The Riegner Telegram, Samuel Silverman to Stephen S. Wise, London, England, August 29, 1942.

American Jews Learn of the Holocaust

In August 1942, Geneva-based World Jewish Congress representative Gerhart Riegner cabled his New York and London offices to report the Nazi plan to murder with poison gas all the Jews in occupied Europe. Riegner's alarming report was cabled to Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise by Samuel Sidney Silverman, a member of the British Parliament. Wise, in turn, alerted the State Department and other American Jewish leaders.