Early news of the Holocaust from Poland

The question of who knew what and when has long concerned Holocaust scholars. How recipients of news about the systematic slaughter of Europe's Jews handled this information was a political question then, and remains so now. This article mobilizes new evidence from archives in Warsaw and London to document the accumulation of such information by the Polish underground, its communication to the government-in-exile in London, what the latter made of it, and how and when they made it known to wider circles. The author argues that delays in publicizing the genocide resulted from a variety of factors, and that a lack of sufficient intelligence data and widespread disbelief played a more important role than any conscious policy.