Talk:Höfle Telegram

Treblinka count
The correct number for the people killed in Treblinka is 71,355 and not 713,555 as before stated. Thus making the total Jewish victims of Aktion Reinhard in 1942 as 631,966 and not 1,274,166 as before stated..That is a huge discrepancy.


 * The number 1,274,166 is given in the telegram itself, making your changing of the number make no sense at all. Every source out there agrees that the final "5" was missing from the figure for Treblinka in the British intercept (transcription errors were not uncommon in strings of number) - both because the total number of deaths given in the telegram clearly requires a total number of people killed at Treblinka to be 713,555, not 71,355 and because the Korherr Report itself includes the 713,555 figure; as well as the fact that the 71355 number just wouldn't make sense given other data about Treblinka. --Goodoldpolonius2 03:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

And how exactly do you know that the mistake was not made when they calculated the total and instead of 71,355 they typed in 713,555?? It is a lot closer to all other numbers and when they are talking about 1.1 million within 3 years in Auschwitz which was the largest concentration camp, then 73,155 sound very reasonable. And it's not a transcipt btw. The article claims that it is the original telegram. If it is a transcript then all numbers could be wrong.


 * Again, we know where the mistake was made because: (a) The exact same numbers were used in the Korherr report, including the 713,555 number for Treblinka, and Korherr got his numbers from Eichmann's office, where the telegram was sent, and (b) The telegram says 1,274,166 people were killed in total, and it is more likely that a "5" was missing at the end of the Treblinka decrypt (especially as the 713,555 number is actually used elsewhere by the Nazis) making the numbers sum properly, than that the total was entirely and completely the wrong number, with the wrong number of digits and (c) In Jurgen Stroop's report, 310,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka during the period from July 22, 1942 to October 3, 1942, making the 71,355 number make no sense at all. Again, I don't think any scholar doubts this point, so you might want to show a source. Also worth noting is that Treblinka had the second largest death toll of any camp, even though it only operated through October, 1943,  and the majority of the deportations to it happened in the fall of 1942, as the Warsaw Ghetto and other nearby areas where liquidated. Incidentally, I never said that it was a transcript, I said that the issue was a transcription error, the document itself is a decryption of a Nazi telegram intercepted by the British, as the article states.  --Goodoldpolonius2 07:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Both user above believe that the report is about kills, which isn't actually the fact. The numbers listed on this telegram says the number of prisoners on these camps, nothing to do with number of people killed. It clearly states that Treblinka would have in december 31, 1942: 713,555 prisoners. The total number is the number of prisoners in end 1942: 1.2million. If this was a "death report" it wouldn't state "arrivals".201.79.44.87 (talk) 01:03, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It would if every arrival was slated to be murdered, which was, horribly, the case.172.190.50.67 (talk) 02:45, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

British National Archive at Kew (fake Documents)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler02.xml (Above link goes to site but does not find article as of 9 July 2009. Link below presents same article) http://greyfalcon.us/restored/Himmler%20fake.htm Joe (talk) 17:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Someone was able to smuggle fake Documents into the British national Archive in 2005. Maybe they should take a closer (forensic) look at that Höfle Telegram...

The discovery of this document seemed odd - According to Irving ( the guy we love to hate but who does seem to know his stuff ) the pages were out of order and appeared to be placed so that some not to hard working "scholar" might accidentally find it oops. And when they oops found it they jazzed it up with all the well known code words that they knew this document had, oddly even before they found it oops.

Another source ( CODOH the other guys you love to hate but who also seem to know their stuff ). The letters used for shorthand abbreviations in the telegram seem odd because the Nazis had another name they used during the war for one of the camps. The letter matches the post war name used by the Allies - odd that the Nazis used our name from a later date on a war time telegram. They must have had their own code words/letters. Maybe the numbers are from a shopping list. This is starting to look like a fake - maybe not but time will tell - using the wrong letter for a camp is really irresponsibly sloppy for a statistician of the German army ( and then to have the same letter used in other related reports seems even odder - the Germans must have been in utter chaos.

Death Toll?
"it gave death tolls for the Aktion Reinhard camps through December 31, 1942." The document isn't talking about "death tolls" at all. Please stop lying about the contents of documents!

