To za co ma nas sprzedać Rosji ten Izrael?

Jakub Mielnik

Benjamin Netanjahu i Władimir Putin / Źródło: Newspix.pl / ABACA

Stawka, za którą premier Netanjahu ma nas ponoć sprzedać Putinowi dramatycznie spada: była mowa o pokoju w Syrii, ugłaskaniu Iranu i setkach tysięcy rosyjskich wyborców w Izraelu. A teraz zeszło na pannicę, która próbowała przewieźć przez Rosję trochę marihuany z Indii.

Dewaluuje się nasze znaczenie dla wielkiej polityki między Rosją i Izraelem i to w zastraszającym tempie. Przynajmniej w medialnych opowieściach. Przybywa ich, im bliżej do rozpoczęcia w Jerozolimie Światowego Forum Holokaustu, organizowanego wspólnie przez szacowny Yad Vashem i mniej szacownego putinowskiego oligarchę Wiaczesława Kantora, używającego poza Rosją bardziej swojsko brzmiącego imienia Mosze. Oczywiście izraelski rząd też ma swój udział w imprezie, grupującej wielu ważnych gości, jak choćby Angela Merkel, Emanuel Macron czy Władymir Putin.

Głównym celem spotkania, jak słyszymy już od kilku tygodni, mają być haniebne targi polską godnością i prawdą historyczną. Kreml wykrzywia ją dla swoich tajemnych celów a także dla czystej satysfakcji zagrania Polakom na nosie. Wydarzenie, które Rosjanie sobie zorganizowali w Jerozolimie, zapraszając w roli widzów Niemców, po których stronie w 1939 roku do II wojny światowej przystąpili i Francuzów, których rząd w latach 40-tych wspólnie z III Rzeszą realizował plan zagłady żydowskich obywateli oświeconej Republiki urasta do rozmiarów nowego paktu Ribbentrop Mołotow, albo, nawet konferencji jałtańskiej. Krótko mówiąc, czeka nas w Jerozolimie pognębienie i upokorzenie, które skomplikuje i tak niełatwą sytuację międzynarodową wokół Polski. W roli Judasza obsadzany jest, a jakże, premier Benjamin Netanjahu, którego nie stać było, żeby wymusić na organizatorach Forum z Jad Vashem i jej sponsorze, czyli Mosze Kantorowi zgody na przyznanie polskiemu prezydentowi prawa głosu.

Stało się to pomimo podpisania przez premiera Izraela i premiera Polski, Mateusza Morawieckiego wspólnej deklaracji, stwierdzającej, że państwo polskie z Holokaustem nie miało nic wspólnego. Putin i jego akolici od dłuższego już czasu twierdzą coś innego a apogeum tego festiwalu antypolskiej propagandy ma nastąpić właśnie w Jerozolimie i to już za kilka dni. Tak na marginesie: czy to przypadek, że przebieg konferencji premier Morawiecki będzie komentował z bezpiecznej odległości Japonii, gdzie leci z oficjalną wizytą?

Wiele było już spekulacji na temat powodów, dla których Netanjahu organizuje Putinowi tak dobrze eksponowaną scenę, z której rzeczywiście mogą, choć wcale nie muszą, paść pod adresem Polski skandaliczne słowa.Izrael ma z Rosją wiele ważnych interesów: Putin trzyma za pysk Syrię, gdzie hasają przecież wrogo do Izraela i Żydów nastawieniu Irańczycy. Ma też w ręku klucz do serc ponad miliona 300 tysięcy izraelskich obywateli rosyjskiego pochodzenia, którzy II wojnę światową pamiętają tak, jak uczyli ich tego sowieccy politrucy a nie tak, jak my w Polsce ją widzimy. Ci rosyjscy Żydzi mają kluczowe znaczenie dla Netanjahu. Premier już po raz trzeci w ciągu roku rozpisuje wybory, bo nie może uciułać większości, która dałaby mu reelekcję. Izraelscy Rosjanie mogą mu to zapewnić, podobnie jak skrajne i niechętne generalnie Polsce kręgi polityczne – gra toczy się o pojedyncze mandaty w Knesecie. Bibi, jak nazywają w Izraelu Netanjahu, walczy nie tylko o reelekcję, ale i wolność, bo ciążą na nim poważne prokuratorskie zarzuty o korupcję: jak przegra wybory po raz trzeci może wylądować w więzieniu.

