{"id":75923,"date":"2020-01-30T17:05:19","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T15:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=75923"},"modified":"2020-01-30T07:58:21","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T05:58:21","slug":"02-05-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=75923","title":{"rendered":"BBC Whitewashes U.S. Refusal to Bomb Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"100%\" src=\"https:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/images\/hnn\/hnn-logo-march2017-2.jpg\"><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/174136\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BBC Whitewashes U.S. Refusal to Bomb Auschwitz<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Rafael Medoff<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><strong>Dr. Rafael Medoff<\/strong> 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.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"content-alignment\" id=\"content\">\n<div class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\" id=\"watch-description\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"680\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y9CMoSBwk3U\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe trailer for the Bombing Auschwitz documentary<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The new BBC documentary about the question of bombing Auschwitz deserves an award\u2014for creative fiction. Through omissions, distortions, and \u201cre-enactments\u201d of conversations with imaginary dialogue inserted for effect, the BBC has made a shambles of the historical record concerning this important issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The film, \u201cBombing Auschwitz,\u201d 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 \u201cdebate\u201d in 1944 over \u201cone of the great moral dilemmas of the 20th century\u201d &#8211;that is, whether to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz, despite the risk that some inmates might be harmed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In fact, there was no such \u201cdebate.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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\u2014and many of the later ones\u2014asked for the bombing of the railways and bridges leading to the camp, and striking such targets obviously did not endanger civilians.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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 \u201cbomb Auschwitz.\u201d The BBC has, in effect, whited-out the actual historical record, and replaced it with a distorted narrative that suits its creators\u2019 agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>THE \u201cSTUDY\u201d THAT NEVER WAS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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\u2019s own War Refugee Board. They named the specific rail lines and bridges between Hungary and Poland that should be targeted to disrupt the deportations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">An official of Agudath Israel, Meier Schenkolewski, also met in person, on June 19, with two senior members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s 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 \u201cwithin the competence of the Russian Military Command.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In his letters, McCloy did not express any concern about possibly harming the inmates of Auschwitz. He wrote that the War Department had undertaken \u201ca study\u201d which concluded that any such bombings were \u201cimpracticable\u201d because they would require \u201cthe diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations\u201d elsewhere in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">McCloy\u2019s explanation was false. No such \u201cstudy\u201d was ever conducted. No \u201cdiversion\u201d of airplanes would have been needed\u2014because 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\u2019s policy of refraining from using even the most minimal resources for humanitarian objectives, such as interrupting genocide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">McCloy\u2019s letter, which is central to this historical episode, is not mentioned in the film. Instead, the \u201cdiversion\u201d argument is presented as a legitimate objection\u2014as if bombing Auschwitz really would have undermined the war effort. The entire fictional \u201cdebate\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>THE OIL WAR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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 \u201cregularly bombing the I.G. Farben factories, a few miles distant from Auschwitz.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The \u201coil war,\u201d as it was called, was no secret. On August 21, 1944, for example, a front page article in the New York Times described how \u201c500 United States heavy bombers from Italy today\u2026bombed the I.G. Farbenindustrie synthetic oil and rubber plant at Oswiecim in Polish Silesia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">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 \u2014the leading international Jewish news agency\u2014repeatedly described the mass killings that were taking place in what it called \u201cthe notorious \u2018extermination camp\u2019 at Oswiecim.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In other words, Goldmann and his colleagues knew at the time that the \u201cdiversion\u201d argument was false. Yet Goldmann does not appear anywhere in the BBC\u2019s film\u2014not among the characters quoted, not in the narration, and not in the re-enactments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The producers preferred one of Goldmann\u2019s 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\u2019s view, omits Goldmann, and disingenuously creates the impression that there were a few Jewish leaders in favor, and a few against.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Kubowitzki was useful to the BBC producers\u2014but 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\u2019s narrative\u2014and when the historical record conflicts with the preconceived narrative in \u201cBombing Auschwitz,\u201d apparently history must give way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>GEORGE McGOVERN\u2019S ROLE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Just before the film was completed, a BBC producer contacted me for an interview. When the project\u2019s 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.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>art. recommended <strong>Leon Rozenbaum<\/strong><\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"25%\" class=\"center alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/ico\/leon-r.jpg\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In a series of telephone conversations and email exchanges with the BBC producer, Sue Jones, I explained that there had been no \u201cdebate\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">McGovern said the \u201cdiversion\u201d argument was just \u201ca rationalization,\u201d since he and other U.S. pilots were already flying over that area, and didn\u2019t need to be diverted. \u201cFranklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero,\u201d McGovern added. \u201cBut I think he made two great mistakes in World War Two.\u201d One was the internment of more than 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans; the other was the decision \u201cnot to go after Auschwitz\u2026God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Ms. Jones told me she had never heard of McGovern\u2019s role\u2014despite 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">I sent her the link to the video. Jones feigned interest. \u201cI\u2019m very interested in including McGovern,\u201d she wrote me on April 1. And: \u201cThe McGovern interview is a good watch.\u201d 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\u2014and 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\u2019s agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cThe film will be entirely faithful to the history of 1944,\u201d Sue Jones of the BBC wrote me. In truth, \u201cBombing Auschwitz\u201d is entirely unfaithful to the historical record. It is faithful only to the preconceived misconceptions of its creators.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<div class=\"content-alignment\" id=\"content\">\n<div class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\" id=\"watch-description\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75923"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75943,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75923\/revisions\/75943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}