Holocaust bump.
Posted on 07/07/2004 8:02:32 AM PDT by Zute
Israelis may remember Benjamin Akzin (1904-1985) as a distinguished academic who served as dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, president of Haifa University, and recipient of the 1967 Israel Prize. What is less well known about Akzin is that he was the first person to propose to the Roosevelt administration that it bomb the Auschwitz death camp.
This week marks the 60th anniversary of a desperate plea that could have changed the course of history - but was rebuffed for political reasons.
After completing doctorates in political science and law at the universities of Vienna and Paris, the Latvian-born Akzin traveled to the United States in the 1930s to complete a third doctorate at Harvard.
Akzin was active in the Revisionists' New Zionist Organization of America, and in 1940 he became one of the first Zionist lobbyists in Washington, when the NZOA sent him to Capitol Hill to seek support for Jewish statehood. After a stint with the legal department of the Library of Congress, Akzin landed a position on the staff of the War Refugee Board, a refugee rescue agency established by president Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 under pressure from Congress, Jewish activists, and the Treasury Department.
Roosevelt had never intended the WRB to be much more than an election-year gesture to avoid an embarrassing public confrontation with refugee advocates. Thus the WRB was given no government funding. Yet with funds contributed by Jewish groups and a small but dedicated staff - composed largely of the same Treasury Department officials who helped lobby for the board's creation - it energetically used every means at its disposal to save Jews from the Holocaust.
Among other things, the WRB financed and facilitated the life-saving work of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who sheltered Jews in Budapest to keep them from deportation. Historians estimate that the WRB's efforts played a major role in saving about 200,000 Jews and 20,000 non-Jews.
The one area of the War Refugee Board's activity that has attracted the most public attention in recent years is its unsuccessful attempts to bring about the US bombing of Auschwitz. It was Benjamin Akzin who initiated this effort.
Shortly after the German occupation of Hungary in the spring of 1944, the WRB learned of preparations for the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. At about the same time, it also received the first detailed information about the mass-murder process, including specific geographical descriptions of the camp's layout, provided by two escapees. This information, combined with the Allies' recently-attained control of the skies over Europe, made it possible for the first time to seriously consider using Allied air power to interfere with the Nazi genocide.
IN JUNE 1944, the WRB received appeals from Jewish leaders in Europe, asking the US to bomb the railroad lines from Hungary to Poland which were being used for the deportations. WRB director John Pehle forwarded the appeals to assistant secretary of war John McCloy. In a note to his assistant, McCloy instructed him to "kill" Pehle's request by rejecting the bombing proposal as "impracticable" because it would require "considerable diversion" of planes needed for the war effort.
But Akzin refused to take no for an answer. In a memorandum to his WRB colleagues at the end of June he made the case for bombing. This was the first time that a government official presented a complete, carefully-reasoned proposal for bombing.
Akzin went beyond the idea of hitting the railroad lines and argued that the Allies should bomb Auschwitz itself. Destroying the camp, he wrote, would "slow down the systematic slaughter, at least temporarily," since "it would require some time" for the Germans to rebuild the murder-machinery, and "with German manpower and material resources gravely depleted" the Germans might not even be able to "equip new large-scale extermination centers" at all.
Bombing the camps "would presumably cause many deaths among their personnel - certainly among the most ruthless and despicable of the Nazis," Akzin wrote. He acknowledged that some of the Jewish prisoners might also be killed in such raids, "but such Jews are doomed to death anyhow," and the destruction of the camps... might save the lives of future victims."
Akzin emphasized the military value of raids in that region, pointing out that "the important mining and manufacturing centers of Katowice and Chorzow" were just 14 miles from Auschwitz, and they "play an important part in the industrial armament of Germany. Therefore, the destruction of these camps could be achieved without deflecting aerial strength from an important zone of military objectives."
Thanks in part to Akzin's persistence, the WRB continued to press the War Department on the bombing issue in the months to follow. But each time Pehle presented a bombing request, it was rejected on the grounds that the department had already conducted a "study" and found that it was not militarily feasible. That claim was false. No such study had been done.
In fact, the War Department had already secretly decided, back in February 1944, that as a matter of principle it would never use military resources "for the purposes of rescuing victims of enemy oppression."
This policy was in accord with the policies of president Roosevelt and his State Department, who feared that saving Jews would create pressure to bring them to the United States. One internal State Department official specifically warned against the "danger" that the Nazis "might agree to turn over to the United States and to Great Britain a large number of Jewish refugees."
Ironically, beginning in August 1944, US bombers repeatedly bombed German synthetic oil factories in the Auschwitz complex, including some that were less than five miles from the gas chambers. Dropping a few bombs on the mass-murder machinery was certainly militarily feasible, but the Roosevelt administration considered it politically undesirable.
Tragically, Benjamin Akzin's desperate appeals fell on deaf ears.
The writer is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America's response to the Holocaust - www.WymanInstitute.org
' In fact, the War Department had already secretly decided, back in February 1944, that as a matter of principle it would never use military resources "for the purposes of rescuing victims of enemy oppression."
