Allies ignored extermination of the Jews, claims Vatican

reply to post by CosmicEgg

I was replying to the OP. There is nothing anyone can contribute to this topic that is not already known to me.

I agree there...History Major, 35 years...

reply to post by Harlequin

as i said , acttacking the infrastructure of the entire operation was viable IF the allies wanted to - but as you said yourself a form of ` dont ask don`t tell` was in force , do not publically acknowledge it and maybe the problem would go away.

I don't believe I said anything about a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, unless your referring to Pope Pius XII. Maybe he was hoping the problem would "go away." Believe me, the Allied Powers were doing everything possible to attack the infrastructure of Nazi Germany, along with underground organizations from many of the occupied countries.

reply to post by Oatmeal


not the infrastructure of the country - the extermination camps -thats what i meant , that they knew about the camps as early as 1942 , but did nothing.

they could have attacked them , the rail lines , and later the crematoria and gas chambers - but didnt.

Originally posted by Harlequin

they could have attacked them , the rail lines , and later the crematoria and gas chambers - but didnt.

You still have not posted any war-time aerial pictures wherein the crematoria and gas chambers can be distinguished....

In any case, you need to read up on just how much infrastructure the allies did bomb. You do not seem to be very knowledgeable of the extent of destruction we inflicted on the European continent.


[edit on 17-8-2009 by Exuberant1]

reply to post by Harlequin

they could have attacked them , the rail lines , and later the crematoria and gas chambers - but didnt.

The Allies attacked the rail lines, the ones they could reach. The Death Camps were located deep inside Germany, and many in Poland. Flying deep into Axis territory was extremely risky at best. Besides, I don't believe the Allies knew that these crematoria existed until 1942.

November 24, 1942 — U.S. State Department confirms the existence of Nazi extermination camps and the murder of two million Jews to date. Rabbi Stephen Wise holds press conference to announce that the Nazis were deporting Jews throughout German-occupied territory to Poland for mass slaughter. The news makes little impact as the next day's New York Times reported this news on its tenth page. Throughout the rest of the war, the N.Y. Times and most other newspapers failed to give prominent and extensive coverage to the Holocaust.

May 31, 1944 — Aerial reconnaissance photograph taken of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, by the U.S. Army Air Force's 8th Division. The U.S. had aerial reconnaissance photos of Auschwitz as early as April 4, 1944. Go here for more information.

Source

Whether precision bombing of the crematoria and gas chambers was possible, and whether that would have stopped the Nazis from committing further murders at Auschwitz, is one of history’s unanswered questions.

Source

First to the historical issues: The question of bombing Auschwitz first arose in the summer of 1944, more than two years after the gassing of Jews had begun and at a time when more than 90 percent of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust were already dead. It could not have arisen earlier because not enough was known specifically about Auschwitz, and the camps were outside the range of Allied bombers. By June 1944 information concerning the camps and their function was available—or could have been made available—to those undertaking the mission. German air defenses were weakened, and the accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to order the bombing.

Source

Bombing a concentration camp filled with innocent, unjustly imprisoned civilians posed a moral dilemma for the Allies. To be willing to sacrifice innocent civilians, one would have had to perceive accurately conditions in the camp and to presume that interrupting the killing process would be worth the loss of life in Allied bombings. In short, one would have had to know that those in the camps were about to die. Such information was not available until the spring of 1944.

The Vrba-Wetzler report provided a clear picture of life and death at Auschwitz. As a result, Jewish leaders in Slovakia, some American Jewish organizations, and the War Refugee Board all urged the Allies to intervene. However, the request was far from unanimous. Jewish leadership was divided. As a general rule, the established Jewish leadership was reluctant to press for organized military action directed specifically to save the Jews. They feared being too overt and encouraging the perception that World War II was a “Jewish war.” Zionists, recent immigrants, and Orthodox Jews were more willing to press for specific efforts to save the Jews. Their voices, however, were more marginal than those of the established Jewish leadership, and their attempts were even less effective.

It would be a mistake to assume that anti-Semitism or indifference to the plight of the Jews—while present—was the primary cause of the refusal to support bombing. The issue is more complex. On June 11, 1944, the Jewish Agency executive committee meeting in Jerusalem refused to call for the bombing of Auschwitz. Jewish leadership in Palestine was clearly neither anti-Semitic nor indifferent to the situation of their brethren. David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the executive committee, said, “We do not know the truth concerning the entire situation in Poland and it seems that we will be unable to propose anything concerning this matter.” Ben-Gurion and his colleagues were concerned that bombing the camps could kill many Jews—or even one Jew. Although no specific documentation reversing the decision of June 11 has been found, officials of the Jewish Agency were forcefully calling for the bombing by July.

