Bottom line:
The camps could never have been placed in France.
France had an active underground and the camps, the transportation lines to them, and their garrisons would have been under constant attack.
Poland also had an active underground. Attacks on the RR lines? Harrassment of the garrisons? Zip! Nada.
Help for the Warsaw ghetto? 50 old (and some unworkable)
pistols.
Uhh France was also a little bit closer to England than Poland was. It took flights from England to supply the French resistance.
Guys, cool down! What are you doing here? This is to remember the victims of the Ghetto uprising and not to blame those who didn´t stand up. I´m German, and I´ve asked myself what had I done during the Nazi time. The honest answer is, that I don´t know. Given I´d been educated the way I was I would not have participated in the Nazi party, but I don´t know whether I had had the strength to risk my life in the resistance.
Why do we call those who had this courage heroes? Because their actions were extra-ordinary. If it were ordinary, why should we call them heroes? I don´t blame anybody for being ordinary. The extra-ordinary behaviour needs our attention - be it in the evil sense or in the good sense.
So don´t engage in verbal fights about those who behaved ordinary. They don´t deserve to be blamed. The Nazis committed the atrocities.
"France had an active underground and the camps, the transportation lines to them, and their garrisons would have been under constant attack."
That is a myth. It was a year and a half after France's surrender before the FIRST German soldier was killed by the French resistance. The French munitions factories, by contrast, were going full strength building weapons for the Nazis. Sound very active to you?
No offense, but the France-Poland comparison is not that simple.
There were concentration camps in France that held Jews before they were to be deported to the death camps. These camps were staffed by both French police and Germans. Guess what, they weren't attacked by the Resistance and their train tracks not targeted for destruction.
There were 3.4 million million Jews in Poland before World War II and only 500,000 in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, combined. Poland was north of Slovakia and Hungary, east of Germany, and linked to the rest of Europe by rail, so it made sense as the location for most murders.
The occupation of Poland was much more brutal than the occupation of France. Neither was a picnic.
You can have an opinion, but not your own facts:
1) Camps were in Poland b/c the Jews and Poles were there. The Polish nation was to cease to exist, and 3 million Polish Christians were exterminated (along w/ 3 million Polish Jews) due to their being 'untermenschen'
2) In the Warsaw Uprising, only about 20% of the troops were armed. The AK gave the Jews arms, but there simply weren't that many to go around either in April 1943 or even September 1944.
3) Poland was the first country to fight, and had the fourth largest armed forces on the Allied side, after the USSR, US and UK but ahead of France.
4) Both Jewish and Christian Poles were given ration cards that were at starvation levels.
5) The Poles did not have a Vichy government. Part of the country was incorporated into the Reich, part was adminstered by the Germans (the infamous Frank).
6) Helping a Jew was punishable by death in occupied Poland.
7) The Polish armed forces fought in the Battle of Britain, Normandy (See the book five armies at Normandy), Monte Cassino, North Africa and the Eastern Front. The Poles took Berlin w/ the USSR. Deserting Polish troops fought in Israel's Independence War. The Poles cracked Enigma and gave it to the British and French (the Brits took credit, natch).
8) The Poles had a gvt department to help the Jews, the Zegota. The Polish government sent a man into the Ghetto (Karski). He reported to Roosevelt what he saw.