Auschwitz bombing debate

The issue of why the Allies did not act on early reports of atrocities in the Auschwitz concentration camp by destroying it or its railways by air during World War II has been a subject of controversy since the late 1970s. Brought to public attention by a 1978 article from historian David Wyman as "a moral question emblematic of the Allied response to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust", and whether or not the Allies had the requisite knowledge and the technical capability to act continues to be explored by historians. The U.S. government followed the military's strong advice to always keep the defeat of Germany the paramount objective, and refused to tolerate outside civilian advice regarding alternative military operations. No major American Jewish organizations recommended bombing.

Background

Allied intelligence on the Holocaust

File:1941 German camps in Polish White Book, German Occupation of Poland.png, German concentration camps: Auschwitz, Oranienburg, Mauthausen and Dachau in "The Polish White Book", New York (1941).
File:Krahelska Pamiętnik więźnia.jpg, Halina Krahelska report from Auschwitz ("Auschwitz: Diary of a prisoner"), 1942.
File:The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied.pdf, "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", a paper issued by the Polish government-in-exile addressed to the United Nations, 1942

The Polish government-in-exile in London first reported crimes in the Auschwitz complex to the western public in 1941.The Polish White Book (1941) Information about tortures inside this camp was published in the same year in New York in a government report from occupied Poland titled The Polish White Book. The Auschwitz camp was also noted in ''The Black Book of Poland'', a 750-page report published in 1942 in New York by the Ministry of Information of the Polish government-in-exile describing atrocities committed by Germany in occupied Poland in twenty-two months between the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and the end of June 1941. Both were printed in New York by The Greystone Press and G. P. Putnam's Sons.

In 1942, Lieutenant Jan Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments on the situation in occupied Poland, especially the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto and the general systematic extermination of the Poles and Jews nationally. He did not know about the murder by gas, repeating the common belief at the time that deported Jews were being exterminated with electricity. Karski met with the Polish government-in-exile, including the Prime Minister, Władysław Sikorski, as well as with members of political parties such as the Socialist Party, National Party, Labor Party, People's Party, Jewish Labour Bund and Zionist Party. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and in Bełżec. In 1943 in London he met the author and journalist Arthur Koestler. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR reacted to Karski's report by inquiring jokingly into animal rights abuses (specifically, horses). His report was a major source of information for the Allies.

Karski met also with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including Felix Frankfurter, Cordell Hull, William Joseph Donovan, and Stephen Wise. Karski presented his report to media, to bishops of various denominations (including Cardinal Samuel Stritch), to members of the Hollywood film industry and artists, but without success. Many of those he spoke to did not believe him, or judged his testimony much exaggerated or saw it as propaganda from the Polish government in exile.E. Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski (1994), ''Believing the Unbelievable, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust''

In 1942, members of the Polish government in exile launched an official protest against systematic murders of Poles and Jews in occupied Poland, based on Karski's report. The Poles addressed their protest to the 26 Allies who had signed the Declaration by United Nations on January 1, 1942.Engel (2014)

In response, the Allied Powers issued an official statement on December 17, 1942, condemning the known German atrocities. The statement was read to the British House of Commons in a debate led by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and published on the front page of ''The New York Times'' and by many other newspapers such as ''The Times''. At the end of the debate the House of Commons stood for a minute in silence, a custom reserved for the death of the Monarch, and therefore a sign that the British establishment was united in expecting retribution. Eden commented that:

On December 13, 1942, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Joseph Hertz ordained a day of mourning to mark the suffering of "the numberless victims of the Satanic carnage". The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, wrote a letter to ''The Times'' to condemn "a horror beyond what imagination can grasp". These responses were mentioned in BBC Radio broadcasts to Europe in several languages that were made on December 17.

In 1942, Szmul Zygielbojm, a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the General Jewish Labor Bund in Poland, and member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, wrote in English a booklet titled ''Stop Them Now. German Mass Murder of Jews in Poland'', with a foreword by Lord Wedgwood.

