The korherr report is a document about the development of the Holocaust , made by the head of the Statistical Office of the Inspector SS , Dr. Richard Korherr , following the instructions of Heinrich Himmler the 18 of January of 1943 . The final report, published in March of that year, summarizing the progress of the Final Solution to December 1942 and a supplementary report covering the first quarter of 1943 . Himmler accepted the report, but ordered Korherr to change the euphemism used for the murder of the Jews in the document of the more and more well-known Sonderbehandlung or “special treatment “, by the word Durchgeschleust or “transformed”.
The report estimated that from the time the Nazis arrived in power in 1933 , until the end of 1942, four million Jews had been eliminated from Europe , of which 1.5 million had emigrated and the other 2,454,000 had been Killed by the Einsatzgruppen or eliminated in the death camps .
The report also admitted that these deaths were probably a partial total, expressly excluding those who died because of the harsh conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps . Korherr estimated that about 6 million Jews were still in Europe. The report concludes, “Since the seizure of power the number of Jews in Europe, which was more than ten million in 1933 , has been halved, the decline of more than four million is due to German influence.”
Adolf Eichmann , during his trial, recalled using the Korherr report to plan the implementation of the Final Solution , including calculations of the number of trains needed to transport Jews to the death camps . He also stated that he had given Korherr “All our matter exceedingly secret. That was the order. All shipments, to the extent that they had been reported to us. ”
In March 1943, Korherr reported that a total of 1,873,594 Jews of various nationalities were subject to an “evacuation” program, “including Theresienstadt and Sonderbehandlung.” The report also contained the number of Jews in the ghettos of Theresienstadt, Lodz and the General Government, in concentration camps and in German cities on account of a special permit granted for economic reasons. It is also emphasized that between 1933 and 31 December 1942, German Jews died in the German concentration camps, 27,347 Jews.
And in his own words:
The claim that I could have established that more than a million Jews have been able to die in the fields of the General Government of Poland and the Varta territories following a special treatment (Sonderbehandlung) is absolutely inaccurate. I have to protest against the use of the verb ‘to die’ in this context. It is precisely the term “special treatment” that prompted me to ask for an explanation by telephone to the Central Security Office of the Reich (RSHA). I was told that this term applied to Jews who were to be settled (angesiedelt) in the district of Lublin.
Richard Korherr, in a letter to Der Spiegel of July 25, 1977
At that time Korherr worked for the Federal Republic of Germany, after the war , claiming that he did not understand the figures contained in his own report, or what he was referring to, so he was finally fired Of his post in 1961.
References
- Korherr Report , Nuremberg documents, NO 5192-4
- Götz Aly, Karl Heinz Roth: Die restlose Erfassung. Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 3-596-14767-0 (germ.)
- Gerald Roberts Reitlinger , Johann Wolfgang Brügel: Die Endlösung . Hitlers Versus der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939-1945. (1. Ed. English 1953 The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, 1987 - ISBN 0-87668-951-9 )), Berlin, Colloquium 1. dt. Aufl. - 1956, 7. Ed. 1992 ( ISBN 3-89166-870-8 ), Copress-paperb.ed 1983. 700 p. ISBN 3-7678-0466-2