Language:
English
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
15,1 (2001) 70-85
Keywords:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
World War, 1939-1945 Diplomatic history
;
Nazi concentration camps
Abstract:
With reference to the controversy over the Allies' failure to bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944, relates a less well-known episode: in January 1941 the Polish government-in-exile asked the British to bomb the camp, where (at the time) 20,000 prisoners, Jewish and non-Jewish, were confined. The request was rejected on the grounds of technical difficulties, the risk of lives of the prisoners, and the low military priority of such an action. Three years later, similar arguments were put forward by the British when a request to bomb Birkenau came from Jewish leaders. The refusal of 1941 might have been used as a precedent for the refusal of 1944. This fact does not excuse the reluctance of the British military to bomb Birkenau in 1944; the probability of success of such a raid had increased, and it was no longer the rescue of 20,000 slave laborers that was at stake, but the rescue of the Jewish people from annihilation.
Note:
Appeared also in "Holocaust; Critical Concepts in Historical Studies" V (2004).
URL:
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