From April 19, 1943, through April 30, 1943, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 19 to May 16, representatives of the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States held an international conference at Hamilton, Bermuda. They discussed the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and of those who still remained in Nazi-occupied Europe. The only agreement made was that the war against the Nazis must be won. The US did not raise its immigration quotas and the British prohibition on Jewish refugees seeking refuge in the British Mandate of Palestine remained in place until mid-1943. A week later, the American Zionist Committee for a Jewish Army ran an advertisement in ''The New York Times'' condemning the United States efforts at Bermuda as a mockery of past promises to the Jewish people and of Jewish suffering under German Nazi occupation. Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the Jewish advisory body to the Polish government-in-exile, committed suicide in protest.

Allied intelligence on Auschwitz-Birkenau

From April 1942 to February 1943, British Intelligence intercepted and decoded radio messages sent by the German Order Police, which included daily prisoner returns and death tolls for ten concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

The United States Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and which had been established in 1941–1942 to coordinate intelligence and espionage activities in enemy territory) received reports about Auschwitz during 1942.

Auschwitz prisoners reports

The Polish underground reports

At the beginning of Operation Reinhard, the principal source of intelligence for the Western Allies about the existence of Auschwitz was the Witold's Report, forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. It was written by the Polish Army Captain Witold Pilecki who spent a total of 945 days at the camp – the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz. He forwarded his report about the camp to Polish resistance headquarters in Warsaw through the underground network known as Związek Organizacji Wojskowej which he organized inside Auschwitz.Jozef Garlinski, ''Fighting Auschwitz: the Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp'', Fawcett, 1975, , reprinted by Time Life Education, 1993. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop weapons for the Armia Krajowa (AK) to organize an assault on the camp from the outside, or bring in the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade troops to liberate it. A spectacular escape took place on June 20, 1942, when Kazimierz Piechowski (prisoner no. 918) organized a daring passing through the camp's gate along with three friends and co-conspirators, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster, Józef Lempart and Eugeniusz Bendera.Kazimierz Piechowski, Eugenia Bozena Kodecka-Kaczynska, Michal Ziokowski, ''Byłem Numerem: swiadectwa z Auschwitz''. Wydawn. Siostr Loretanek, hardcover, . The escapees were dressed in stolen uniforms as members of the SS-, fully armed and in an SS staff car. They drove out the main gate in a stolen Steyr 120 with a smuggled first report from Witold Pilecki to Polish resistance. The Germans never recaptured any of them. By 1943 however, Pilecki realized that no rescue plans existed in the West. He escaped from the camp on the night of April 26–27, 1943.

The first written accounts of Auschwitz concentration camp were published in 1940/41 in the Polish underground newspapers ("Poland lives") and . From 1942 members of the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Warsaw Area Home Army also began to publish short booklets based on the experiences of escapees. The first was the fictional ''Auschwitz: Memories of a Prisoner'' written by Halina Krahelska and published in April 1942 in Warsaw. The second publication was also produced in 1942 in the PPS WRN book ("Camp of Death") written by Natalia Zarembina. In the summer of 1942 a book about Auschwitz titled ("In Hell") was written by the Polish writer, social activist and founder of Żegota, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka

Polish reports about Auschwitz were also published in English versions. A booklet titled Zarembina was translated into English and published by the Polish Labor Group in New York in March 1944 with the title "Oswiecim, Camp of Death (Underground Report)" with a foreword by Florence Jaffray Harriman. In this report from 1942, the gassing of prisoners was described.

Auschwitz site plans, originating from the Polish government, were passed on to the British Foreign Office on August 18, 1944. Władysław Bartoszewski, himself a former Auschwitz inmate (camp number 4427), said in a speech: "The Polish resistance movement kept informing and alerting the free world to the situation. In the last quarter of 1942, thanks to the Polish emissary Jan Karski and his mission, and also by other means, the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States were well informed about what was going on in Auschwitz-Birkenau."

The Jewish escapees reports

On April 7, 1944, two young Jewish inmates, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, had escaped from the Auschwitz 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. Hilberg, Raul. ''The Destruction of the European Jews'', Yale University Press, 2003, p. 1215. Information based on the report was broadcast on June 15 by the BBC
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