Washington files reveal secrets about early days of Holocaust

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Allied intelligence officials knew that German soldiers were targeting Jews for extermination as early as the summer of 1941, long before the Holocaust was publicized in the West, according to previously secret documents just released by the United States government.

A British code-breaking operation dubbed "Enigma" intercepted around 1.3 million pages of German messages which were apparently shared with U.S. intelligence officials. The documents were recently released to American University history professor Richard Breitman in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

"In yesterday's cleansing action in Slonim, carried out by Police regiment ... 1,153 Jewish plunderers were shot" read one of the intercepted messages.

"The extraordinary thing about these documents is that they contain new information both about the Holocaust itself and what the West knew about the Holocaust," Breitman was quoted as saying in The Washington Post.

The messages, intercepted during July, August and September of 1941, include this from a German commander in the western Soviet republics of Belarus to his superiors in Berlin on July 18.

"In yesterday's cleansing action in Slonim, carried out by Police regiment center 1,153 Jewish plunderers were shot."

This cable is among the earliest documentary evidence of the Holocaust and also showed that much of the killing was done by ordinary German units, and not just the elite SS, according to the article in Sunday's Washington Post.

Breitman said a study of the documents could mean a revision in the total number of those killed in Holocaust from six million to seven million. He estimated that at least 500,000 Jews were killed in the Soviet Union during the six months leading up to December 1941.

In one message to Berlin dated August 7, 1941, a German commander reported that "total number of executions in territory under my jurisdiction has now exceeded 30,000."

The intercepted cables released by the U.S. government's National Security Agency are still considered secret by the British government and were stamped "Most Secret, to Be Kept Under Lock and Key, Never to Be Removed From the Office," the Post reported.

The papers are available to the public in the reading room of the National Archives.

Related story:

• Reno announces payments for Holocaust survivors - June 13, 1996

Related sites:

• US Holocaust Museum
• The Nizkor Project
• Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation

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