Reply #36: The only revisionism I'm seeing is from you...

[Violet_Crumble]

So the US and British didn't talk to each other about what was happening in Europe? Sorry, but the US knew about the Holocaust prior to the camps. Heard of the Einsatzgruppen? See, the camps weren't the initial way that the Nazis carried out their mass-murder, and the BBC started broadcasting news of the murder of Jews in 1941 and kept on going. Of course there was the possibility that this news didn't hit the top levels of either US or British govts, because the murder of Jews didn't rate all that highly with them...

Some more FACTS for you:

In January 1942, 52,000 people were murdered by the Nazis in Kiev. When the US embassy in Moscow asked whether the victims had been Jews, they were told yes.

40,000 Jews were murdered in Vilna in 1942. The US knew about this too - the US ambassador in London reported it to Washington once that news hit some American and Jewish newspapers.

In July 1942, Dr. Reigner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland sent this cable to London and Washington:

Received alarming report that in Fuhrer's headquarters plan discussed and under consideration according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled Germany numbering 3½ -4 millions should after deportation and concentration in East be exterminated at one blow to resolve once for all the Jewish Question in Europe stop the action reported planned for autumn methods under discussion including prussic acid stop we transmit information with all reservation as exactitude cannot be confirmed stop informant states to have close connections with highest German authorities and his reports generally speaking reliable.

Reigner was cautious about what he'd been told, and he did try to find out if his informant could be trusted, but that wasn't all the evidence that came from Reigner. In October 1942, he also forwarded the evidence of two Jews who had been witnesses to massacres carried out by the Nazis. There were other reports coming in from various sources at the same time, and all were being forwarded to Washington. Even though some got facts wrong, it was blatantly clear that there was systematic mass murder being carried out by the Nazis. But the Allies didn't want to hear these stories because it would mean they'd be forced (in the words of one of the heads of the Foreign Office) 'to waste a disproportionate amount of their time in dealing with wailing Jews.'

As more and more information appeared, the Assistant Secretary in charge of Special War Problems Division told a US ambassador in Europe that he was to no longer transmit or accept any similar reports. Those reports were seen as embarressing. While some of the reluctance to listen could maybe be put down to the atrocity-story hangover from WWI, there were too many reports saying the same thing coming from different sources for them to be discarded as that...


There's a world of difference in not knowing, or even not being sure, and what happened, which was a strong desire not to listen to reports of what was going on....

All that is in a book by Walter Laqueur called 'The Terrible Secret: An investigation into the suppression of information about Hitler's Final Solution', and there's heaps more in there that show it wasn't a case of not being sure - it was a case of complete indifference...

Violet...