On 15.07.1944 the director of 1st Directorate of NKGB, the Soviet intelligence, Pavel Fitin wrote to Aleksandr Shcherbakov, a Central Committee secretary and the head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army and the Soviet Information Bureau:
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Source: RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 250, l. 89.
ЦК ВКП(б)
товарищу Щербакову
Нами из Варшавы от нашего корреспондента получена информация следующего содержания:
"В лагере Освенцим немцы отравляют газами венгерских евреев по 10-15 тысяч в день и жгут их на кострах. Проверено точно, реагируйте."
Начальник I Управления НКГБ
Союза ССР
(ФИТИН)
CC AUCP(b)
to comrade Shcherbakov
We received the following information from our correspondent in Warsaw:
"In the camp Auschwitz the Germans are poisoning 10-15 thousand Hungarian Jews a day with gas and burning them on pyres. Definitely verified, react."
Head of the 1st Directorate of NKGB
USSR
(FITIN)
Thus the Soviet intelligence learned about the mass destruction of the Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz either while it was still going on (depending on when exactly Fitin got this information) or shortly thereafter.
Up to 09.07.1944 about 434,000 Jews were deported from Hungary, most of them to Auschwitz, where about 320,000 of them were found unfit for work and gassed on arrival, and the rest were either registered in the camp or left in the area for the transit Jews (who resided in the camp but were not registered there, awaiting transfer to labor camps). Most of the latter Jews were transferred for work in other camps, but many eventually perished (incl. through gassings) in Auschwitz.
So far I have been unable to find anything in the central press, like Pravda or Izvestiya, about this destruction. Whether this was due to scarcity of information, low importance assigned to it or A. Shcherbakov's reputed antisemitism is hard to say.
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