Abstract
Information about German atrocities against Jews during the Second World War reached Britain throughout the conflict. The arrival of information, however, did not mean that it was equally accessible to all sections of the population. Like all information entering Britain during the war, it was subjected to various control processes—including different forms of censorship and journalistic and editorial decisions (newspapers, the BBC). The manner in which recipients comprehended the information was also coloured by their pre-occupations (social, political), prejudices (including antisemitism), their understanding of atrocity news in a context in which the reporting of atrocities during the Great War had been criticised and, at the level of senior government officials and senior politicians, geo-political concerns and a determination not to undermine domestic morale in the context of war. It is therefore important to recognise that different groups had different access to information about atrocities against Jews, and that key gatekeepers exercised influence on how the information that reached wider publics was actually understood.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, an 18 April 1943 report about Auschwitz is described as having been written by a member of the Polish Underground who had reached Britain and having never been made public. Gilbert, however, failed to inform readers that the report was written specifically for Ignacy Schwarzbart, a moderate Zionist on the Polish National Council, and that Schwarzbart in turn distributed the report to a range of Jewish colleagues in Britain, the United States and Palestine. See Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (London: Pimlico, 1981/2001), p. 130; Yad Vashem Archive M2/261. The report was intercepted by British censorship and reached the Foreign Office on 4 May 1943. See NA.FO 371/34552.
- 2.
Wiener Library, UNWWC Archive, Correspondence with National Offices, Reel 41, p. 14. The charge file was logged in by the UNWCC Secretariat on 3 June 1944. See Charge File 20, Reel 14, p. 171.
- 3.
See Michael Smith, ‘Bletchley Park and the Holocaust’, in Understanding Intelligence in the Twentieth Century: Journeys in Shadows, eds. Len Scott and Peter Jackson (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 111–121. Also see National Archives (NA) (Kew), HW16/23 (Höfle telegram); HW16/38 German Police Decodes, no. 1. Traffic 15 October 1943 (Sobibór).
- 4.
Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 17 December 1942, vol. 385 cc2082-7.
- 5.
See Republic of Poland Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland (London: Hutchinson, 1942).
- 6.
Christopher Browning, Initiating the Final Solution: The Fateful Months of September–October 1941 (Washington, DC: USHMM, 2003).
- 7.
NA.HO 213/953, 3, “Report on Jewry, No. 3, Part I.”
- 8.
Naomi Shepherd, Wilfrid Israel: German Jewry’s Secret Ambassador (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), p. 216.
- 9.
The Bund Report of May 1942 can be found at the Polish Underground (1939–1945) Study Trust (PUMST) MSW 16/26.
- 10.
National Archives—NA 371/31097 (66).
- 11.
Brendan Bracken, Bestiality…Unknown in any Previous Record of History… (London:Polish Ministry of Information, 1942), p. 38.
- 12.
Jeremy Harris, ‘Broadcasting the Massacres: An Analysis of the BBC’s Contemporary Coverage of the Holocaust’, in Critical Concepts in Holocaust Historical Studies,eds. David Cesarani, Volume 5 (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 298–323.
- 13.
Szmul Zygielbojm, Stop Them Now: German Mass Murder of Jews in Poland, Foreword by Josiah Wedgwood (London: Liberty Press, 1942).
- 14.
Robert Vansittart, ‘Never in History…’, The Listener Vol. XXVIII, No. 713 (10 September 1942), pp. 325–326.
- 15.
Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: The Suppression of the Final Truth About Hitler’s Final Solution (New York: Henry Holt, 1980/1998), p. 79.
- 16.
See NA.FO 371/31097 (178). This data arrived in Bern from the Polish Underground in August 1942 and was received by the Polish representative Dr. Julius Kuhl (an Agudist). It was sent via Polish diplomatic cable to the US and reached Jacob Rosenheim and Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz. Rabbi Stephen Wise was informed on 3 September. On 4 September the Polish Ambassador to the US passed the information to the British Ambassador who, in turn, forwarded it to the Foreign Office. However, it was not made clear to the Foreign Office that the original source of the data was the Polish Underground. The courier who delivered the information to Switzerland was Napoleon Segieda, also known as Jerzy Salski—the man who informed Schwarzbart about Auschwitz on 18 April 1943. See Adam Puławski, Wobec “niespotykanego w dziejach mordu”: Rząd RP na uchodźstwie, Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj, AK a eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej od “wielkiej akcji” do powstania w getcie warszawskim (Chełm: Biblioteka Rocznika Chełmskeigo,2018), p. 140.
