Confronted with growing public pressure in view of the flow of reports on the systematic murder of Jews, a statement was elaborated by the British Foreign Office, amended by the U.S. State Department, and issued on December 17 under the signatures of Great Britain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the National Council of France. The statement explicitly condemned the GermansΓÇÖ policy of bestial and cold-blooded extermination and stressed that hundreds of thousands had been killed. Although those who demanded assistance for the Jews did not find the statement satisfactory, it was the first public acknowledgment of the fact that masses of Jews had been murdered.