Source

[edit on 17-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by Harlequin

not the infrastructure of the country - the extermination camps -thats what i meant , that they knew about the camps as early as 1942 , but did nothing. they could have attacked them , the rail lines , and later the crematoria and gas chambers - but didnt.

Requests were made to both American and British officials to bomb Auschwitz. Similarly they were asked to come to the aid of the Poles in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 by bombing the city. Yet the Americans denied the requests to bomb Auschwitz, citing several reasons: military resources could not be diverted from the war effort (as they were to support the non-Jewish Poles); bombing Auschwitz might prove ineffective; and bombing might provoke even more vindictive German action. On the other hand, the Americans did not claim that Auschwitz was outside the range of the most effective American bombers. In fact, as early as May 1944 the U.S. Army Air Forces had the capability to strike Auschwitz at will. The rail lines from Hungary were also well within range, though for rail-line bombing to be effective it had to be sustained. On July 7, 1944, American bombers flew over the rail lines to Auschwitz. On August 20, 127 B-17s, with an escort of 100 P-51 fighter craft, dropped 1,336 500-pound bombs on the IG Farben synthetic-oil factory that was less than 5 miles (8 km) east of Birkenau. German oil reserves were a priority American target, and the Farben plant ranked high on the target list. The death camp remained untouched. It should be noted that military conditions imposed some restrictions on any effort to bomb Auschwitz. For the bombing to be feasible, it had to be undertaken by day in good weather and between July and October 1944.

In August, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy wrote to Leon Kubowitzki of the World Jewish Congress, noting that the War Refugee Board had asked if it was possible to bomb Auschwitz. McCloy responded: After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources. There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans. Cremation ovens at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland. Archivo Iconográfico, Barcelona, España McCloy’s response remains controversial. There had been no study on bombing Auschwitz. Instead, the War Department had decided in January that army units would not be “employed for the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression” unless a rescue opportunity arose in the course of routine military operations. In February an internal U.S. War Department memo stated, “We must constantly bear in mind, however, that the most effective relief which can be given victims of enemy persecution is to insure the speedy defeat of the Axis.” No documents have been found in the records of the leaders of Army Air Forces considering the possibility of bombing Auschwitz.

n the late 1980s and early ’90s, debate over the issue intensified. Military historians challenged Holocaust historians in an ineffectual debate characterized as the “Dialogue of the Deaf.” In 1993 both Holocaust scholars and military historians of divergent points of view addressed the issue in a symposium at the National Air and Space Museum that marked the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. At issue was the nature of the aircraft that could have been used. Was bombing feasible, and when? From what air fields would the bombers take off, and where would they land? What airplanes would be used? What escorts would be required, and at what cost in men and material? Could lives have been saved and how many? At what cost to the Allies? But in addition to military considerations, political questions were at issue. Did the plight of the Jews matter? To whom and how deeply? Were Jews effective or ineffective in advancing the cause of their brethren abroad? Did they comprehend their plight? Were they compromised by their fears of anti-Semitism or by the fears they shared with American political leaders that the World War would be perceived as a Jewish war? Historians are uncomfortable with the counterfactual speculation “What if…” But such is the debate over bombing Auschwitz.

Those with a basic knowledge of air-to-ground warfare in the WWII era will see the impossibility of preventing the Holocaust by bombing the rail lines. Railroad track can be repaired quickly and easily, and even a knocked out train bridge could be repaired by the Gemans in amazing time. The gas chambers were developed at the behest of Heinrich Himmler who after witnessing a mass execution by machine gun demanded something more efficient. Also, few people realize that the first mid-air refueling was done in 1929. The aircraft, named the Question Mark, set a world record for remaining in the air for 150 hours. Only after the war when Communism became the new enemy was it decided that bombers needed an inflight refeuling capability. Bombing surely could have saved some Holocaust victims, but it also would have killed some in the process. Only an invasion of Germany, delayed until 1945 by the squabbling Allies, could have stopped the Holocaust.

Many, many reasons were given for not bombing the camps. Indifference seems to be one, but not the primary reason for not bombing the Death Camps.

[edit on 17-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by Exuberant1

You still have posted any war-time aerial pictures wherein the crematoria and gas chambers can be distinguished....

