A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

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Karski
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A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#1

Post by Karski » 30 Sep 2022, 14:38

It seems that on 4th December 1942, Schwarzbart sent a telegram to the Jewih World Congress in New York. According to Robin O'Neil, "Poland and her Jews 1941-1944", (2005), here :
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/poland/pol001.html
"Szwarcbart cabled confirmation of Karski's testimony to the Jewish World Congress in New York on 4th December 1942. Because of wartime censorship regulations, a copy of the telegram, which was passed to the Foreign Office, has survived in the British Public Records Office."
Robin O'Neil doesn't quote the text of this telegram.

Perhaps it is the same telegram as this one :
"To: Jewish Congress
330 West – 42nd Street
New York City
From: Ignacy Schwarzbart
Queensway
Bayswater
Special Official envoy Gentile escaped and arrived here left capital this October – saw Warsaw Ghetto on last August and September witnessed mass murder of one transport six thousand Jews at Belzec.
Spoke to him yesterday 3 hours confirm all most horrible mass atrocities- still living all remnants of Jews facing death Stop. Brought desperate appeal of this remnant to World Jewry sending report Stop
Constantly negotiating Raczynski Jewish Joint Committee for diplomatic and rescue action settled details shortly – Governments published full report sent inform representatives but press only without

Censors Note: Mentioning"

The text of this telegram is reproduced by Chris Webb & Victor Smart, "The Allied Reaction Regarding the Holocaust During 1942", 2009, here :
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org ... llies.html
but they don't indicate the date of the telegram.

(They indicate as their sources :
The History of the Second World War – published by Purnell London 1966
Holocaust Historical Society
Polish Library London
The BBC
NARA
PRO = Public Records Office)

Curiously, Wood and Jankowski's 2014 book doesn't mention this telegram.

In another discussion, our wm said "His (Karski's) meeting with Schwarzbart was basically spurious."
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=223126&start=15

My question is : have any historians questioned the authenticity of this telegram? If so, would it be possible to have the references and an idea of their arguments?

Thank you in advance.

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wm
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Re: A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#2

Post by wm » 30 Sep 2022, 23:33

The telegram couldn't look more authentic, but still, it is just a footnote in history, so historians don't mention it.
After all, six days later, Raczyński's Note (later known as "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland") was published for people who lived under a rock and hadn't heard about the Holocaust already.


Karski
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Re: A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#3

Post by Karski » 01 Oct 2022, 10:12

Thank you for the answer. Perhaps the telegram is somewhat embarrassing for Wood and Jankowski. In the passage where they expose the Izbica theory, they say (p. 114):
The village Jan reached was not Bełżec, nor did Jan think it was while he was there. When he first spoke of this mission three months later, he described the site as a " 'sorting point' located about fifty kilometersfrom the city of Bełżec" - although in the same statement he referred to the camp's location as "the outskirts of Bełżec" . (...) By the time he began retelling his story publicly in 1944, the town he reached had become Bełżec itself.
P. 269, a note shows that what Wood and Jankowski believe Karski's first account of his visit to the camp is an (anonymous) text published in "The Ghetto Speaks" on March 1, 1943. But if Schwarzbart's telegram is authentic and faithful (and if the "envoy" of whom Schwarzbart speaks is Karski), then Karski was already saying from the first days of December 1942 that he had visited Bełżec, which does not fit well with the ideas of Wood and Jankowski.
Incidentally, Wood and Jankowski seem to be saying that it was not until 1944 that the "sorting point" became Belzec in Karski's memory, but (Schwarzbart's telegram aside) Karski was already claiming to have visited the camp at Belzec in a script broadcast by the BBC in July 1943.

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wm
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Re: A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#4

Post by wm » 01 Oct 2022, 23:30

In my opinion, the omission was more like it was unrelated to the story.
And there is a (tiny) possibility that Schwarzbart himself messed up things; after all, "witnessed mass murder of one transport" wasn't true either.
For an intellectual from Kraków (i.e., Schwarzbart), rural areas, Izbica, Bełżec were like the other side of the Moon. Even Karski wrote in his book the intellectuals didn't know anything about the peasants.

Karski's book is obviously a fictionalized version of actual events written to influence American public opinion. Nothing wrong with it. But why should the fictionalization have started so early, when there was no need for it, I don't understand.
In this case, the most interesting thing is the story in "The Ghetto Speaks."

Strange, I've re-read the camp description in his book, and obviously, it wasn't Bełzec.
But then I've re-read the (detailed) description of Izbica in "From the Ashes of Sobibor" by Thomas Toivi Blatt (he lived in Izbica all the time), and really it wasn't Izbica either.

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Re: A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#5

Post by Karski » 02 Oct 2022, 11:14

Steffen Hänschen (Das Transitghetto Izbica im System des Holocaust, Metropol, 2018, p. 165-167) also has doubts about the Izbica theory. He concludes: "so kann kaum mit Sicherheit behauptet werden, Karski sei in Izbica gewesen." (p. 167). He says on the same page, note 392: "Thomas (Toivi) Blatt bezweifelte ebenfalls, dass Karski in Izbica war." As a reference for Blatt's doubts, Hänschen points to an Internet page that requires a password.

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wm
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Re: A telegram from Schwarzbart regarding Karski

#6

Post by wm » 02 Oct 2022, 16:00

I was curious about his opinion.

Karski writes about the camp:
It was on a large, flat plain and occupied about a square mile. It was surrounded on all sides by a formidable barbed-wire fence, nearly two yards in height and in good repair. ... The camp itself contained a few small sheds or barracks. The rest of the area was completely covered by a dense, pulsating, throbbing, noisy human mass.
When in fact, in Izbica, the Jews lived in ordinary houses all around the town and were merely forbidden to leave the place. Even more non-Jews lived among them. From time to time (rather infrequently), some of the Jews were gathered in the town square, deported, and replaced by newly arriving ones.

I doubt a camp or a ghetto, as described by Karski, existed anywhere in occupied Poland in 1942.

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