Allied Declaration, 17 December 1942

   The Allies solemnly condemned the extermination of the Jews and promised to punish the perpetrators. Pressure from members of the British Parliament, from Jewish groups in England, from the Anglican Church, from the British press, and from the Polish government-in-exile persuaded the Allied governments to publish their first official recognition of atrocities in Poland. The Allied nations-Great Britain, United States, Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee-officially condemned the Nazis’ “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.” They vowed to punish those responsible. The notable exception to the declaration was the refusal of Pope Pius XII to join with the Allies to condemn the Nazi atrocities.

   Agreeing with the U.S. government’s position that the Jews being massacred by the Germans could be helped only by a total and unconditional Allied victory over Germany, most of the American press, including the Jewish-owned New York Times, continued to treat the Holocaust as just another war story, and was unwilling to discuss the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Given the Allied governments’ knowledge of the Holocaust at this time, waiting until the Allied armed forces had achieved a total victory over the Germans before acting to prevent the ongoing Nazi genocide indicates that the Allied governments had accepted the possibility that the majority of European Jews would be killed before the Germans could be stopped.