Here is the source of the first known camp photo taken in April 1944:

Source

You can't tell too much from it though.


[edit on 17-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by mf_luder

 

I do however find it rather odd though that with all the intense aerial surveillance & photographing going on during that period that nobody had spotted them.

That's because you're thinking with a modern head. A viewer in the early 1940's would never have heard of death camps, and would have no mental concept of such a place existing.

Case in point, some newly discovered aerial photos of Auschwitz came to light about 5 years ago. You could even see the smoke coming out of the (what we now know to be) crematorium chimney. Apparently the pictures weren't given any great importance when inititally developed because it was just assumed to be a camp of some kind. So the photos were given the once over and filed away, no further action.

reply to post by silo13
First thing that caught my eye (apart from the source...**** newspaper) was this...

But instead of bombing the concentration camps and the railways supplying them, they reacted by first suppressing eye-witness reports and then claiming they were exaggerated.

Not sure if that's what hindsight recommends

George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier (written in 1936) made a reference to the treatment of Jews in Germany, it wasn't a secret and there isn't a nation in the world that can point the finger at anyone else about it. A ship left Holland or Belgium around 1940 with around 900+ Jews on board. They were fleeing from what they knew would happen. They tried England, France, Cuba and the USA and were turned away. IIRC the UK finally admitted them after all but a couple of dozen had died of malnutrition.

The bit about Allied Forces 'saving the Jews' was elaborated after the War. To a degree the anti-Semitism would have found release elsewhere in different ways. It's likely been pointed out by other members...the Vatican, as an Institution, has been elbow-deep in a lot of inhumane activities for centuries. It still is.

Edit: The ship was in a story by Julian Barnes...the full and true account is ..MS St Louis. Humans are way more good than bad, but sometimes...sheesh!

[edit on 17-8-2009 by Kandinsky]

reply to post by Kandinsky

But instead of bombing the concentration camps and the railways supplying them, they reacted by first suppressing eye-witness reports and then claiming they were exaggerated.

Honestly that's what I jumped on first too.

I was like WHAT? BOMB them?

Then again I've gotten into enough scrapes talking about bombings on ATS so I let it go.

I'm sure now we'll hear from those who will say 'Bombing would have been the best thing for those concentration camps - sure it killed some but think of how many lives it saved!'

Thanks for your post!

reply to post by Oatmeal


this goes back alot further than the pope


www.telegraph.co.uk...

^^citing Bild from 2004

en.auschwitz.org.pl...

news.bbc.co.uk...

the allies had photo`s taken by the sonderkommando and had photographed the entire place from its contrustion to liberation by the red army.


yet they west did nothing.


edit:

The mosquito was nothing like a short ranged bomber - london to berlin is 580 miles and in 1943 4 mostiquto`s made a daylight bombing of the broadcasting station transmitting the 10th anniversary speach of the nazi party being made by goering

[edit on 17/8/09 by Harlequin]

I find the subject of the thread surreal. I was of a better opinion of the Vatican.

Look, when you fight a World War, you have a lot on your hands. If you lose, you won't be able to help anybody at all, be it Jews or Belorussians (who lost 25% of their total population due to Nazi invasion). Any operations against concentration camps would be necessary risky (resulting in a significant loss of life), expensive in resources and with dubious outcome (cf bombing the barracks). This must be compared against the strategic goals that needed to be achieved.

If you are in an airplane and the oxygen masks drop due to loss of pressure, you are instructed to put one on yourself before putting them on your children, because if you pass out, there'll be no one to help your kids.

I'm not sure who's sending who on yet another guilt trip here, but the premise just stinks.


[edit on 17-8-2009 by buddhasystem]

what the vatican is saying - and quite rightly is that the allies knew of the camps from as early as 1941 , and had detailed knowledge by early 1943 , and did nothing.

the russians `liberated` most of the camps , and used the likes of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen as NKVD special camps themselves for keeping prisoners sentenced by the Soviet Military Tribunal - since it was liberated till it closed in 1950 - more than 12,000 more people died...

this is quite "funny" although the word is not proper,

hypocrisy might be a better one

the vatican did the same job as the allies as it always did as the institution leader in the ignorance business.

they all knew, they all did nothing

why ?

easy : because of the sionist agenda

indeed : who were the 1st ally of the nazi in the extermination of the jews ?

