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September 5, 2003/Elul 8 5763, Vol. 55, No. 54
Israeli planes over AuschwitzRAFAEL MEDOFFThe Israeli planes that flew over Auschwitz this past week are a tragic reminder that Allied planes also flew over the notorious Nazi death camp - but failed to bomb the gas chambers and crematoria where an estimated 1.5-million Jews were murdered.The Israeli planes were over Poland on Sept. 4 to take part in an international celebration of the 85th anniversary of the creation of the Polish Air Force. Recognizing the symbolic significance of their presence, the Israeli Air Force arranged to have three of its fighter jets stage a special fly-over above the site of the Auschwitz death camp. The sight of Israeli planes flying over Auschwitz should cause us to ask why the Allied planes that flew over Auschwitz in 1944 and could have bombed the infamous gas chambers, instead bombed only the adjacent oil factories. The answer is that the Roosevelt administration knew about the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz but did not order U.S. planes to bomb the gas chambers, largely because saving Jews would have resulted in more pressure to let the refugees come to the United States. By 1944, the Roosevelt administration even had detailed aerial reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz, showing the mass-murder machinery - photos that were taken because the War Department was interested in bombing the German oil factories in the region. On Aug. 20, 1944, 127 American Flying Fortress bombers dropped more than 1,300 bombs on German factories less than five miles from the gas chambers; on Sept. 13, 96 American Liberator bombers hit the factories again - and stray bombs accidentally struck an SS barracks and the railway line leading into the death camp. In the new film "They Looked Away," (directed by Stuart Erdheim; narrated by Mike Wallace) Allied pilots who took part in those raids describe, in chilling detail, how they could have easily struck the murder facilities - but were never instructed to do so. In Washington, a number of Jewish organizations privately urged the Roosevelt administration to bomb the gas chambers. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy rebuffed the requests on the grounds that they would divert resources that were "essential" to Allied military operations in Europe. But the fact is that during World War II, American military resources were repeatedly diverted for reasons far less important than the saving of human lives. McCloy personally intervened to divert American bombers from striking the German city of Rothenburg because he feared for the safety of the city's famous medieval architecture. General George Patton even diverted U.S. troops to rescue 150 prized Lipizzaner horses in Austria in April 1945. Perhaps the Zionist leader Rabbi Meyer Berlin was not so far off the mark when he told Sen. Robert Wagner in early 1943: "If horses were being slaughtered as are the Jews of Poland, there would by now be a loud demand for organized action against such cruelty to animals. Somehow, when it concerns Jews everybody remains silent." Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. |
