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Allied Forces Knew about Holocaust Two Years Before Discovery of Concentration Camps, Secret Documents Reveal
(Independent-UK) Andrew Buncombe - The Allied Powers were aware of the scale of the Jewish Holocaust two-and-a-half years earlier than is generally assumed, and had even prepared war crimes indictments against Adolf Hitler and his top Nazi commanders. Newly accessed material from the UN - not seen for 70 years - shows that as early as December 1942, the U.S., UK and Soviet governments were aware that at least two million Jews had been murdered and a further five million were at risk of being killed. Despite this, the Allied Powers did very little to try and rescue or provide sanctuary to those in mortal danger. Professor Dan Plesch of SOAS University of London, author of the newly published Human Rights After Hitler, said the major powers began drawing up war crimes charges based on witness testimony smuggled from the camps and from the resistance movements in various countries occupied by the Nazis. "The major powers commented [on the mass murder of Jews] two-and-a-half years before it is generally assumed...in December 1942." In that same month, UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told the British parliament: "The German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule extends, the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people."