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December 7, 2005

"You Learn Something New" Department, #1

P
erhaps the best thing about doing research in the National Archives is that you never know what's going to show up in the files adjacent to those you've requested. In WWII, the War Department filed all of its correspondence under a decimal filing system not unlike the Dewey Decimal system, with the result that adjacent decimal numbers might have nothing whatsoever to do with each other at the level of substance.

Thus, this morning, just next to a file about Japanese Americans in the files of Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, I saw a file labelled "Jews," and in it found this:

The Nazis floated the idea of foregoing the total annihilation of the Jews in exchange for war supplies and provisions. Wow.

The excerpt is from a diplomatic document from the British, sent to the U.S. government for comment in June of 1944. According to the British, the Nazi offer came from a top Gestapo official in Turkey who communicated it to a Zionist official for further communication to Britain and the United States.

Britain and the United States apparently said "no."

Like I said, at the National Archives, you learn something new.

UPDATE: More on these "blood-for-trucks" negotiations.

Posted by Eric at December 7, 2005 1:51 PM

Comments

Ok, I'm clearly out of my element here, not knowing much history. I always thought that, at least officially, the Americans didn't know what was happening to the Jews. The existence of this memo is really disturbing.

Posted by: The Subversive Librarian at December 7, 2005 5:32 PM

The negotiation with the Nazis was widely known and discussed in Israel since the 50s. We knew it as 10,000 trucks for a large number of Hungarian Jews.

It was also common knowledge that the British and the Americans were quite aware of Nazi death camps and takes place there. There was less agreement on the amount of details they had.

Posted by: shmuel at December 8, 2005 1:48 AM

History isn't my strong point, but Turkey did not take part in WWII, and I don't think there were any "top Gestapo officials" in Turkey at that time. Not officially, at least.

Posted by: ye at December 25, 2005 6:25 AM