- 17.
Winston Churchill, ‘War Situation’, Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 8 September 1942, vol 383 cc82-110.
- 18.
Richard Bolchover, British Jewry and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 98.
- 19.
BBC Written Archives Centre, C165. PWE Central Directive: ‘Special annex on the extermination of the Jews’.
- 20.
NA. FO 371/34361 (CM255).
- 21.
BBC WAC European News Bulletins—Polish 1943.
- 22.
Fajner’s testimony also informed a report prepared by Hersz Wasser (secretary of Oneg Shabbat) which was passed on to the Polish Home Army in Warsaw on 23 March 1942. The Information and Propaganda Office (BIP) of the Polish Underground State drew on this data in a 25 March 1942 report entitled Masowe egzekucje Żydów w pow. kolskim [Mass execution of Jews in the Kolski district]. This report, in turn, was included with the material carried by Norrman to Stockholm, but did not reach London until 23 June as it followed a different transit protocol. See Adam Puławski, W Obliczu Zagłady: Rząd RP na Uchodźstwie, Delegatura RP na Kraj, ZWZ-AK wobec deportacji Żydów do obozów zagłady (1941–1942) (Lublin: IPN,2009).
- 23.
United States National Archives, RG 218 Joint Chief of Staff CCS 334, Polish Liaison, Washington, Folder 3.0. 18 May 1943.
- 24.
BBC Monitoring at Caversham monitored broadcasts in Europe, and the Press Reading Bureau in Stockholm provided a Daily Digest to British officials.
- 25.
NA. FO 371/34361 (CM255).
- 26.
NA. CAB 65/18/41 (WP (41 269), 12 November 1941, p. 2.
- 27.
NA. INF 1/64, 7 March 1941.
- 28.
NA. INF 1/770, Memo 314, Document 20 (p. 7), Publicity Division, Planning Section meeting, 10 July 1939.
- 29.
Indicatively, see NA INF 292 Home Intelligence report 115.
- 30.
NA. INF 1/251, 25 July 1941, p. 2.
- 31.
BBC Archive, ‘Memo on Reporting Atrocities in Occupied Europe’. Available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20190509064600/; http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/holocaust/5138.shtml?page=txt.
- 32.
Harris, “Broadcasting”, p. 300.
- 33.
Polish Underground Movement (1939–1945) Study Trust AALC, Kol 133/296. Also see Attlee’s letter to Ciołkosz, AALC, Kol 133/297 (5 April 1944).
- 34.
Hoover Institute Archives, Polish Information Center Papers, Box 3.9, cable from London, 21 March 1944.
- 35.
- 36.
NA.FO 371/31097.
- 37.
Laqueur “The Terrible Secret”, p. 221.
- 38.
The WPISs have been published. See Clifton Child (ed.), Great Britain. Foreign Office. Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries (London: Kraus International Publications, 1983).
- 39.
NA FO 366/1276 (14 October 1941) ‘PID: The Functions of the PID are: … ’.
- 40.
Mikołajczyk had, on 29 June, passed documents to Frank Savery (perhaps the writer of the Polish section of the WPIS in 1942), and it is possible that an agreement was made to lower the numbers reported in the Bund Report.
- 41.
Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), p. 18.
- 42.
Some of Schwarzbart’s bulletins can be found in the Board of Deputies of British Jews archive at the London Metropolitan Archive—ACC 3121 C11 012 087.
- 43.
Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 54. Educators well understand the power of eyewitness testimony. This is one of the reasons why students are invited to listen to survivors rather than simply being instructed to read their accounts.
- 44.
People’s History Museum, Manchester, LP/ID/21. ‘London Information of the Austrian Socialists in Great Britain’, 15 September 1942, p. 4.
- 45.
Szmu Zygielbojm,. ‘Untitled Speech’ in Fight for Freedom Round Table Conference ‘Germany’s Thirty Years’ War’ 18th December, 1942 in London (London: Fight for Freedom Editorial and Publishing Services, 1943), p. 48.
- 46.
Victor Gollancz, Shall Our Children Live or Die? A Reply to Lord Vansittart on the German Problem (London: Gollancz, 1942).
- 47.
Victor Gollancz, Let My People Go: Some Practical Proposals for Dealing with Hitler’s Massacre of the Jews and an Appeal to the British Public (London: Gollancz, 1943).
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Fleming, M. (2020). Knowledge in Britain of the Holocaust During the Second World War. In: Lawson, T., Pearce, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Britain and the Holocaust. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55932-8_6
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