Auschwitz bombing debate
The question of why Auschwitz wasn't bombed is one that continues to be debated, sometimes bitterly, particularly by Holocaust survivors. It is, as Michael Berenbaum has argued, not only a historical question, but also "a moral question emblematic of the Allied response to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust. Moreover, it is a question that has been posed to a series of presidents of the United States." [1]
David Wyman, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Massachusetts, has asked: "How could it be that the governments of the two great Western democracies knew that a place existed where 2,000 helpless human beings could be killed every 30 minutes, knew that such killings actually did occur over and over again, and yet did not feel driven to search for some way to wipe such a scourge from the earth?" [2]
What the Allies knew
- Main articles: Rudolf Vrba and Vrba-Wetzler report
The Allies were aware by mid-June 1944 at the latest of the mass murder that was taking place inside the camps. On April 7, 1944, two young Jewish inmates, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, had escaped from the camp with detailed information about the camp's geography, the gas chambers, and the numbers being killed. The information, later called the Vrba-Wetzler report, is believed to have reached the Jewish community in Budapest by April 27. Roswell McClelland, the U.S. War Refugee Board representative in Switzerland, is known to have received a copy by mid-June, and sent it to the board's executive director on June 16, according to Raul Hilberg. [3] Information based on the report was broadcast on June 15 by the British Broadcasting Corporation and published on June 20 by The New York Times. [4]
Allied bombing and reconnaissance missions
From March 1944 onwards, the Allies were in control of the skies over Europe, according to David Wyman. He writes that the 15th U.S. Army Air Force, which was based in Italy, had the range and capability to strike Auschwitz from early May 1944. On July 7, shortly after the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, a fleet of 452 15th Air Force bombers flew along and across the five deportation railway lines on their way to bomb oil refineries nearby. [5]
See also
- Auschwitz concentration camp
- History of the Jews in Hungary
- Rudolf Vrba
- Vrba-Wetzler report
- The_Abandonment_Of_The_Jews
Notes
- ^ Berenbaum, Michael. "Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed," Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- ^ Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 583.
- ^ Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 1215.
- ^ The full report was first published on November 25, 1944 by the U.S. War Refugee Board, the same day that the last 13 prisoners, all women, were killed in Auschwitz. The women were "unmittelbar getötet," leaving open whether they were gassed or otherwise disposed of. (Czech, Danuta (ed) Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp.920 and 933, using information from a series called Hefte von Auschwitz, and cited in Karny, Miroslav. "The Vrba and Wetzler report," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 564, Indiana University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994.)
- ^ Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 577.
References
- Berenbaum, Michael. "Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed," Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003.
- Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, first published 1994; this edition 1998. ISBN 025320884X