On November 24 , 1942 , after being informed by U.S. Under-secretary of State Sumner Welles , Wise held a press conference in Washington , D.C. and announced that the Nazis had a plan for the extermination of all European Jews , and had already killed 2 million ; it did n't make front-page news . The information was based on the Riegner Telegram , a message sent to Wise in August 1942 by Gerhart M Riegner , then representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva , informing the Allies about the so-called " Final Solution of the Jewish question " , the German plan to exterminate the European Jews , for the first time . Together with Nahum Goldmann , Wise spread the information about the ongoing genocide to Sweden and other countries by telegram
German plan to exterminate the European Jews
The Holocaust
Stephen Samuel Wise