The Katzmann Report is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in Nuremberg Trials and numerous other proceedings against war criminals abroad. It is a leather-bound report by SS-GruppenführerFritz Katzmann, Commander of the German SS and Police in the District of Galicia, entitled "Lösung der Judenfrage im Distrikt Galizien", submitted on June 30, 1943 to the SS and Police ChiefFriedrich Krüger. It describes part of the Operation Reinhard. The Report was published in German and illustrated with photographs of the systems of persecution. A Polish translation of the report had been published in the 1950s, but was subject to the communist censorship and it did not have an accompanying scholarly analysis that came with the more recent edition by the Institute of National Remembrance. Full uncensored text of "Katzman report" was published in 2009.
Report as an artifact
Modern historians consider the report to be of limited value in terms of evidence because of its intentional distortion of facts meant to cover up the wholesale theft of gold and money by various German officials. The 62-page book attempts to present the extermination of Jews as an orderly operation. It begins with the photo collection titled "The Solution of the Jewish Problem in East Galicia", which is followed by the cost and benefit analysis. The report provides only a window into the scale of plunder. The totals are never rounded off. They are meant to lead the reader into believing in their authenticity. The Katzmann Report was written not in the occupied territories but in Berlin after Katzmann's tour of duty in Distrikt Galizien where he personally directed the slaughter of between 55,000 and 65,000 Jews during 1941-1942 around Lemberg. In the following months, his "Jew hunts" coupled with round ups for mass deportations to death camps produced a death toll of 143,000 people. In all, the Report described the liquidation of 434,329 Jews, implementing a thoroughly sanitized and approved language based on popular "racial science" of Adolf Hitler and his "experts", so as to help Katzmann advance his career.