This policy was in accord with the policies of president Roosevelt and his State Department, who feared that saving Jews would create pressure to bring them to the United States. One internal State Department official specifically warned against the "danger" that the Nazis "might agree to turn over to the United States and to Great Britain a large number of Jewish refugees." '
From another article:
'In the wake of Kristallnacht, humanitarian-minded members of Congress introduced legislation to aid German Jewry. A bill sponsored by Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Mass.) proposed the admission of 20,000 German refugee children outside the quotas. Nativist and isolationist groups vociferously opposed the Wagner-Rogers bill. Typical of their perspective was a remark by FDR's cousin, Laura Delano Houghteling, who was the wife of the U.S. commissioner of immigration. She warned that "20,000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults."
An appeal to FDR by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for his support of the bill fell on deaf ears, and an inquiry by a congresswoman as to the president's position was returned to his secretary marked "File No action FDR." '
http://www.aish.com/SSI/articleToPrint.asp?PageURL=/holocaust/issues/Kristallnacht_And_The_Worlds
By the way, the son of an Auschwitz survivor once told me that the inhabitants of the camp used to look up at the Allied planes flying overhead and actually prayed that they would bomb the camp - that was far more important to them than their own survival.
And if not the camp, why not the tracks?
...and if we'd have bombed the camps, we'd still be trying to answer for the carnage to innocent lives -- and paying with big bucks as long as there was anyone even remotely related to any of the victims still alive. Sorry. This revisionism is worthless. How dare anyone give the US a piece of the blame for the suffering when it was the Germans and they alone who inflicted it. I grow weary of such. But I suppose it's as inevitable as mold growing on stale bread. Leave it laying around long enough and someone will blame the US.
didn't russia kill many innocent people also at that time . How come we don't hear about that? And why is it only the jews who suffered in those camps christians where there and so were others who didn't believe in the German way.
This policy was in accord with the policies of president Roosevelt and his State Department, who feared that saving Jews would create pressure to bring them to the United States.
Another reason why old Gumlegs is ranked higher than Reagan. Interned Japanese and pissed on the Jews. Hard to decide which is more racists, Woodrow Wilson or FDR. Guess we'll need Robert Byrd to decide.
Because railroad tracks are the hardest damn thing to bomb with unguided ordnance.
This is a ridiculous argument. Reasonable people would have supported a bombing of the death camps even if a few inmates died in the process if it stopped the killing machine for a significant period of time, not to mention the killling of the guards and other personnel who would have had to be replaced as well as rebuilding of the camps. Maybe the Nazis would have even quit rebuilding after a couple of bombings. Nobody is saying the US is responsible for the Holocaust however, that is not to say we could not have done more to stop it or slow it down.
YOu are right some non Jewish victims of the Nazis could have been saved also and there is certainly nothing wrong with that, you only strengthen the argument for active intervention.
Holocaust bump.
Interesting work, where is it located?
Bump.
T.
One of the Ukraine's countless tragedies.
Do you then absolve the Vichy French, the Dutch Nazis, the Hungarian Arrow Cross crowd, or do you wish to revise your statement?
It's a marvel to me that American Jews vote in lockstep for the Democratic Party. It didn't help them then...it doesn't help them now, but embraces anti-Israel lefties like Michael Moore. It allows sexual predators like Bill Clinton to prey on a young Jewish girl like Monica Lewinsky then excuses his abhorrent conduct.
Look at the Jews in "civilized" France today, again facing anti-Semitism and being advised to take off their yarmulkas when they exit their homes, so they don't look Jewish and thereby open themselves to attack. Where's the outrage among French intellectuals and the French media elite?
Granted. That is in the process of bombing or shelling THE ENEMY, that is, the MILITARY we were trying to defeat. War is hell. But for us to have bombed places where we knew that our FRIENDS, the victims were being held, noncombatant, against their will, en masse, I guarantee would have us subject, to this day, to questions and guilt trips, accusations of mass murder, that far exceed those that we are hearing now about our failure to have done same.
My argument holds water, or I would not use it. Mostly, though, I despise the second guessing, and that is the context of my statement in the first place.
Try and imagine yourself being the one who had to make that call. In the mind of the President would have to be the glimmer of hope, however slight, that the Germans would take out Hitler and capitulate "any day now". "What if that occurred on the very day after I, the now-infamous-villain of all time, bombed 20,000 Jewish victims to death". Hindsight is clear, but there were many other military contingencies of the moment that people are forgetting nowadays, and it is unfair, I think.
And my argument is not ridiculous. If it were, I wouldn't use it. No legitimate FReeper makes ridiculous arguments, and to characterize them as such, when they represent legitimate, well-founded differences of opinion, is beneath our dignity on here, I think. Still, far too much trashing of fellow-conservatives goes on. Disagree, of course! Politely.
I wasn't even addressing those other perpetrators or circumstances. I was talking about the failure to bomb the death camps, specifically Auschwitz. The only people I absolve of anything in all that's been written here is the United States of America. We did our best and we did more than anyone else in the world could legitimately have ever been asked to do. Why did you adduce those others?
The US knew there was only one way to stop it: defeat the nation perpetuating it. That we did. Planes diverted to bomb a camp served the purpose of ending the war far better by destroying Germany's ability to make war.
Besides, Auschwitz is in Poland. No American airplane had the range to reach it.
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