The Soviets initially grossly overestimated the number of deaths, claiming at the Nuremberg Trials in July 1944 that there were no fewer than 400,000 Jewish victims, and the official Soviet count was of 1.5 million victims of different nationalities, Independent Canadian journalist Raymond Arthur Davies, who was based in Moscow and on the payroll of the Canadian Jewish Congress, visited Majdanek on August 28, 1944. The following day he sent a telegram to Saul Hayes, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. It states: ""I do wish stress that Majdanek where one million Jews and half a million others [were killed"" and ""You can tell America that at least three million Jews [were killed of whom at least a third were killed in Majdanek"," and though widely reported in this way, the estimate was never taken seriously by scholars.