Worth mentioning that Jan Karski, a Polish soldier working undercover at the direction of the Polish government in London began warning the Polish, British and US governments of the murder of Jews as early as 1940. After being withdrawn he met with numerous officials of those governments, including FDR in 1943. FDR had no questions for Karski.
Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt knew from the beginning what was being done to the Jews. They refused to act. They even refused to include what they knew of the genocide in propaganda against the Axis. They at the least could have announced that those that did the killing would be hunted down and punished. Nor would they bomb the rail lines that brought people to these execution camps.
If you ask me who my greatest hero is, without hesitation I will say "Witold Pilecki".
And for what he did, he was murdered by the Communists.
> Some Jewish leaders begged the Allies to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. <
There was a whiff of antisemitism in FDR’s government. But all fairness, I must mention two points.
1. Precision bombing was in its infancy in WW II. How many of those bombs would have hit their target? Maybe 10% on a good day.
2. The Germans were VERY good at repairing damaged railroad lines. Repairing damaged oil refineries and ball-bearing factories, well that wasn’t so easy.
So where do you send the limited amount of bombers you have? Hitting which targets would end the war quickest, and save the most lives? I dunno. It’s not the easiest of calls.
Bookmark (literally!)
i had some correspondence with Rudolf Vrba a few years before his passing, a real credit to the human race...
Damn it.
bmp
I will read that. I have always been interested in pre-war Germany, and the events that transpired, the people who did them and why, so this book will be read and placed in my collection.
Thank you for posting this most interesting article.
‘Face
;o]
If you’re interested, you should find a copy of the 2021 film, The Aushwitz Report, a dramatization of the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Auschwitz_Report
In the end their escape came to nothing because the information didn’t make it to Allies’ Supreme Command until early 1944, the the brass thought mounting any effort to free them would directly reduce resources they thought better spent on D-Day.
Not to mention most of the Jews were to be found east of Berlin, so that’s where they built the camps, too far from English airbases to be targeted practically.
You might also be interested in another 2021 film, “Getting Away with Murder(s)”, which details how few of the hundreds of thousands of Nazis directly involved in the mass murder program ever were brought to justice, to include some still living but protected by their host nation.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5078614/
Read the book several weeks ago. Highly recommend.
A very interesting read.
Bookmark.