Chapter XVIII
The Number of Victims

As a result of recent research, most notably by Steven Tyas, which considerably helped my own work at the National Archives in Kew, a German police message sent by Herman Höfle was intercepted and decoded by the British Intelligence staff at Bletchley Park. It is thanks to the sterling research of Tyas that this decode became known.

The message sent by Herman Höfle to SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Heim, Commander-in-Chief (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei, BdS) office in Krakow, was a 14-day report for Aktion Reinhardt and a year-end report up to December 31, 1942. This was the second of two messages intercepted by the British—the first one Höfle sent to Adolf Eichmann at RSHA Berlin was only partially intercepted. The second message to Heim was intercepted in full, on January 11, 1943. The death camps were identified only by letters.

 

Camps	14 Day Report to 31-12-1942	Year End 1942
L—Lublin	12,761	24,733
B—Belzec	0	434,508
S—Sobibor	515	101,370
T—Treblinka	10,335	713,555*
Totals	23,611	1274,166

 

In the original message the British Intelligence staff made a mistake and missed the last 5 off the Treblinka figure, it has to be 713,555 to fit the total figure. The message does not refer to the above as victims, but people sent to the camps. This decoded message is one of the most important historical finds of recent years.[163]

The figure of 434,508 for Belzec is thought to be the total for only the Generalgouvernement and does not include the Jews deported to Belzec from the Reich and other places, recently estimated as between 20–25,000. Thus, the likely total for the number of people murdered at the Belzec death camp is around the half a million mark. Though it is fair to say it is unlikely that the true figure will never be known.

What is interesting is that the figures for Aktion Reinhardt submitted by Herman Höfle in his message include the camp at Lublin (Majdanek) which was not officially part of Aktion Reinhardt. The camp at Lublin came under the control of the Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (WVHA)—Concentration Camp Inspectorate—whilst Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were controlled by Odilo Globocnik. The Old Airfield camp was a storage depot for the clothing and footwear of the murdered victims in the three Aktion Reinhardt camps as well as from the ghettos and was due to become a sub-camp of the Lublin concentration camp. But the liquidation of the camp as part of Aktion Erntefest in November 1943 meant this plan never came to fruition.[164]