- Date
- 11 Jan. 1943
- Sender
- Hermann Höfle
- Total
- 1,274,166 arrivals
- Archive
- UK National Archives HW 16/23
What the document is
Hermann Höfle transmitted a coded radio message from Lublin to Kraków on January 11, 1943. British signals intelligence intercepted and decoded it.
The four coded destinations
- L: 24,733 — Lublin/Majdanek
- B: 434,508 — Bełżec
- S: 101,370 — Sobibór
- T: 713,555 — Treblinka
- Total: 1,274,166
The Treblinka figure
Some reproductions show 71,355 because a digit is missing in the surviving transcript. The stated total and independent transport evidence establish 713,555 as the intended figure.
What “arrivals” means
The message reports arrivals rather than explicitly saying “people murdered.” Because almost all deportees to Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka were murdered soon after arrival, historians use these figures as major mass-murder evidence while retaining the wording.
What it does not count
The document ends on December 31, 1942 and does not include every later transport, shooting, labor-camp death or other victim associated with Operation Reinhard.
Why historians value it
The telegram connects a named perpetrator, a date, coded sites and centralized reporting and corroborates other German records and camp-by-camp transport research.
Sources
This page draws on the institutional sources listed below.