Order to Sanitize the Korherr Report: “At No Point Should There Be Any Mention of Special Treatment of the Jews”

In April 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered changes to the Korherr Report, the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution” he considered as quite good “for camouflage purposes”. A letter dated April 19, 1943 instructed that the term “special treatment of the Jews” be removed from the report. The euphemism “passed through the camps in the General Government and the camps in the Warthegau” was to be used to denote the death toll from the extermination camps at Bełżec, Treblinka, Sobibór, and Kulmhof (Chełmno).

Letter dated April 9, 1943 Himmler letter on Korherr report
Contemporary Source

1943-04-09 / Himmler’s April 1943 Letter on the Korherr Report

A brief letter written by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, on April 9, 1943, to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Security Police and SD, makes direct reference to the so-called Korherr Report – a statistical analysis compiled by Richard Korherr, the SS’s chief statistician, on the progress of the “Final Solution”. In it, Himmler acknowledges the report’s value as “material for possible later times” and, above all, “for camouflage purposes”. At the same time, he orders that the report must not be published or circulated further. Himmler closes the letter by stressing his overriding concern that “what remains most important to me is that Jews are now being shipped off to the East as much as is at all humanly possible.”

Cover Letter to Korherr report on Final Solution of the Jewish Question dated April 28, 1943
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1943-04-28 / The Korherr Report: Nazi Statistics on the “Final Solution” Through Early 1943

This post reproduces the so called Korherr Report, a statistical report on the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” up to 1943 and its accompanying cover letter from April 1943. Authored by SS statistician Richard Korherr for Heinrich Himmler, the report presents – through a veneer of euphemism and bureaucratic precision – the numerical decline of European Jewry via excess of deaths over births, emigration, deportation and so-called “evacuations” and “special treatement”. The report concludes that “European Jewry since 1933 … likely lost nearly half of its population”. A substantial portion of this loss is attributed to 1,274,166 Jews “processed through camps in the General Government” (i.e. Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor), 145,301 Jews “processed through camps in the Warthegau” and 633,300 Jews “evacuated in the Russian territories”.

Letter dated July 11, 1943 (NS 6) Bormann 1943 circular Jewish Question Nazi secrecy
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1943-07-11 / Bormann’s Secret Instruction on Public “Handling of the Jewish Question”

A classified Nazi Party circular dated July 11, 1943, on the “Handling the Jewish Question” issued by Martin Bormann and distributed among Nazi party and state officials. In this document, Bormann instructs that any public mention of “a future final solution must be avoided”. Instead, officials were to state that Jews were being “brought in collectively for appropriate labor deployment.”

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