History of Sorts

The Riegner Telegram was a telegraph message sent on 8 August 1942 from Gerhart Riegner, then Secretary of World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to its New York and London offices.

The cable confirmed the alarming reports that had reached the West previously about the German intention to mass murder the European Jews.

Riegner was office manager of the WJC in Geneva. He was informed about the German plans for the final solution by German industrialist Eduard Schulte.

Through his British and American diplomatic channels -Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise of the American Jewish Congress in New York and Sydney Silverman, a Jewish Member of Parliament and Chairman of the British Section, World Jewish Congress.

Riegner sent the following message to his contacts via the British Foreign Office and the State Department in Washington:

Received alarming report stating that, in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according…