Welcome to our last lesson of the course The Holocaust - An Introduction So did the world remain silent? Information regarding the repression of the Jews, first in Nazi Germany, later in the Greater Reich, occupied Poland, Western European countries, and all over Europe, was described in press and radio coverage as of 1933. Though the Jewish plight was different in its ideological origins, in its enormous extent, and its radical implementation, it was understood, by many at the time, at least until 1942, as being part of the so-called regular war atrocities, not demanding any exceptional attitude. Even after the systematic mass murder began, long months would pass until what the Allies grasped as valid information would arrive, and the true destructive meaning of the final solution would be understood. The German radio communication reports of mass shootings of the Jews, in the summer of 1941, were intercepted by the British, who decoded the German enigma transmission code, the full terrifying meaning was not clearly understood, and didn't provoke any practical measures. More could've been understood by the end of 1941, and the beginning of 1942. As part of the Soviet counter-offensive, some territories were recaptured, in which Germany's special atrocities towards the Jews were very evident. Yet, while making those crimes public, the Soviets concealed the fact that the Jews had been the major target. In May 1942, a detailed report, written by a Polish Jewish worker, part of The Bund, reached the Polish government in Exile in Britain, and its main themes were broadcast over the BBC World Service, saying hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews were murdered. Yet as research has shown, those who heard them in the free world, saw them as part of the propaganda war, not really to be believed. First shifts toward comprehension and internalisation of the total annihilation of European Jewry can be observed only in the summer of 1942 with the so-called Riegner telegram sent on August the 8th, 1942, from Geneva, by Gerhart Riegner, to the World Congress in New York. "Received alarming report that in the Fuehrer's Headquarters, plan discussed, and under consideration, all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany, numbering 3 1/2 to 4 million, should after deportation and concentration in East, at one blow be exterminated, to resolve, once and for all Jewish question in Europe. Stop. Action reported planned for autumn; methods under discussion including prussic acid. Stop. We transmit information with all necessary reservation as exactitude cannot be confirmed. Stop. Informant stated to have close connections with highest German authorities, and his reports generally speaking reliable." Although this information, coming from the German industrialist, Edward Schulte, contained some inaccuracies, especially the very fact that, at this stage, the mass murder of the Jews was already in full force, it was grasped by Jewish organisations as reliable. Yet, at the same time, it was hindered and disbelieved by the Allies. The British Foreign Office delayed forwarding it to the intended Jewish recipients, and the US State Department rejected its credibility, and asked Jewish leaders not to make its contents public until it could be verified. Significant reinforcements for this terrifying information came, among other things, at the end of November, 1942, from Jan Karski, a Polish underground courier to the Polish government in Exile in London. Karski had left occupied Europe after, among other things, entering the Warsaw ghetto and visiting, what he thought, was a death camp. He carried with him the sights, and the sounds, and became one of the clearest voices, which made public the murderous character of the Holocaust. Thus, it was only on the 17th of December, 1942, a year and a half after the beginning of the murder campaign, that an authoritative joint statement on behalf of the Allies was declared. "The attention has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe." As you can see, the full version of the declaration below, the estimated number of victims was very low, and the declaration ended in a condemnation of the atrocities, a promise to end them by defeating Hitler, and a threat to those responsible for them. But no concrete action was mentioned. Following the Allied Joint Declaration of December 17th, 1942, in which the Allies condemned the Nazis for the murder of the Jews, tremendous public pressure grew within the United States and in the United Kingdom on the Allied governments. And this was not only Jewish pressure. And that pressure, public and internal, within the government led President Roosevelt to create a new agency in the government that would be a rescue agency, the War Refugee Board, which he created in January 1944. And according to most historians, the War Refugee Board, during the last year of the war, contributed to the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews in Europe, particularly in Hungary, and particularly in Budapest. And that brings us to a related subject-- the controversy around the bombing of Auschwitz or the lack of the bombing of Auschwitz by the Western Allies. As we know, on April 7th of 1944, two Jews from Slovakia escaped from Birkenau, the murder centre of Auschwitz, and succeeded in making their way to Slovakia. They wrote a detailed report about Auschwitz. This was translated and sent out to the West. It reached the Allies in mid-June of 1944, arriving together with a request from those who were passing it on to bomb the rail lines leading from Hungary to Auschwitz-- Hungarian Jews were then being deported to Auschwitz-- and also to bomb the crematoria at Birkenau. The Allies consistently, over the following months, refused to bomb either the rail lines or the camp. They argued that bombing rail lines, from Allied experience, was inefficient as a war tactic, and therefore they would not do that. And they argued that bombing the camp itself was, first of all, technically not possible because Allied airplanes could not reach Birkenau from where their bases were in Italy or in other parts of Europe, which we know today was actually not true. They could reach them. They were actually in the vicinity at the time. But they also argued-- the Allies argued-- that bombing the camp would be only a symbolic gesture and would not really rescue the Jews because after all, the Nazis had many methods for killing Jews, and this would therefore not really rescue people. How could they rescue people, they argued. Only by a speedy Allied victory. And hence, the Allies argued, the only way to really rescue the Jews would be to pour all Allied energies into the war effort, meaning no diversion from the war effort. And this policy was