W takich warunkach pozwolić Putinowi popastwić się trochę nad Polakami to doprawdy niewielka cena. To się wszystko nawet jakoś trzyma kupy. Ale jeśli schodzimy na poziom telawiwskiej hipsterki, która była na tyle głupia, żeby wlec indyjskie konopie z Indii do Izraela przez Moskwę, to już doprawdy jest to intryga grubymi nićmi szyta. Każdy hipster w Tel Awiwie wie, że nie ma sensu wlec marihuany przez pół świata, skoro świetne konopie uprawiają żydowscy osadnicy, kolonizujący Zachodni Brzeg Jordanu. Jeśli więc Bibi miałby zagrać, jak mu Putin gra, dla jakiejś bezmyślnej niedojdy, to i jego polityczna przyszłość maluje się w barwach znacznie bardziej ponurych niż wizja polskiej historii, spreparowana przez kremlowskich propagandystów.

BBC Whitewashes U.S. Refusal to Bomb Auschwitz

Rafael Medoff

Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust, which was recently published by the Jewish Publication Society / University of Nebraska Press.

The new BBC documentary about the question of bombing Auschwitz deserves an award—for creative fiction. Through omissions, distortions, and “re-enactments” of conversations with imaginary dialogue inserted for effect, the BBC has made a shambles of the historical record concerning this important issue.

The film, “Bombing Auschwitz,” was broadcast in the United States by PBS on January 21 and is being screened at various venues. It purports to tell the story of what it calls the “debate” in 1944 over “one of the great moral dilemmas of the 20th century” –that is, whether to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz, despite the risk that some inmates might be harmed.

In fact, there was no such “debate.” There were a few individuals who privately expressed qualms. But they did so long after the Roosevelt administration had repeatedly rejected the bombing requests, on completely different grounds.

U.S. officials did not cite the danger of harming inmates when they turned down the bombing requests. That was not a consideration. The first such requests—and many of the later ones—asked for the bombing of the railways and bridges leading to the camp, and striking such targets obviously did not endanger civilians.

Rescue advocates sought those bombings because hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being deported in cattle cars across those tracks and bridges, destined for Auschwitz. Damaging the transport routes would have interrupted the mass murder process.

Remarkably, the requests and rejections concerning bombing the railways and bridges are not discussed in the film. In fact, some of the requests that were made to bomb the railways are misleadingly presented in the film as requests to “bomb Auschwitz.” The BBC has, in effect, whited-out the actual historical record, and replaced it with a distorted narrative that suits its creators’ agenda.

THE “STUDY” THAT NEVER WAS

The first requests for bombing were made in telegrams to the Roosevelt administration in June 1944 by leaders of Agudath Israel (an Orthodox group based in New York) and the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and by Roswell McClelland, a Switzerland-based official of the U.S. government’s own War Refugee Board. They named the specific rail lines and bridges between Hungary and Poland that should be targeted to disrupt the deportations.

An official of Agudath Israel, Meier Schenkolewski, also met in person, on June 19, with two senior members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet to plead for the bombing of the railways and bridges. Secretary of State Cordell Hull passed the buck, telling the Agudath Israel emissary to go talk to the War Department. Secretary of War Henry Stimson falsely told Schenkolewski that bombing those targets was impossible because they were “within the competence of the Russian Military Command.” In fact, American planes were already flying in the vicinity of Auschwitz, in preparation for attacks on other targets. Neither Hull nor Stimson is mentioned in the film.

Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, acting on behalf of the administration, replied to the written requests of June 1944 and rejected them out of hand. He used nearly identical language in the rejection letters that he sent later that summer, in response to requests by other Jewish groups to bomb both the railways and the gas chambers within Auschwitz.

In his letters, McCloy did not express any concern about possibly harming the inmates of Auschwitz. He wrote that the War Department had undertaken “a study” which concluded that any such bombings were “impracticable” because they would require “the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations” elsewhere in Europe.

McCloy’s explanation was false. No such “study” was ever conducted. No “diversion” of airplanes would have been needed—because U.S. bombers were already striking German oil factories in the Auschwitz industrial zone, just a few miles from the gas chambers. The real reason for the rejections was the Roosevelt administration’s policy of refraining from using even the most minimal resources for humanitarian objectives, such as interrupting genocide.

