Korherr Report

The Korherr Report is a 16-page document on the progress of the Holocaust in German-controlled Europe. It was delivered to Heinrich Himmler on March 23, 1943, by the chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the SS and professional statistician Dr Richard Korherr under the title die Endlösung der Judenfrage, in English the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Commissioned by Himmler, Korherr calculated that, from 1937 to December 1942, the number of Jews in Europe had fallen by 4 million. Between October 1939 and December 31, 1942 (see, page 9 of the Report), 1,274,166 million Jews had been "processed" at the camps of the General Government (Occupied Poland) and 145,301 at the camps in Warthegau (location of Kulmhof).

The decrease of Soviet Russian Jews from the territories overrun in Operation Barbarossa was not included due to lack of statistical data. The summaries came from the RSHA office receiving all SS reports about the so-called "already evacuated" Jews. Their "special treatment" was removed from the document on the request of Himmler who intended to share it with Hitler, and replaced by Korherr with "processed".

Significance
The initial report, sixteen pages long, was submitted on March 23, 1943. On Himmler's request an abridged version, six-and-a-half pages long, was updated to March 31, 1943. After the initial report was made and delivered to Himmler, he requested that he receive short monthly reports there after. The full report summarized how many Jews remained in Germany, Austria and Europe; detailed the numbers of Jews detained in the Nazi concentration camps; how many Jews had died natural deaths since 1933; and how many Jews had been evacuated to the eastern territories. Himmler accepted the full report on a confidential basis, but for the abridged estimate, made Korherr change the word "Sonderbehandlung" or "special treatment," to the word "durchgeschleust" or "processed." The report calculated that, from 1937 to December 1942, the number of Jews in Europe had fallen by 4 million.

Korherr ascribed this fall to "emigration, partially due to the excess mortality of the Jews in Central and Western Europe, partially due to the evacuations especially in the more strongly populated Eastern Territories, which are here counted as ongoing."

By way of explanation, Korherr added that

"It must not be overlooked in this respect that of the deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the occupied Eastern territories only a part was recorded, whereas deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all. In addition there are movements of Jews inside Russia to the Asian part which are unknown to us. The movement of Jews from the European countries outside the German influence is also of a largely unknown order of magnitude. On the whole European Jewry should since 1933, i.e. in the first decade of National Socialist German power, have lost almost half of its population."

Post-war
After the war Korherr was initially held in Allied custody but was one of the first to be released. He was then hired at the West Germany Ministry of Finance. However, he was dismissed in 1961 when Gerald Reitlinger’s book Die Endlösung [The Final Solution] was published and it revealed the importance of the Korherr Report in crafting the "final solution."

The Korherr Report's full impact was revealed at Adolf Eichmann's trial when he testified that the report made his job "much easier."

Korherr denied all knowledge of the Holocaust, saying that he had "only heard about exterminations after the collapse in 1945."

In a letter he sent to the German magazine Der Spiegel in July 1977, Korherr said that he had not written the report on Himmler's order" and that the

"statement that I had mentioned that over a million Jews had died in the camps of the Generalgouvernement and the Warthegau through special treatment is also inaccurate. I must protest against the word 'died' in this context. It was the very word 'Sonderbehandlung' ['special treatment'] that led me to call the RSHA by phone and ask what this word meant. I was given the answer that these were Jews who were settled in the Lublin district."