In fact, U.S. bombers were already operating in the skies above Auschwitz, so there would have been no need to “divert” planes from elsewhere.
Neither Hull, Stimson, nor McCloy ever disputed what was happening at Auschwitz. The late Prof. Martin Gilbert, in his 1980 book Auschwitz and the Allies, concluded that as of June 16, the Roosevelt administration had confirmation of what was happening in the death camp. That was the date American and British diplomats in Switzerland sent Washington a cable confirming “massacres in gas chambers Auschwitz Birkenau of hundreds of thousands Jews all nationalities occupied Europe…”
It was not the full Vrba-Wetzler report – the entire 30-page document was too long to fit in a telegram – but it demonstrated the U.S. knew about Auschwitz in plenty of time to intervene.
In the months to follow, there were additional bombing requests from Orthodox rescue activists and others, including future Israeli prime ministers Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir. In response, McCloy expanded his list of excuses. On August 14, he informed the World Jewish Congress that the rejection of the bombing idea was based on “a study” by the War Department. No evidence has ever been found that any such study was conducted.
The Roosevelt administration did not reject the bombing requests because it was too difficult to reach Auschwitz, or because it would have undermined the war effort, or because it did not know what was happening in the camp. It rejected them because the administration had decided, as a matter of policy, not to expend even minimal resources for such a non-military purpose. (Although it did use military resources to rescue medieval paintings, rare monuments, and the famous Lippizaner dancing horses.)
Did the Allies know in time to make a difference? Of course they did. The first bombing request was made on June 18. Deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz were carried out for three more weeks, until July 8. Even after July 8, more than 200,000 Jews remained in Budapest and there was a constant danger they would be deported.
There also were deportations to Auschwitz from elsewhere in Europe, continuing through the summer and autumn, until November. With thousands being gassed daily, an interruption of even just a few days could have saved many lives.
Rafael Medoff
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Berenbaum Responds: I am pleased that such a respected scholar as Dr. Medoff agrees with me that the complete documentation did not arrive in Washington until November. By then, gassing had ended at Birkenau.
Dr. Medoff provides considerable evidence that “ample information” was available in June 1944. Yet he does not inform his readers of what he knows so well – that since 1982 scholars working with this material have been asking Walter Laqueur’s all important question: “When did information become knowledge?”
There is, as Dr. Medoff knows, a distinction between knowledge and information, both for individuals and for policy makers. And “to know” also requires at least for a time that one wants to know. So I would have no difficulty concurring that information was available from many sources – trusted and not so trusted, disregarded as pleading partisans or respected as possessors of important intelligence information – to Allied policy and decision makers earlier.
What they “knew” and how they internalized such information is quite another matter. Precision is required, so too caution before making the leap from information to knowledge, which was the essential point of my interview.