British Doubt Reports of
Mass Murder of Polish Jews
(August 1943)
The British and Polish
governments have published intelligence records
from World
War II that indicate William Cavendish-Bentinck,
chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee,
the main coordinator of intelligence, did
not believe reports about German atrocities
were credible and, this is one reason Winston
Churchill was not aware of the scale of the Holocaust at a time when action might have
been taken to prevent the genocide.
Jan
Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish
underground, came to London in November 1942 and told Cavendish-Bentinck about the mass
murder of Jews in the Warsaw
Ghetto and the Belzec concentration
camp. Another Polish
witness, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, reported
in December 1943 that 3.3 million Polish
Jews had been murdered and that “the
Germans used troops, tanks and artillery
to liquidate the ghetto in Warsaw.”
Doubt was cast on reports of atrocities
by Roger Allen, a high-ranking Foreign Office
official who worked closely with Cavendish-Bentinck
during the war. Allen didn’t believe
stories about the use of gas
chambers in Poland. Allen wrote in August 1943 that he
could “never understand what the advantage
of a gas chamber over a simple machine gun
or over starving people would be.” He
also questioned the reliability of the reports
of gas chambers because they were “very
general and tended to come from Jewish sources.”
Cavendish-Bentinck had access to the decrypted
German police and SS reports which also mentioned
the persecution and genocide of the Jews
on the territories held by the Germans. Nevertheless,
he said in August 1943, the Poles and Jews
were exaggerating the German atrocities to
try to stiffen British resolve.
British officials also withheld information
about the treatment of the Jews from the
War Cabinet and Churchill. When he reported
on Karski’s visit, Foreign Secretary
Anthony Eden deleted all references to Jews
being murdered. He also refused to let Karski
report personally to Churchill because he
felt it was “his duty to protect the
elderly and overworked Prime Minister from
too many petitioners.”
Sources: Michael Evans, “Why
British intelligence refused to believe all
reports of the mass murder of Poland's Jews,” Times
Online, (June
6, 2005) |