Richard Lichtheim 1939-1942 in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXIII

Confronting the Reality of the Holocaust: Richard Lichtheim, 1939-1942

Richard Lichtheim, the representative of the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency in Geneva in the war years, was one of the first Jewish observers to realize that the Nazis were carrying out a systematic extermination of the Jews. At the beginning of the war, Lichtheim believed that the ghettoization of the Jews in Poland was the only aim of the Nazis, but in March–June 1942, he understood that there was a Nazi plan to destroy the Jews and that the deportations to the East meant death. Using the information he received from various sources, he tried to impel the Allies and the Vatican to undertake political measures against Germany and its satellites, as well as to convince Zionist leaders to place the rescue of European Jews at the top of their international agenda and not to offer immigration to Palestine as an exclusive solution.