Ministry of Supply scientist Prof. Reginald Patrick Linstead asks F.O. for evidence of gas chambers, December 1944

SECRET

Dear Vyvyan,

The chemical Defense Division of this Ministry is anxious to make technical enquiries on the use by the Germans of Gas Lethal Chambers on prisoners. I am writing to ask if you know of any authenticated case of the use of such Lethal Chambers in France or other liberated countries.

Yours sincerely,
R. P. Linstead.

J.M. Vyvyan, Esq.,
Foreign Office,
Whitehall, S .W. 1.

Copy to: Mr. Childs

(C 17549/17549/18)

SECRET

Dear Professor Linstead,

In reply to your secret letter of the 5th December, I write to say that the Foreign Office have no record of the use by the Germans of lethal chambers for gassing human beings in France or elsewhere in Western Europe.

You refer, however, to "other liberated countries" and if this includes the part of Poland evacuated by the Germans, it was of course near Lublin that the worst known case of killings of the kind occurred. Perhaps you will let me know if you require any information about gas chambers in Eastern Europe of a non-technical kind, such as we could supply from the published material available here.

Yours sincerely,

(J.M. Vyvyan)