Mr Eden and the Holocaust

This link ought to quash, absolutely and forever, the conspiracy theory (ie: in this case, malicious fabrication) that the British Government attempted to cover up the Holocaust. Mr Eden made a very complete statement, in response to Mr Silverman's question, on December the 17th, 1942.

In fewer words than a modern politician uses to say "hello, I am Tony, trust me", Mr Eden gives an essential history of the holocaust and the methods used, barring "gas," which, at the time of his speech, was still being used experimentally on handicapped German children rather than Jews. Mr Eden's statement is notable for the information it gives, rather than what it hides.

Mr Eden was interviewed (between 5:00 and 7:30 on this clip) on this matter, years later, for "The World At War" and although he didn't doubt the intelligence, he knew that something this awful and incredible would be attacked as crude "Hun-hating" propaganda unless he was very sure of his ground, but over the course of a few months, persistent rumour became a flood of mutually-consistent eye-witness accounts.
(There were also photographs smuggled out. It is always worth trying to document this kind of thing, even if it seems hopeless. This is why more people believe in the holocaust than in the German massacres of civilians in Belgium in 1914: both atrocities were all too real, but the latter was (and mostly still is) perceived as propaganda. Hence Mr Eden's wariness, but also his determination.)

There was also a need to protect MI6 sources in Nazi Germany, some of whom were very highly placed and of war-winning importance, as well as an equivalent need to protect signal intelligence sources such as "Ultra". In this context, Mr Eden seems to have made as complete a statement as he possibly could have done, just as soon as verification and the physical safety of his sources would allow.

There is no way in which this can possibly be described or honestly presented as any sort of "cover up." But readers will doubtless find a hundred posts elsewhere on the internet telling them another tale. This, however, is the one with the link to an article which any interested party can verify via the contemporary printed copies of Hansard, and the link gives all the references needed to accomplish this.

(All you really need is Mr Eden's name and the date of 17th of December, 1942, but there are "column numbers" on the link, which is how Hansard references work.)

The Nazi holocaust did not commence in a vacuum: the Japanese occupation of most of Burma (there were always large areas that they did not control) was accompanied by the rapid and almost complete disappearance of Burma's Hindu population, apparently at the hands of the Burmese Nationalist Millitia rather than the Japanese themselves. This occurred almost concurrently with the first wave of the European Holocaust, against Jews in the Baltic States. If there's a hidden truth anywhere, it may lie in that synchronization and the inscrutable motives for ethnic cleansing in Burma, which remains an appalling work in progress, sixty-eight years on.

NB: this above post has been updated to include a link to Mr Eden's World at War interview, he was by then (1973) Lord Avon. Thanks to Richard for help in finding this: the series is on You Tube in something like 140 clips! This link is to a database of the relevant episode's contents, Medawar is not sure if there's a database for the whole series.)