Yes, Jewish leaders should have more vigorously pressed the bombing request. They should not have been intimidated by suggestions that dropping a few bombs on Auschwitz would divert American military resources and thus prolong the war effort. But none of that absolves the Roosevelt administration of its moral responsibility. Nor does it change the fact that U.S. officials lied when they told Jewish leaders that they had “studied” the feasibility of bombing and found that it would require the diversion of planes that were needed elsewhere in Europe.
By the spring of 1944, U.S. airplanes were able to reach the Auschwitz area, and they carried out surveillance flights there. During the summer and autumn, they repeatedly bombed German oil factories in the region, some of them less than five miles from the gas chambers.
The failure to bomb Auschwitz was based on the Roosevelt administration’s policy of never diverting even the slightest amount of military resources to save Jews from Hitler. It did however, divert planes from bombing Japanese and German cities that contained valuable architecture; General Patton diverted troops to save the Lippizzaner dancing horses; and the State Department, in 1943, even created a special commission to save famous works of European art that were situated near battle zones.
Horses and paintings were considered more valuable than Jewish lives.
This is where Rosen has chosen to position himself, alongside those who opposed helping the Jews in the 1940’s or were determined to shield FDR from Jewish protests. It is not pleasant company to keep: State Department bureaucrats, many of them anti-Semitic, whose policy was to “postpone and postpone and postpone” granting visas to refugees; British Foreign Office staffers, many of them anti-Semitic as well, who kept Palestine closed off; callous politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who thought sympathy for the Jews would cost them votes; and officials of Jewish organizations who, consumed by jealousy, tried to convince the Justice Department to arrest and deport Peter Bergson.
A famous passage in the Talmud teaches that a man is judged by the company he keeps. One wonders if Robert Rosen ever read that passage.
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(Editor’s Note: Please visit www.WymanInstitute.org to read the full report “Whitewashing FDR’s Holocaust Record: An Analysis of Robert N. Rosen’s Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, Dr. Racelle Weiman, founding director of the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College, and Dr. Bat-Ami Zucker of Bar-Ilan University.)