Exactly what I thought when I traced the document down - it talks about arrivals not deaths. The assumption is made up front that Treblinka was a "death" camp - thw wiki article on Richard Krege and GPR says that he never found any burial pits, etc. Noone has disputed his findings - except verbally. Tracing down the Korherr Report likewise leads to the famous use of "code words" - which leads nowhere unless you are a conspiracy nut ( I like conspiracies but not with "code words").
 * Whether you want to believe it or not, "arrival" and "death" came to mean exactly the same thing at places like Treblinka. Death was what they arrived for.--172.190.50.67 (talk) 02:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it seems one needs to believe something into the documents they aren't actually saying. But seriously, if it ain't saying it, this document is hardly proof for what is so often insinuated. --41.151.223.95 (talk) 19:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Insinuated? Wouldnt over 700 000 surviving prisoners at Treblinka make the camp size enormous - the largest of all camps ever with all its barracks and things needed to make camp life possible - a description of the camp that has no support in any testimony or physical evidence. Mass graves of considerable size and depth have been found in the area by a british forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.252.24.101 (talk) 03:21, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Wrong wording
Moved from main article --Errant Tmorton166(Talk)(Review me) 00:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC):

Dissent: == Hoefle telegram ==

There is a fundamental translation error in the "Hoefle telegram" article. The German word "Zugang" simply means arrivals, rather than "deaths." This changes the total context of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Erodin (talk • contribs)


 * I see what you mean. The original publication by Witte and Tyas has a direct and proper translation. They then go on to explain the terminology, specifically the euphemisms or code words that were used in such communications. The WikiPedia article gives only a summarised interpeted translation, as if the reader knows all about the code words. It does not give any information as to why the telegram is of any importance, i.e. why it qualifies for inclusion in WP (which I think it does). I'll post the proper translation when I find my copy, plus some reasons for why it is a significant find. --Seejyb 09:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Translating into code words is decption not translation. What code words are buried in the rest of this article?

Rewrote most of the article
I've added the direct translation, as promised. The number difference (missing "5") is pretty well established as beyond reasonable doubt, as per the Korherr doc. The issue of "document replacement" (authenticity of the original) may best be asked of Witte and Tyas, if one is interested. Their article gives a reasonable overview of the euphemisms used by the executioners of Einsatz Reinhardt, should one wish to look further. --Seejyb 22:12, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why this article appears at all - the telegram in its translated form gives numbers arriving and totals at each camp. So what?

It's the best, actually nothing, they can find. "eupheisms" of Witte and Tyas - that means opinion - another code word i guess.

From what i can see this telegram details the number of arrivals NOT DEATHS


 * It marks important evidence as to the mechanics of the Holocaust. Darkmind1970 15:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Nitpicking on the math

 * "The DRB railway manual which was used by the SS for making payments, had a listed carrying capacity of each trainset set up at 50 boxcars, each loaded with 50 prisoners.
 * In reality, boxcars were crammed with up to 100 persons and routinely loaded from the minimum of 150% to 200% capacity for the same price. This resulted in an average of 5,000 people per trainset; 100 persons in each freight car multiplied by 50 cars."
 * In reality, boxcars were crammed with up to 100 persons and routinely loaded from the minimum of 150% to 200% capacity for the same price. This resulted in an average of 5,000 people per trainset; 100 persons in each freight car multiplied by 50 cars."

While I do not, in any way, doubt the atrocities involved or their scale, the above passage is using rather dubious math. A train had 50 boxcars, with a "listed capacity" of 50 people / boxcar (citation given). "In reality" they crammed "up to" 100 people into a boxcar (citation given). Then the (uncited!) claim that, emphasis mine, "this resulted in an average of 5,000 people per trainset".

50 people listed capacity, "up to" 100 actually put into the cars. This cannot result in an average of 100 people / car.

I suggest removing the uncited calculation and "average" claim to avoid casting doubt on the whole passage. -- DevSolar2 (talk) 09:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Question about low-end estimates
The article is a bit unclear about the estimations. After reading it, I still wasn't clear whether Hoefle's message is the SS's more exact figures for Jews sent to the death camps, or whether his numbers are still affected by the under-counting issues caused by packing the Holocaust trains with more passengers than the DRB manifests suggested. I don't see clarity on this point from the 2001 publication, either. Sacxpert (talk) 20:28, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Importance of the document - Majdanek
Was researching Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz and ended up looking into the article for the Majdanek concentration camp, where it is stated that this document lowered the estimated death toll from 235k to 80k, a figure that surprised and was considered "incredibly low", but was cautiously accepted by the museum itself. Shouldn't the article for the telegram itself note this somewhere? I was thinking the "Importance of the document" section would. If there's any other camps that suffered drastic changes to their estimates (increases too!) it might also very well be worth noting.185.163.103.83 (talk) 21:03, 29 December 2020 (UTC)