Why, Despite Good Intentions, Ken Burns’s "The U.S. and the Holocaust" Fails

Mosaic Magazine ^ | OCT. 13 2022 | RUTH R. WISSE

[wardaddy]

We didn’t do enough basically

I wish we had

But nearly 400,000 dead defeating the Axis is holy plenty

Allied leaders were hesitant to divert war effort

Many simply didn’t believe it was as bad as it was

And bombing camps was not the perfect solution

Throwing out the baby with the bath water

We did access them and free them as soon as we could I’m unaware we bypassed any

Especially the ones that held western political prisoners

[PeterPrinciple]

There is a story, can’t find it now. Some of Pattons men freed a camp and were so enraged by what they saw, the machined gun down some captured NAZI officers. They were to be charged and brought to military court. Patton lost the paper work.

[wardaddy]

Yes that happened at a number of camps

One of the major camps maybe Dachau ..a young SS officer who had just arrived was given charge the day the camp fell when the culpable commander had already fled (later caught charged and hanged)

He tried to stop the killing of prisoners and surrendered the camp as peaceably as he could

He was executed that day anyway but line soldiers who grabbed

Bad luck for him or no good deed goes unpunished

Lots of reprisals not surprisingly

Frankly as bad as the camps were

Some of the most personal atrocities against Jews and others were in Ukraine and Lithuania and Croatia

And commited by civilians Rwanda style without firearms

Brutal stuff like pregnant women sliced open baby removed and bashed in front of her eyes

In a part of Ukraine contested by Poland Ukrainian nationalists under Bandera did this to polish ethnics

100,000 to 200,000

Eastern Europe is a vicious place Christian Comanches

Now Poland is Ukraine biggest supporter

Go figure

[ConfusedAndLovingIt]

Now Poland is Ukraine biggest supporter

I've heard the theory that Poland's aim is to absorb western Ukraine when Russia inevitably wins, so they're "helping" while getting into position. Sounds a bit convoluted, but I guess we'll see.

[Pelham]

I watched a good show on the question of whether the Allies should have bombed the death camps (or if they even could have). It may have been a PBS special, I’m not sure who produced it.

In 1944 a couple of prisoners escaped from Auschwitz with elaborate drawings of the place. It was their story and drawings that first made the Brits and the US understand just what was going on in the camps.

A Jewish agency wanted the Allies to bomb Auschwitz. The Brits were more receptive to trying than the US. US planners wanted to keep hitting military targets and not divert. The camps were within bomber range but bombs weren’t accurate and they were liable to hit anything near the intended target. You couldn’t target rail lines or the death factories and expect to hit them alone, you’d hit everything.

this may be what I watched:

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/bombing-auschwitz-wnrzgw/4740/

[rxh4n1]

That was an old communist smear on the US, that we didn’t do enough to save the Jews.