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ellisonz

(27,709 posts)
Thu Jan 26, 2012, 04:53 AM Jan 2012

U.S. Holocaust Museum refutes FDR supporters' defense of failure to bomb Auschwitz

SOURCE: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (1-22-12)

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust have been dealt a major blow, as a study by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has rejected a claim they frequently have made regarding the U.S. failure to bomb Auschwitz.

The development comes just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), which commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In numerous speeches, articles, and conferences in recent years, officials and supporters of the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, NY have claimed that then-Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion opposed bombing Auschwitz (for fear of harming prisoners). Roosevelt supporters have made the claim to deflect criticism of FDR for the U.S. rejection of requests to bomb the death camp.

But a newly-completed two-year study by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has concluded that Ben-Gurion opposed bombing the camp only for a period of several weeks when he believed it was a labor camp, and then reversed himself when he learned more about the true nature of Auschwitz, and thereafter supported bombing. Ben-Gurion's associates in Europe and the United States then repeatedly pressed Allied officials to bomb the camp.

More: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/144170.html

X-posted to American History group.

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U.S. Holocaust Museum refutes FDR supporters' defense of failure to bomb Auschwitz (Original Post) ellisonz Jan 2012 OP
So why do you think he didn't order the bombing? MicaelS Jan 2012 #1
I think they simply decided it wasn't worth the headache... ellisonz Jan 2012 #2
I agree with you MicaelS Jan 2012 #3
Morgenthau was a great man... Violet_Crumble Jan 2012 #4
Thanks for the link MicaelS Jan 2012 #5

MicaelS

(8,747 posts)
1. So why do you think he didn't order the bombing?
Thu Jan 26, 2012, 01:06 PM
Jan 2012

I find this article by Michael Beschloss very interesting.
[link:http://homepage.mac.com/oldtownman/WW2Timeline/beschloss.html|
"FDR's Auschwitz Secret," By Michael Beschloss, Newsweek, October 14, 2002]




ellisonz

(27,709 posts)
2. I think they simply decided it wasn't worth the headache...
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 12:23 AM
Jan 2012

From your article:


Morgenthau had long refrained from jeopardizing his friendship with Roosevelt - which he called the "most important thing" in his life - by special pleading on Jewish matters. After World War II began, FDR had privately said to Morgenthau and a Catholic appointee, Leo Crowley, "You know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance." He bluntly told them it was "up to you" to "go along with anything I want."


I'd also point out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

MicaelS

(8,747 posts)
3. I agree with you
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 12:33 AM
Jan 2012

The goal was to win the war in Europe as quickly as possible. And helping Jews didn't do anything to attain that goal.

Violet_Crumble

(35,954 posts)
4. Morgenthau was a great man...
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 08:38 AM
Jan 2012

Back when the Turks were massacring the Armenians and he was US ambassador to Turkey, he kept on gathering information and sending back cables to the US demanding that the US do something. That he had to push the State Department and FDR to take any interest in what was being done to European Jews is incredible, given the massive amounts of evidence of genocide the US goverment was being given...

Why the US didn't bomb Auschwitz is pretty much what you said. A mixture of people in places of power in the US who were antisemitic, the Allies preferring to ignore all the evidence of the Holocaust because they saw taking action as diverting from the war, and the media of the time burying stories of atrocities and massacres happening in Europe by printing only a paragraph or two and putting the story on page 7 or something deep in the paper where most people didn't read...

It's not about Auschwitz specifically, but when I was studying I read a book by Walter Lacquer called 'The Terrible Secret', which was about the suppression of evidence of the Holocaust. Some of it's available online, and if you read from page 223 onwards, you get a good idea of what Morgenthau was up against...

http://www.amazon.com/Terrible-Secret-Suppression-Hitlers-Solution/dp/0140061363

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