Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1998
Abstract
In the late summer and early autumn of 1941, the British military intercepted coded German radio messages that revealed that German troops were killing large numbers of Jewish civilians in German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union. The British did not make this knowledge public at that time, nor did they use their still classified records during the war crimes trials after the end of World War II.
Commentators more expert than I have addressed themselves to the question of whether the British had a legal obligation to disclose the information from the coded messages. These remarks concentrate on the possible moral responsibility of the British government, and they briefly address the responsibilities of modern governments whose intelligence services discover genocide.
Disciplines
Holocaust and Genocide Studies | International Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Kent Greenawalt,
Secret Knowledge of Genocide: British Failure to Disclose the Killing of Jews in 1941,
20
Cardozo L. Rev.
549
(1998).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3666