Raczyński’s Note, a diplomatic note written by the government of Poland in exile on 10 December 1942 and signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Raczyński, was the first official report informing the Allies and the West of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland. It was sent to the 26 governments signed up to the Declaration by United Nations and informed the 17 December United Nations Declaration in which a pledge of severe punishment of the guilty of the Holocaust was made.
“Hundreds of thousands of Jews who have been transplanted to Poland from other countries. Imagine entire populations of large cities all taken out and shot, exterminated in cold blood. That will give you the idea of what is happening to the Jews in Polan” – informed Edward Raczyński in his Note.
https://twitter.com/AmbWilczek/status/1604425595797925889?s=20&t=_pWYv8uCVtgZx1DRj2OQyQ
A reprint of Raczyński’s Note was prepared by the UK’s Polish Embassy on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. The publication is available online here.
Not only was it the first official report informing the Allies and the West of the Holocaust in Europe, but it also became a testimony and a warning of the kind of atrocities that human beings driven by an extreme ideology are capable of – a vital lesson for future generations if a tragedy such as this is to never happen again.
Source: Press Office of the Polish Embassy in London
Photo: British Poles