YES, the sionists were working hand in hands with the nazis

the next statement is going to shock many of you but i assume :

at the time of extermination the sionists and the very rich were already in palestine or the us

were extermined in priority the non-sionist orthodox jews that KNEW that had nothing to do in palestine and that it was not their land and that had no will to emigrate there.

for more information on this truth look out for lenni brenner

en.wikipedia.org... to start with
the "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis" being a must read
www.counterpunch.org...


[edit on 17-8-2009 by ::.mika.::]

reply to post by Motorhead


No...

I'm very much a student of WWII. I was being sarcastic. The powers that be knew about the camps. Like many things during WWII there were priorities. First being smashing the German industrial capacity. Second leveling their cities in an attempt of trying to break the will of the German people to fight. Third they used most of their combined Aeriel power in the support of the troops on the ground.

Bombing the perimeter of these camps to free the prisoners would have done little for the over all war effort. Besides the bombing of the period was not as accurate as it is today they would have hit some of the prisoner housing and killed them. However reducing Germany's Industrial and civilian base of support in the end did help bring the German war machine to a halt and with it brought the wholesale killing of the JEWS to a quicker end.

EDIT TO ADD


They simply were not a priority. When the RAF and US were loosing sometimes 1/3 to 1/2 of the bombers in raids over Germany's Industrial and civilian populations do you think they would have risked that kind of losses to attempt a bombing of the walls and fences of a prisoner camp to free the prisoners?

Thanks Oatmeal.

Auschwitz 1944

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/95f592f0bdea.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 17-8-2009 by SLAYER69]

reply to post by silo13

But instead of bombing the concentration camps and the railways supplying them, they reacted by first suppressing eye-witness reports and then claiming they were exaggerated.

There is no way they should have bombed those camps, if the Allies even knew what they were looking at.

As Previous poster stated:

That's because you're thinking with a modern head. A viewer in the early 1940's would never have heard of death camps, and would have no mental concept of such a place existing. Case in point, some newly discovered aerial photos of Auschwitz came to light about 5 years ago. You could even see the smoke coming out of the (what we now know to be) crematorium chimney. Apparently the pictures weren't given any great importance when inititally developed because it was just assumed to be a camp of some kind. So the photos were given the once over and filed away, no further action.

reply to post by Harlequin

the allies had photo`s taken by the sonderkommando and had photographed the entire place from its contrustion to liberation by the red army.

From your source:

A photograph taken by an RAF reconnaissance aircraft on August 23, 1944, shows not only the regular ranks of barracks but also smoke rising not from the crematoria but from the pyres burning in mass graves (there is also ground-level documentation from this period in the form of photographs taken clandestinely by members of the Sonderkomando).

By the summer of 1944, detailed information about the true nature of the death camps had reached the West, but it was not until months later that Auschwitz was finally liberated by the advancing Red Army.

This is Almost precisely what I said previously"

Here is the source of the first known camp photo taken in April 1944:

Source

There was no mention of this in your source:

the allies had photo`s taken by the sonderkommando and had photographed the entire place from its contrustion to liberation by the red army.

reply to post by SLAYER69

They simply were not a priority. When the RAF and US were loosing sometimes 1/3 to 1/2 of the bombers in raids over Germany's Industrial and civilian populations do you think they would have risked that kind of losses to attempt a bombing of the walls and fences of a prisoner camp to free the prisoners? Thanks Oatmeal.

Your Entirely Welcome...

This is/was a Thread on the Vatican accusing the Allies of knowing about the death camps and not doing anything. Yeah, they knew, but couldn't do anything. The Pope however was in a position to do a great deal and he did nothing.

[edit on 17-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by silo13


Interesting topic.

That the Allies ignored to safe many Jews, especially in the first few years of WW II doesnt suprise me.

History is written by those who won the war let's not forget that.

The Allies had much more urgent reasons to win the war and in that process even the Brits, US and the Russians had their own agenda.

EVERY war has a 'hidden agenda' and part of this agenda was to lay their hands on Nazi technology, that was the main priority, not saving Jews or other people.

It also sounds acceptable that The Vatican did hid many Jews. Logic is often that 'money seeks money', economics attract economics, add to that a 'shared religious history' and humanitarian acts of The Curch and it can very well be so.

I don't buy the official lectures about why the Allies started to take part in the war. There have been way too many scientists who did start to work for the varius Allied countries in late/after WW II.

Nick Cook, British aviation journalist, has done research in Poland. He discovered that the US government confiscated secret Nazi anti-gravity technology at the end of World War II.

dir.salon.com...





[edit on 8/17/2009 by Melyanna Tengwesta]

[edit on 8/17/2009 by Melyanna Tengwesta]