Allies May Have Known of Holocaust Plans

American and British WWII military intelligence authorities may have been aware of Hitler's "Final Solution" plan for the "eradication" of the Jews of Europe as early as 1942, according to documents just declassified under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998.

According to a July 2, 2001 National Archives press release, by March 20, 1942, a surreptitiously obtained document appears in the files of the United States Coordinator of Information (COI), a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, clearly discussing the Nazi intent to eradicate European Jewry.

The document sheds new light on the longstanding question of how much the Western powers knew of the Holocaust. According to Elizabeth Holtzman an IWG member, "This recently declassified document helps pinpoint how much officials within our government knew about the Holocaust and when they knew it. The next question is why our government--not to mention the British--did nothing in response. It is unbearable to think that plans to 'eradicate' a Jewish population were a matter of such indifference."