Buhler’s list of extermination camp locations sent to Kritzinger

Buhler’s list of extermination camp locations sent to Kritzinger is a handwritten document dated July 18, 1943, that identifies six sites by name and coordinates. Addressed to Kritzinger and signed “Buhler [?],” it is brief, but its precision makes it a consequential piece of evidence: locations associated with mass killing appear not as rumor or vague reference, but as a compact list prepared for an official recipient.

Document and Contents

The note is headed “Krakau” and dated “7/18/43.” It begins, “My dear Kritzinger,” followed by “Here is the list.” Six entries name Auschwitz, Kulmhof, Blezec, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Sobibor, each paired with a latitude and longitude. The list ends with “Heil Hitler!” and a tentative attribution, “[Signed] Buhler [?].” The question mark matters: the document is presented as bearing Buhler’s signature, but the transcription does not claim absolute certainty about the handwriting or attribution.

Its form is strikingly spare. There is no explanation of what the named places are, no description of their function, and no account of the people affected there. The coordinates supply a different kind of specificity: they make the locations geographically identifiable while leaving their human significance unstated. The note’s administrative economy is therefore part of its meaning, not evidence that the places themselves were unimportant.

Address and Context

The salutation identifies Kritzinger as the intended recipient, while the phrase “Here is the list” presents the locations as information being passed along rather than as a personal recollection. The heading and date place the communication in Krakau on July 18, 1943. Beyond those details, the document does not explain why Kritzinger requested the list, how it was conveyed, or what either man intended to do with it; the text supports a connection through the address and contents, not a fuller account of their exchange.

The list’s names acquire their full force in the context of March’s later examination of documentary evidence concerning the extermination system. The Wannsee minutes refer to the “final solution of the Jewish question” and describe a European population counted in millions. In the draft record March studies, Reinhard Heydrich’s amendments remove discussion of specific killing methods from the final version. Against that pattern of bureaucratic language and concealment, a dated list of sites and coordinates is significant for what it makes locatable, even as it says nothing directly about the crimes committed there.

Relation to Evidence of the Killing System

Other documents and records in the investigation establish that the sites were part of a system of organized killing and exploitation. The Wannsee material describes the processing of large numbers of people, while Martin Luther’s inspection notes record the camp’s infrastructure and routine. At Auschwitz, the account follows a deportation from the railway arrival through selection and the killing installation; it also records the removal and reuse of prisoners’ possessions and hair. A separate SS circular orders the collection and reporting of human hair from concentration camps. These materials provide the operational and administrative context that the list itself omits.

The difference between those records is illuminating. The list offers a name and a coordinate for each place, but no account of transportation, camp operations, or victims. Other evidence supplies those missing dimensions in detail, showing the consequences hidden behind the apparently neutral act of identifying locations. The list should not be treated as a complete account of the camps or as proof, by itself, of every detail in the later records. Its evidentiary importance lies in its narrow, concrete contribution: it records named locations and coordinates in a communication attributed, with some qualification, to Buhler.

Significance in the Investigation

For March, the document belongs to a wider body of evidence in which official paperwork both records crimes and obscures them. The list’s exact geography contrasts with the evasive terminology in the Wannsee draft, where language such as “appropriate direction” and “natural reduction” masks the policy’s real consequences. Read together, the documents expose a divide between bureaucratic presentation and the violence the administrative process organized.

The note is therefore most significant as a small but pointed link between knowledge and place. It names six sites without narrating what happened there; the surrounding evidence supplies that history. Its bare coordinates make the sites difficult to dismiss as abstractions, while its restrained wording shows how a document can preserve a trace of the system without openly describing its purpose. In the investigation, that combination makes the list a concise piece of evidence within a much larger case against the state’s attempt to conceal the mass killings.