McCloy’s letter, which is central to this historical episode, is not mentioned in the film. Instead, the “diversion” argument is presented as a legitimate objection—as if bombing Auschwitz really would have undermined the war effort. The entire fictional “debate” is presented to the viewer as a clash between U.S. officials who were waging the war, and semi-hysterical Jewish leaders who wanted to divert from the war effort for the sake of their narrow Jewish interests.

THE OIL WAR

Jewish leaders were aware at the time that the Allies were bombing the oil factories at Auschwitz. The co-chairman of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, who repeatedly met with U.S. officials to press for bombing the railways and the gas chambers, specifically cited the fact that they were already “regularly bombing the I.G. Farben factories, a few miles distant from Auschwitz.”

The “oil war,” as it was called, was no secret. On August 21, 1944, for example, a front page article in the New York Times described how “500 United States heavy bombers from Italy today…bombed the I.G. Farbenindustrie synthetic oil and rubber plant at Oswiecim in Polish Silesia.”

The fact that Oswiecim/Auschwitz also was a death camp for Jews was no secret, either. The Times itself mentioned the mass murder of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz in news articles on June 25, July 3, and July 6. During this same period, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency —the leading international Jewish news agency—repeatedly described the mass killings that were taking place in what it called “the notorious ‘extermination camp’ at Oswiecim.”

In other words, Goldmann and his colleagues knew at the time that the “diversion” argument was false. Yet Goldmann does not appear anywhere in the BBC’s film—not among the characters quoted, not in the narration, and not in the re-enactments.

The producers preferred one of Goldmann’s subordinates, A. Leon Kubowitzki, because he proposed that Auschwitz be attacked by Allied ground troops rather than from the air. Kubowitzki was the only official of any Jewish organization who told U.S. officials he opposed bombing Auschwitz. By contrast, 30 different officials of Jewish organizations called for bombing. Yet the BBC film highlights Kubowitzki’s view, omits Goldmann, and disingenuously creates the impression that there were a few Jewish leaders in favor, and a few against.

Kubowitzki was useful to the BBC producers—but only up to a point. The fact that he also circulated proposals for bombing the railway lines and bridges leading to Auschwitz was simply omitted. That historical information would have conflicted with the film’s narrative—and when the historical record conflicts with the preconceived narrative in “Bombing Auschwitz,” apparently history must give way.

GEORGE McGOVERN’S ROLE

Just before the film was completed, a BBC producer contacted me for an interview. When the project’s extreme bias became apparent, I declined to participate. I had good reason to expect that anything I said on camera which undermined the predetermined narrative would end up on the cutting room floor. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what happened with George McGovern.

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In a series of telephone conversations and email exchanges with the BBC producer, Sue Jones, I explained that there had been no “debate” over bombing Auschwitz and that the main Jewish requests that U.S. officials rejected concerned bombing the railways and bridges. I pointed out to her that young George McGovern, the future U.S. senator and Democratic presidential nominee, was one of the pilots who flew over the Auschwitz region in 1944. In a lengthy videotaped interview some years ago (with the filmmakers Haim Hecht and Stuart Erdheim), McGovern said that bombing the railways and bridges would have been feasible. He noted that Allied pilots frequently bombed railways and bridges as part of the war effort, even though they were sometimes difficult to hit.

McGovern said the “diversion” argument was just “a rationalization,” since he and other U.S. pilots were already flying over that area, and didn’t need to be diverted. “Franklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero,” McGovern added. “But I think he made two great mistakes in World War Two.” One was the internment of more than 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans; the other was the decision “not to go after Auschwitz…God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation.”

Ms. Jones told me she had never heard of McGovern’s role—despite the fact that the interview with him had been the subject of dozens of published articles in major newspapers, and even was screened on Capitol Hill for a Congressional task force.

I sent her the link to the video. Jones feigned interest. “I’m very interested in including McGovern,” she wrote me on April 1. And: “The McGovern interview is a good watch.” Not good enough, apparently. McGovern is not mentioned even once in the film. One of the most prominent figures in recent American political history was directly involved in the events in question—and yet the BBC could not find even a few seconds to mention him. Because, of course, what he had to say would have contradicted the film’s agenda.

“The film will be entirely faithful to the history of 1944,” Sue Jones of the BBC wrote me. In truth, “Bombing Auschwitz” is entirely unfaithful to the historical record. It is faithful only to the preconceived misconceptions of its creators.