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Auschwitz Protocols

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The Auschwitz Protocols, also known as the Auschwitz Reports, is a collection of three eyewitness reports from 1943–44 about the mass murder that was taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War.[1]

Description

The reports were compiled by prisoners who had escaped from the camp and presented in their order of importance from the Western Allies' perspective, rather than in chronological order.[2] The escapees who authored the reports were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (the Vrba-Wetzler report), Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz (the Rosin-Mordowicz report), and Jerzy Tabeau (the "Polish Major's report").[2] The full reports were first published in this form by the United States War Refugee Board on 26 November 1944 under the title "German Extermination Camps—Auschwitz and Birkenau."[3] They were submitted in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, as document number 022-L, and are held in the War Refugee Board archives in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York.[3]

It is not known when they were first called the Auschwitz Protocols, but Randolph L. Braham may have been the first to do so. He used that term for the document in The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1981).[3]

Component reports

Part of a series of articles on
The Holocaust
Vrba–Wetzler report
timeline
Main railroad track into Auschwitz
Main railroad track into
Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Timeline
1942
1943
  • 27 April
  • Witold Pilecki escapes. Witold's report is filed away by the OSS.
  • May
  • Stanislaw Chybinski, a member of the Polish Home Army, escapes and compiles the report "Snapshots of Auschwitz".
  • 19 November
  • Jerzy Tabeau and Roman Cieliczko escape. Their January 1944 report becomes known as the "Polish Major's report".
    • March 1944
    • 19 March
    • Germany invades Hungary.
    • 22 March
    • The Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune report the existence of gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz.
    April 1944
    • 5 April
    • Siegfried Lederer escapes to warn Jews in Theresienstadt and the Red Cross about the mass murder inside Auschwitz.
    • 7–11 April
    • Vrba and Wetzler escape.
    • 22 / 23 April
    • Vrba and Wetzler arrive in Žilina, Slovakia.
    • 24 April
    • Vrba and Wetzler meet Dr Oscar Neumann of the Bratislava Working Group.
    • 27 April
    • German translation of the Vrba–Wetzler report completed.
    • 28 April
    • The first trainload of Hungarian Jews leaves for Auschwitz.
    • c. 28 April
    • Rezső Kasztner of the Aid and Rescue Committee obtains the report and gives a copy of the report to Geza Soos, Hungarian Foreign Ministry official; Soos gives it to Joszef Elias; Elias's secretary translates it into Hungarian and prepares six copies for Hungarian officials.
    May 1944
    • 15 May
    • Mass transports begin of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day.
    • 27 May
    • Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz escape Auschwitz.
    June 1944
    • 4 June
    • The New York Times describes the gas chambers and said that Jews were being executed.
    • 6 June
    • Allied invasion of Normandy, France.
    • mid June
    • The Vrba–Wetzler report reaches the British and US governments.
    • 15 June
    • The BBC World Service reports that 4,000 Jews from Theresienstadt were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz during March 1944. Rosin and Mordowicz tell Krasniansky 100,000 Hungarian Jews were killed on arrival between 15 and 27 May, unaware of what was about to happen to them.
    • 16 June
    • The New York World Telegram repeats the BBC's information. Allen Dulles, Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services, sends the Vrba–Wetzler report to the US State Department.
    • 17 June
    • The Los Angeles Times repeats the BBC's information.
    • 20 June
    • 'The Washington Times Herald reports the same, courtesy of Reuters, while The New York Times offers further details. In Bratislava, Vrba discusses his report with Vatican legate Monsignor Mario Martilotti, who then sends a copy to the Vatican via Switzerland.
    • 25 June
    • The New York Times reports that "new mass executions" recently took place in Auschwitz.
    • 30 June
    • The Kastner train, carrying 1,684 Jews, leaves Hungary for Switzerland via Bergen-Belsen.
    July 1944
    • 1–10 July
    • Several newspapers report that, between April 1942 and April 1944, 1.5 to 1.7 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz (from the Vrba-Wetzler report).
    • 7 July
    • Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy orders a halt to the deportations.
    • 9 July
    • Mass deportations end.
    Key figures
    Historians
    "Blood for goods"
    Background
    Genocide portal
    • The Vrba-Wetzler report (the term "Auschwitz Protocols" is sometimes used to refer to just this report), a 30–40-page report written around 24 April 1944, after Vrba and Wetzler, two Slovak prisoners, who escaped from Auschwitz 7–11 April 1944.[4] In the Protocols, it was 33 pages long and was called "No 1. The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia."[5][6]
    • The "Polish Major's report," written by Jerzy Tabeau (or Tabau), who was in Auschwitz under the pseudonym Jerzy (or George) Wesolowski, and who escaped with Roman Cieliczko on 19 November 1943. Zoltán Szabó writes that Tabeau compiled his report between December 1943 and January 1944. It was copied using a stencil machine in Geneva in August 1944, and was distributed by the Polish government-in-exile and Jewish groups.[7] This was presented in the Protocols as the 19-page "No 2. Transport (The Polish Major's Report)."[5]
    • The Rosin-Mordowicz report, a seven-page report from Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, also Slovak prisoners, who escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944.[4] This was presented as an addition to the Vrba-Wetzler report.[5]

    The contents of the Protocols was discussed in detail by The New York Times on 26 November 1944.[5]

    See also

    References

    Citations

    1. ^ Szabó (2011), pp. 85–120
    2. ^ a b Szabó (2011), p. 94
    3. ^ a b c Conway (2002), pp. 292–293, footnote 3.
    4. ^ a b Szabó (2011), p. 91
    5. ^ a b c d Gilbert (1989), p. 305
    6. ^ "The Auschwitz Protocol: The Vrba-Wetzler Report". Holocaust Research Project (Full text, online ed.).
    7. ^ Szabó (2011), p. 90.

    Sources

    • Appendix I: The Significance of the Vrba-Wetzler Report on Auschwitz-Birkenau. Barricade Books. 2002. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
    • Part 9: The Question of Bombing Auschwitz. Walter de Gruyter. 1989. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
    • "The Auschwitz Reports: Who Got Them, and When?". The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary. Columbia University Press. 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

    Further reading

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