This is one of a series of aerial reconnaissance photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp taken between April 4, 1944 and January 14, 1945 by Allied units under the command of the 15th U.S. Army Air Force. This image of Auschwitz I was taken on April 4, 1944. From the National Archives, courtesy of the USHMM. More images are available from the Nizkor Project. [1]

The issue of why the Allies failed to bomb the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II continues to be explored by historians and Holocaust survivors. Michael Berenbaum has argued that it is not only a historical question, but "a moral question emblematic of the Allied response to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust ..." ^[1] Mixed reconnaissance patrol of the Polish Home Army and the Soviet Red Army during Operation Tempest, 1944 Reconnaissance is the military term for the active gathering of information about an enemy, or other conditions, by physical observation. ... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz, Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ... April 4 is the 94th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (95th in leap years). ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... January 14 is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1945 (MCMVL) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ... The group of countries known as the Allies of World War II consisted of those nations opposed to the Axis Powers during the Second World War. ... USAAF recruitment poster. ... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz, Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ... April 4 is the 94th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (95th in leap years). ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... The United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records. ... Exterior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum viewed from 14th St. ... The Nizkor (Hebrew: we will remember) Project is an ongoing Internet-based project run by Ken McVay which is dedicated to countering Holocaust revisionism. ... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz, Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Michael Berenbaum is an Jewish American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ... The group of countries known as the Allies of World War II consisted of those nations opposed to the Axis Powers during the Second World War. ... Selection procedure of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz camp on 26 May 1944, where the Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation. ...

David Wyman, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Massachusetts, has asked: "How could it be that the governments of the two great Western democracies knew that a place existed where 2,000 helpless human beings could be killed every 30 minutes, knew that such killings actually did occur over and over again, and yet did not feel driven to search for some way to wipe such a scourge from the earth?" ^[2] This page is about the university system across Massachusetts. ...

What the Allies knew

Main articles: Rudolf Vrba and Vrba-Wetzler report

The Allies knew by mid-June 1944 at the latest that mass murder was taking place inside the camps. On April 7, 1944, two young Jewish inmates, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, had escaped from the camp with detailed information about the camp's geography, the gas chambers, and the numbers being killed. The information, later called the Vrba-Wetzler report, is believed to have reached the Jewish community in Budapest by April 27. Roswell McClelland, the U.S. War Refugee Board representative in Switzerland, is known to have received a copy by mid-June, and sent it to the board's executive director on June 16, according to Raul Hilberg. ^[3] Information based on the report was broadcast on June 15 by the British Broadcasting Corporation and published on June 20 by The New York Times. ^[4] Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ... One of the maps from the Vrba-Weztler report The Vrba-Wetzler report, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler statement, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 32-page document about the German Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust. ... April 7 is the 97th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (98th in leap years). ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ... Alfréd Wetzler (1918–1988), who later wrote under the alias Jozef Laník, was a Slovak Jew, and one of a very small number of Jews known to have escaped from the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust. ... One of the maps from the Vrba-Weztler report The Vrba-Wetzler report, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler statement, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 32-page document about the German Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust. ... For other uses, see Budapest (disambiguation). ... Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most distinguished of the Holocaust historians. ... This article is an overview article about the Crown chartered British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. ... The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Allied bombing and reconnaissance missions

From March 1944 onwards, the Allies were in control of the skies over Europe, according to David Wyman. He writes that the 15th U.S. Army Air Force, which was based in Italy, had the range and capability to strike Auschwitz from early May 1944. On July 7, shortly after the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, a fleet of 452 15th Air Force bombers flew along and across the five deportation railway lines on their way to bomb oil refineries nearby. ^[5] World map showing Europe Political map Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of Earth; the term continent here referring to a cultural and political distinction, rather than a physiographic one, thus leading to various perspectives about Europes precise borders. ... USAAF recruitment poster. ... Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz, Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ...

The Allies' Considerations

The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, did not see bombing as a solution, given that bombers were inaccurate and would also kill prisoners on the ground. The land war, which he had continued to wage single-handedly in 1940, would have to be won first. Bombers were used against German cities and to carpet-bomb the front lines. Concerning the concentration camps, he wrote to his Foreign Secretary on 11 July 1944: "..all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out these butcheries, should be put to death.."^[6] In August 1944 60 tons of supplies were flown to assist the uprising in Warsaw and, considering the dropping accuracy at that time, were to be dropped "into the south-west quarter of Warsaw". In terms of aircraft, seven reached the city.^[7] Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC(Can) (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was an English statesman and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. ...

While the analysts' focus has been on the choices available to the western allies, the Red Army had taken areas in eastern Poland from the German army in July 1944, such as the town of Kovel which is 300 km (200 miles) east of Warsaw, much nearer to Auschwitz than the American and British airforce bases in England. Its leader Joseph Stalin also decided not to bomb the death camps, for ungiven reasons, but he also gave priority to the land campaign on a front that was over 1,500 km long. The short forms Red Army and RKKA refer to the Workers and Peasants Red Army, (in Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия - Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya), the armed forces first organized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918. ... Stalin redirects here. ...

See also

• Auschwitz concentration camp
• History of the Jews in Hungary
• Lord Moyne
• Rudolf Vrba
• Vrba-Wetzler report
• The Abandonment Of The Jews
• Winston Churchill
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Joseph Stalin

Auschwitz, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, KL Auschwitz, Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German extermination camps, along with a number of concentration camps, comprising three main camps and 40 to 50 sub-camps. ... History of the Jews in Hungary concerns the Jews of Hungary and of Hungarian origins. ... Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne (29 March 1880 - 6 November 1944) was a British politician. ... Dr. Rudolf Vrba in 1997. ... One of the maps from the Vrba-Weztler report The Vrba-Wetzler report, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler statement, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 32-page document about the German Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC(Can) (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was an English statesman and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. ... FDR redirects here. ... Stalin redirects here. ...

Notes

1. ^ Berenbaum, Michael. "Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed," Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2. ^ Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 583.
3. ^ Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 1215.
4. ^ The full report was first published on November 25, 1944 by the U.S. War Refugee Board, the same day that the last 13 prisoners, all women, were killed in Auschwitz. The women were "unmittelbar getötet," leaving open whether they were gassed or otherwise disposed of. (Czech, Danuta (ed) Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, pp.920 and 933, using information from a series called Hefte von Auschwitz, and cited in Karny, Miroslav. "The Vrba and Wetzler report," in Berenbaum, Michael & Gutman, Yisrael (eds). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 564, Indiana University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994.)
5. ^ Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 577.
6. ^ W. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Penguin 2005) p597.
7. ^ W. Churchill, op cit. p115-117.

Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most distinguished of the Holocaust historians. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ... November 25 is the 329th (in leap years the 330th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ...

References

• Berenbaum, Michael. "Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed," Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, 2003.
• Wyman, David S. "Why Auschwitz wasn't bombed," in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press, first published 1994; this edition 1998. ISBN 0-253-20884-X

Michael Berenbaum is an Jewish American scholar, professor, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust. ... Dr. Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (born June 2, 1926) is one of the best-known and most distinguished of the Holocaust historians. ... Book cover The Destruction of the European Jews is a three-volume work published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. ...

Further reading

• Wyman, David S. The Abandonment Of The Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.