consistent by the Allies right to the end of the war. We could conclude by asking what would've happened had the Allies said yes to bombing the camp. Of course, we have no idea what would've happened. Yet at the same time, we know that had they said yes, it would have taken them many weeks at the very least to organise the operation, by which time the camp was already beginning to be dismantled by the Nazis. In other words, they could not have rescued most of the Jews in this camp. But by the same token, they did not know that. They also did not offer any alternatives to the Jews. If the free world was mainly occupied with ending the war, what was done or known by other influential factors, such as the Holy See, that is the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, regarding the mass murder of millions of innocent victims? What did the Vatican know, and what was the reaction to the extermination of the Jews? Pius the XII became a very controversial pope because of these questions. Information about the systematic murder of the Jews, reached the Vatican quite early, and in the fall of 1942, the Allies asked the Vatican to join the declaration of December. Yet the Pope decided not to join. And he talked indirectly about these crimes in his Christmas speech. In there he spoke about the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who, because of their origin or race, were consigned to death. So it did refer to a genocide, but he failed to mention the victims, meaning the Jews, or the murderers, meaning the Germans. And yet we can find people who listened to it and understood it as a condemnation of the Nazi atrocities. Research and documentation that only recently was open, prove that previous claims of some historians that Pius was pro-Nazi were inaccurate. Pius saw Nazism as a heresy that was dangerous to Christianity and to all manhood. And some historians believe that the reason was actually anit-Semitism or fear of communism, which brought the Vatican to prefer Nazi Germany, and therefore to avoid any conflict with it; even at the cost of ignoring the systematic murder of the Jews. Others suggest that the Pope kept silent and vague enough since he feared a split within the church as Europe was riveted with anti-Semitism. As most of the material is still inaccessible to scholars, we still can give only very partial explanations and answers. But hopefully, when documentation will be available, we will be able to reach a better understanding of this very controversial topic. Those questions regarding actions and reactions cannot be limited only to the non-Jewish circles. What about the Jews of the world-- did they know? Did they act? Could they have acted? True, Jewish communities were not independent states and it goes without saying that their actual abilities were much more limited. And yet two Jewish communities should be discussed. The Jews in the United States, almost five million, and those in what would become Israel, about half a million. For many reasons, Russian Jewry under Stalin's regime was very much limited in its abilities. Yet during the war, American Jewry faced many challenges. First, a rising wave of anti-Semitism, including an accusation for dragging the US into a foreign war, even though it had entered the war after having been attacked by Japan and with an intention to defend American interests in Europe. Second, since entering the war, all American connections with occupied countries were forbidden, including passing money for philanthropic needs. The most important American Jewish aid organisation, The Joint, like almost all Jewish organisations halted its activity in occupied Europe in order not to break federal laws or be accused of doing so. Only a few small Jewish American groups claimed that the total shattering of all human moral conventions demands using all available tools, including breaking local laws in order to save lives in far away and attacked countries. And what about the Jews of the Yishuv, the Jewish community preceding the establishment of the state of Israel? Today, looking back with hindsight from a reality of a state that can help Jews in distress, the activities of the Yishuv during the Holocaust period seem little and inappropriate regarding the terrible events. But one should take into consideration the situation from at least three major angles. The first is that the Yishuv, that numbered less than half a million Jews living among a million Arabs and was politically under the British mandate, the Yishuv had no army, no navy, or airplanes. It had no natural resources, such as oil. It did not have financial resources. And not any geographic way to get closely, or directly, into Europe, and itself was struggling with difficulties, doing everything voluntarily. The second angle was the Allies. The Allies were determined definitely to fight and get unconditional surrender from the Germans. And anything else, any other plan, looked to them as a disturbance that they did not want. Third, the Germans were determined to kill the Jews of Europe. And if possible, the Jews of all the world. And they cut out every possibility of rescue, of coming close, of bringing anything for the Jews of Europe. Therefore, only after more information got in from a number of sources, the Jewish Agency, then the political leader of the Yishuv, announced that there is a systematic extermination going go on. And it was done on November 23, 1942. Since that moment, it served as a watershed. A long line of rescue plans, such as exchange, ransom, paratroopers, taking multitudes of Jews out to the Sahara Desert, collecting money, sending parcels, falsified documents. All this began, perhaps not enough was done, but a lot was done compared to the possibilities. Could Jews in the USA or the Yishuv save European Jews? Could more powerful entities in the Holy See or the Allies save them? Unfortunately, hardly. The aforementioned understandings matured when most of the Jews were already dead. And the practical steps which could have been taken were very limited. Yet, should they have done more? Should they have at least tried to do more, as making the end of the mass murders their top priority? Historians don't deal with if's. We just don't have the tools to analyse imagined situations. Maybe Nazi Germany's ability to commit the mass murder, of Hungarian Jews in 1944, as an example, would have been compromised. Maybe the murders would have been sped up. Or maybe, a determined position of the world, of the Church, would have caused individuals or large systems to hesitate regarding participation in mass murders. We simply don't know. Yet, what can be said is that if anything of this sort would have happened, the burden of the Holocaust on post-1945 world might have been easier.
