Editing World Jewish Congress (section)

====Riegner Telegram====
{{Main|Riegner Telegram}}

On 8 August 1942, the WJC's Geneva representative [[Gerhart Riegner]] sent a telegram to the US vice-consul in Geneva in which he informed the Allies for the first time about the Nazis' planned [[Final Solution]] to exterminate all Jews in the German-occupied territories.<ref name="pbs.org">[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/newsusdept.html U.S. State Department receives information from Switzerland regarding the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170208191539/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/newsusdept.html |date=2017-02-08 }}: The American Experience</ref> Riegner had received his information from the German industrialist [[Eduard Schulte]].

His telegram read as follows:

<blockquote>Received alarming report about plan being discussed and considered in ''Führer'' headquarters to exterminate at one fell swoop all Jews in German-controlled countries comprising three and a half to four million after deportation and concentration in the east thus solving Jewish question once and for all stop campaign planned for autumn methods being discussed including hydrocyanic acid stop<ref name="pbs.org"/></blockquote>

[[File:World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference Atlantic City 1944.jpg|thumb|[[Louise Waterman Wise]], Jewish activist and wife of WJC President [[Stephen Samuel Wise|Stephen S. Wise]], addressing the World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference in Atlantic City, November 1944]]
It was only several weeks later, on 28 August 1942, that WJC President [[Stephen S. Wise]] received Riegner's alarming message.<ref>Rafael Medoff, [http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/06/11/how-america-first-learned-of-the-holocaust "How America First Learnede of the Holocaust"] The Algemeiner (June 11, 2012). Retrieved June 26, 2012.</ref> The [[Riegner Telegram|telegram]] was met with disbelief despite preexisting evidence for mass executions. The US State Department considered it "a wild rumor, fueled by Jewish anxieties", while the British Foreign Office refused to forward the telegram for the time being and called for the allegations to be investigated first. It was only on 25 November 1942 that the WJC was allowed to release the news to the world.<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 159</ref>

On 28 July 1942, 20,000 people participated in a WJC-organized "Stop Hitler Now" demonstration at New York's Madison Square Garden. Nine months later, on 1 March 1943, an estimated 22,000 people crowded into the same hall and a further 15,000 stood outside at a WJC rally addressed by Wise, [[Chaim Weizmann]], New York Mayor [[Fiorello LaGuardia]] and others.<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 162</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX101.html |title=The American Experience.America and the Holocaust.People & Events &#124; Rabbi Stephen Wise (1874–1949) |publisher=PBS |date=1942-08-28 |access-date=2013-08-18}}</ref> However, the US government did not heed calls to rescue European Jews. Early in 1944, US Treasury Secretary [[Henry Morgenthau Jr.|Henry Morgenthau]] stated in front of President [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] that "certain officials in our State Department" had failed while it would have been commanded by duty to "prevent the extermination of the Jews in German-controlled Europe".