dec 17, 1942 - Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden’s statement to the House of Commons evidences knowledge of concentration camps.

Description:

Historians agree that news of the systematic mass killing of Jews reached the Allies
soon after it began, as early as the summer of 1941, when the British were able to
decode secret German radio signals reporting the actions of SS murder squads after
the invasion of the Soviet Union.
The Allies then had a fairly full and accurate picture of what was happening by the
end of 1942, when reports of the Nazi plan to kill all of Europe’s Jews reached
the West from at least three separate sources: the Bund in the Warsaw ghetto,
the Riegner telegram from Switzerland and from Jan Karski, a Polish courier who
reached London and provided the first eyewitness account.
The fact that they knew is further underscored by Foreign Secretary Anthony
Eden’s statement to the House of Commons on 17 December 1942, which publicly
condemned the extermination of Jews by Germans – undeniable proof that the
British government knew about the unfolding genocide by the end of 1942.

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