1944: bombs on Auschwitz?

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The 2019 documentary by Tim Dunn (director) and Mark Hayhurst (screenwriter) 1944: Bombs on Auschwitz? wants to answer the question contained in the title with the help of historical image and film material, interviews with contemporary witnesses, historians and with restrained but illustrative play scenes with the prisoners Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler who fled from Auschwitz , and the report written according to their statements . The report, there are two versions (short and long), is also known as the Auschwitz Protocols . On the basis of historical quotations, however, attempts are made to include the possible statements made by Allied politicians at the time on this question from various perspectives in a possible answer.

These questions are asked more precisely in the film: Why was the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and with it the gas chambers and / or the railway lines leading there not opened before the deportation of the Hungarian Jews by the German occupiers of the country in the spring / summer of 1944 destroyed by targeted air raids? Was that technically (militarily) possible and what risks would have been associated with it? Were there other obstacles to such air strikes?

The film was shown on British (abridged) and German television from 2019.

Content

The film has three main focuses:

  • the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler in the spring of 1944 and the recording of their report (documented in writing) in occupied Czechoslovakia by Oscar Krasniansky in Žilina (from April 25).
  • The two versions of the report were transported and passed on from Bratislava by Rab.CMD Weissmandl to places with the Allies, which presumably provided military aid for the prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp: in Jerusalem, Bern, London, Washington / DC (from min. 20; for example in the US War Refugee Board ). The long version of their report (40 pages) came to government offices in London and Washington only after the liberation of Italy .
  • The discussion at that time revolves not only about the technical, but also about the ethical questions about a bombing and thus the killing of people trapped there, which cannot be ruled out, by these air strikes. It was run both within Jewish organizations and by government agencies in London and Washington and had to find an answer under time pressure.

Well-known people in the history of the world who are featured in the film are Winston Churchill , John W. Pehle - Director of the US WRB , John McCloy - the US Secretary of War, Anthony Eden and Chaim Weizmann . It is repeatedly asked whether the extent of the genocide was correctly assessed before the end of the war. The Allied invasion of France, which is in preparation on D-Day and ongoing from June 6, 1944, also plays an important role. Later assessments of these questions are also given in the film. It is also about the subsequent question whether the often heard justification that Auschwitz was not yet known as an extermination camp at the beginning of 1944 is even true?

Technical specifications

  • Country of origin: Germany, 90 min.
  • Year: 2019
  • First broadcast by arte on January 21, 2020
  • English title: 1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz?
  • First broadcast on BBC Two on September 29, 2019 (Language: English, 59 minutes)
  • Producing channels: ZDF , BBC  
    • Tim Dunn (Director)
    • Mark Hayhurst (screenwriter)
    • Susan Jones (executive producer)
    • Nicolas Kent (executive producer)
    • Oxford Film and Television (production company)

Contributors

Performing in the game scenes ... from real person - was (actor)

Comments from the interviewed witnesses cut into the film:

  • Hedy Bohm (deported to A. concentration camp in 1944)
  • Judy Cohen (deported to A. 1944)
  • Max Eisen (deported to A. concentration camp in 1944)
  • Zigi Shipper (deported to A. 1944)
  • Gerta Vrbová (first wife of Rudolf Vrba)
  • Lenka Weksberg (deported to A. concentration camp in 1944)

Participating and interviewed researchers:

background

Well-known successful escape attempts, which were connected with the transport of reports from the concentration camp to the West, committed:

Karski was also able to meet President Roosevelt personally in July 1943.

  • Jerzy Tabeau fled Auschwitz on November 19, 1943. His report reached Switzerland in April 1944. From there it came to the USA and was published anonymously in November 1944 as “Report of a Polish Major”.
  • Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz were also able to flee Auschwitz shortly after Vrba and Wetzler on May 27, 1944. They were able to confirm parts of the two’s more comprehensive report.

There was another source of news about the mass murders of Jews that had begun in Poland and the occupied parts of the Soviet Union: German radio messages contained many details about it. Prime Minister Winston Churchill received daily short reports of such deciphered German messages and weekly summaries thereof. In a radio speech on August 24, 1941, he announced parts of this knowledge for the first time.

From spring to autumn 1942, information from the American and British governments about mass murders of Polish Jews and many Jews deported from Western Europe, Aktion Reinhardt , which began in March 1942 with the “liquidation” of the first Polish assembly camps of Jewish prisoners, i.e. the mass murders would have. These include the Grojanowski Report and the Riegner Telegram (August 8, 1942). The excitement of the American public over the news even led to national demonstrations demanding action by the US government against the crimes.

Even before that, the reports came from the officer Witold Pilecki (from October 1940, Raport Witolda) from the Auschwitz concentration camp and from March 1941 went to the Polish government in exile in London. This information led u. a. on the Allied Declaration against the German policy of exterminating the Jewish population of Europe of December 1942.

See also

  • Contemporary knowledge of the Holocaust
  • IG Farben , Buna Plant with the Auschwitz III (Monowitz) concentration camp , damaged in a US air raid on September 13, 1944. The main camp and the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp were also hit by bombs. An estimated 300 people were injured and killed in this air strike from Italy, including SS men. The archived images of the preparatory reconnaissance flight became known worldwide in 1979 after a subsequent analysis by the US Air Force.
  • Roswell McClelland , US War Refugee Board in Switzerland
  • General Carl A. Spaatz , U.S. Air Force

literature

  •  The Auschwitz Protocol -  The Vrba-Wetzler Report - der original text bei holocaustresearchproject.org (Transcribed from the original OSI report of the US Department of Justice & the War Refugee Board Archives)
  • Tami Davis Biddle (2000): Allied Air Power: Objectives and Capabilities. In Neufeld, Michael J .; Berenbaum, Michael (eds.): The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It ?. New York, St. Martin's Press, pp. 35-51. ISBN 0-312-19838-8 .
  • Max Eisen : By Chance Alone: ​​A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz . 2017
  •  Erich Kulka : Attempts by Jewish Escapees to Stop Mass Extermination . In: Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3/4, 1985, pp. 295-306. Published by: Indiana University Press,
  • Walter Laqueur : What nobody wanted to know. The suppression of news about Hitler's "Final Solution" . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1981, ISBN 3-550-07947-8 .
  • Heiner Lichtenstein : Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed . Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-7663-0428-3 .
  • Michael Robert Marrus : The End of the Holocaust. De Gruyter, 2011. Engl. (The two relevant contributions by Martin Gilbert , David S. Wyman, from p. 249)
  • Konstanty Piekarski: Escaping Hell. The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, P 4618 . Dundurn, Toronto 1990. Engl. ISBN 1-55002-071-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (Bio RE at wilsoncenter.org, 2020)
  2. ↑ Karski correctly named the three extermination camps, Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka , which had been in operation up to that point .
  3. ↑ Marta Kijowska : Courier of Memory. The life of Jan. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2014. ISBN 978-3-406-66073-3 .
  4. ↑ A copy of his seven-page report is linked there.
  5. ↑ Shown in the film from min. 53.
  6. ↑ http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/de/auschwitz_ii_birkenau
  7. ↑ ... air raid an air squadron of 96 bomber of the type Liberator ... . There further air strikes on the plant and thus also on Auschwitz III are reported. (at wollheim-memorial.de)
  8. ^ Auschwitz survivor Max Eisen revisits horrors for memoir , Globe and Mail. 17th April 2016. 
  9. ^ "RBC Taylor Prize finalists: Ross King shortlisted for fourth time" . The Globe and Mail , January 11, 2017.
  10. ↑ URL of the online version: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467305