A recently released letter from the United States Secretary of State in 1944 to the Vatican warned Germany that Nazi officials would be prosecuted after the end of World War II for their roles in the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust.
The Oct. 12, 1944 letter from Secretary of State Cordell Hull, was sent to the United States Representative at the Vatican, who was to forward it on to German officials at the Vatican, according to Reuters news agency in a recent news release.
Hull’s letter to the Germans raises questions as to how much the United States knew about the Holocaust and whether more could have been done to save the six million Jews who were killed during World War II.
The letter said the U.S. State Department has information that “Jews in three concentration camps of Birkenau, Naeuss and Oswiecin (Auschwitz) have been ordered to be exterminated. This probably involves some 65,000 Jews.”
Hull’s letter was directed at Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler’s deputy overseeing the “Final Solution.”
The letter said Himmler “pesonally authorized this death order, which certain other officials will carry out.”
Hull warned of “appropriate consequences” after the end of the war. (RNS)
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