Failed to report the atrocities

officials engage with the on-going genocide.

On December 17 1942, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden read in the House of Commons the United Nations Declaration, which confirmed that the German authorities were “carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe”.

In the aftermath of that declaration, reporting the Holocaust became more difficult.

This is clearly seen by the failure of the British press to cover the genocide unfolding at Auschwitz.

Forty five reports detailing German actions against Jews at Auschwitz reached the West between November 1942, when news that “trainloads of adults and children [were] taken to great crematoriums” was published in the New York Times, and mid June 1944, when information from the Vrba/Wetzler report arrived in London. Most of these reports were sent by the Polish Underground — the same source that provided the Allies with prized military intelligence.

Information about Auschwitz, including repeated mention of the gassing of Jews, was distributed by the Polish Government: reports using information from this source were published in the JC, the Polish Jewish Observer, and by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, for instance.

But the news that Jews were being systematically murdered at Auschwitz was not reported in the UK national press.

Even a Polish government press release in March 21, 1944 stating that over half a million people, mainly Jews, had been gassed at Auschwitz was ignored by the major British newspapers.

For key British officials and the press corps, there was no lack of information about the ongoing slaughter of Europe’s Jews at Auschwitz during 1943 and 1944.

But it was overlooked because it failed to conform to how the British sought to narrate the war. Propaganda organs aimed to sustain Allied morale and commitment to the war effort by highlighting the fighting against German tyranny. Reports about Auschwitz did not satisfy these objectives.

The Foreign Office was also wary that any focus on Jewish suffering could upset the situation in Mandate Palestine by appearing to recognise a distinct Jewish nationality.

In any case, the British had resolved to punish perpetrators of atrocities against Jews only once victory had been achieved.

Limiting the circulation of news of the Holocaust undermined efforts by people such as Eleanor Rathbone and Victor Gollancz to galvanize public opinion to persuade the government to aid Europe’s Jews.

Given that the true function of Auschwitz was well known to policymakers and the press prior to the deportation of Hungarian Jews in spring 1944, British responses to the Holocaust are more problematic than generally thought.

Early Allied knowledge of Auschwitz raises difficult questions about how we in Britain memorialise this unprecedented genocide.

The news was ignored because it failed to further the war effort

Michael Fleming is professor of history at the Polish University Abroad and conference secretary of the Institute for Polish Jewish Studies. His book, ‘Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust’, is published by Cambridge University Press