For decades, Poland maintained that heroes of the Polish underground were the first to alert the West to the “Final Solution” and the destruction of European Jewry. A reexamination of the facts and timelines, however, reveals a different picture: many months before official reports, it was Jews who escaped killing sites and mobilized an extensive network of rabbis, underground figures and community activists to cry out to the world: “They are murdering us.”
Nearly every Polish student learns about Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, and Jan Karski, the courier who brought testimony about the murder of Jews to world leaders. Both have been crowned national heroes who first conveyed information about the death camps, and Karski was also recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations — a title awarded by Israel’s Yad Vashem to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. A closer look at the facts shows a far more complex reality: it was, first and foremost, Polish Jews who worked intensively to transmit information about the death camps, long before the Polish government-in-exile or the Polish underground showed any real interest.
Contrary to the prevailing view, the first information to emerge from the camps did not come from Polish underground operatives but from individual Jews who managed to escape the inferno in early 1942. One of them was Szlama Ber Winer, also known as “Jacob Grojanowski,” who fled the Chełmno extermination camp on Jan. 19, 1942. Wiener, who had been enslaved at the site, was forced to bury Jews murdered in gas vans. After escaping, he delivered a detailed testimony exposing the atrocities.
A network of rabbinic letters: 'A bitter and terrible reality'
After his escape, Wiener reached the town of Grabów and gave a detailed account to Rabbi Yaakov Zilman, the town’s rabbi. He described in precise detail the murder of the Jews of his hometown, Izbica Kujawska, recounting how Jews were forced into gas vans, the brutal violence of the killing process, and how enslaved Jews in the camp were compelled to extract gold teeth from the victims. Rabbi Zilman, who had likely already been trying to understand the disappearance of Jews from nearby towns, grasped the scale of the catastrophe. He began writing urgent letters to his contacts and urging other Jews to document the mass murder.
These letters reached various towns, as well as Warsaw and Łódź, and included appeals to spread the horrific information. One letter read: “You must know that what has until now been kept in silence must be made public. You must raise the alarm, not relent, seek every possible means to save the remnant from this terrible decree, God forbid. You must not sit idly by, you must not remain silent. You must do everything to save the lives of thousands of others.”
According to materials preserved in the “Oneg Shabbat” archive — the codename for a clandestine group in the Warsaw Ghetto that documented Jewish life and destruction during World War II — the letters reached historian Emanuel Ringelblum and his colleagues. They compiled the “Grojanowski Report” based on the first letter to arrive in Warsaw, which was preserved in the archive, along with additional sources.
On June 26, 1942, the BBC broadcast a collection of testimonies about the murder of Jews, based in part on these Jewish reports. For Ringelblum and his colleagues, it was a historic moment. They felt they had fulfilled their duty and made clear to the world that this was not a series of local pogroms but a systematic plan of annihilation. “This morning the English radio broadcast to the Jews of Poland all that we already know well, especially about the deportations and the mass killings,” they wrote. “For months we suffered, believing the world was indifferent to our tragedy, unprecedented in history.”
“The ‘Oneg Shabbat’ group fulfilled a great historic mission. It alerted the world to our fate and perhaps saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from destruction — only the near future will prove this. It warned the world and perhaps saved hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews. The near future will tell whether these hopes are realized.”
Researcher Meir Bulka, a research fellow at Bar-Ilan University’s Holocaust studies institute and chairman of the J-Nerations organization for preserving Jewish heritage in Poland, said: “When we examine the timelines and the available documents, the gaps become clear. The testimony of Szlama Ber Winer and its dissemination by Rabbi Zilman were delivered in late January 1942. The BBC broadcast was on June 26, 1942, about five months later. Statements by the Polish government came many months after that. In other words, despite the lack of resources and the brutal occupation, it was Jews who used traditional means to get the truth out. Jewish intelligence preceded established governments, even if the information was not translated into rescue in real time.”
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An example of a Polish publication claiming this was the first report released to the world
(Photo JHI)
Prof. Havi Dreifuss, a historian at Tel Aviv University and head of the Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland at Yad Vashem, added: “The early testimonies from Chełmno illustrate not only what Jews knew and did, but also the limits of knowledge and the depth of helplessness within a reality of annihilation. Even when information was collected and disseminated, many — including Jews themselves — found it difficult to believe, and it did not immediately translate into effective action, let alone prompt a response from the free world. The gap between knowledge and understanding, and between understanding and action, as well as between will and ability, is a central and complex component in understanding the Holocaust and analyzing the world’s response.”