Höfle Telegram

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The Höfle Telegram (or Hoefle Telegram) is a document discovered in 2000 among recently declassified World War II materials from the Public Record Office in Kew, England. Sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on January 11 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Berlin, it gave death tolls for the Aktion Reinhard camps through December 31, 1942.

It gives deaths for 1942 as

L (Lublin Majdanek) 24,733,
B (Belzec): 434,508,
S (Sobibor) 101,370,
T (Treblinka) 713,555The figure for Treblinka in the telegram contains a transcription mistake, as the final "5" is missing from the number, as is clear from the sum given in the telegram, 1,274,166. The Korherr report gives the number as 713,555 as well. for a total Jewish victims of Aktion Reinhard in 1942 as 1,274,166. These numbers match those given in a key surviving piece of Nazi documentation, the Korherr Report, on the progress of the Final Solution written by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the SS, Dr Richard Korherr, and was most likely the source of the statistics given to Korherr.

According to the National Security Agency, "It appears the British analysts who had decrypted the message missed the significance of this particular message at the time. No doubt this happened because the message itself contained only the identifying letters for the death camps followed by the numerical totals. The only clue would have been the reference to Operation Reinhard, the meaning of which – the plan to eliminate Polish Jewry that was named after the assassinated SS General Reinhard Heydrich – also probably was unknown at the time to the codebreakers at Bletchley."[link]

Notes

References

PRO: HW 16/23 (ZIP/GPDD 355a, messages 12 and 13/15, transmitted 11 January 1943.
Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt’ 1942,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15:3 (2001) pp. 468-486.

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