Behind the Headlines Ask Why Auschwitz Was Not Bombed

Three Senators have called for a fresh U.S. investigation of why the Allied forces did not attempt to disrupt the slaughter in the death camps of Auschwitz in World War II.

Their statements Tuesday came after the Central Intelligence Agency released aerial reconnaissance photographs last week showing the Auschwitz layout and passed them on to the National Archives and to the White House. President Carter gave the photographs to the Holocaust Commission which he appointed last November to establish a suitable remembrance of the victims of the Nazi horror.

Two freshmen Senators, Carl Levin (D, Mich.) and Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.), himself a refugee as a child from Nazi Germany, brought the matter to the Senate’s attention, following the publication of the Auschwitz photos Shortly after their statement, Sen. William Proxmire (D. Wis.) making his daily appeal for Senate ratification of the United Nations Genocide Convention, pointed to the photographs as further evidence of the need for acceptance of the anti-genocide provision as U.S. law.

Levin, whose maiden speech in the Senate in January urged approval of the Genocide Convention, spoke on behalf of himself and Boschwitz regarding Auschwitz He pointed out that “the photographs taken in 1944 and 1945 provide further evidence that Allied authorities were aware of the slaughter taking place at Auschwitz during the latter years of the war, which makes even more disturbing the fact that no direct attempt was ever made to disrupt it.”

A LINGERING PAINFUL QUESTION

The question of why the Allies did not undertake any military action against the camp or the rail lines used to transport prisoners to it “has been a painful one throughout the postwar years,” Levin said. “The just released photographs do not by any means represent the first evidence that the Allies were aware of the Auschwitz death camp.”

Historian David Wyman, Levin noted, published “Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed” in the May 1948 issue of Commentary magazine. Author Joseph Borkin, whose recent book,” The Crime and Punishment of I. G. Farben” received favorable reviews, also discussed this episode in World War II history.

Levin observed that “despite repeated appeals that the U.S. direct bombing raids at the rail lines or the murder installations at the camp, the War Department consistently refused. “He quoted a War Department statement in 1944 after it was urged to bomb Auschwitz that “the suggested air operation is impracticable for the reason that it could be executed only by division of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged In decisive operations Borkin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that this statement was made by John McCloy, then Assistant Secretary for War.

“No purpose would be served by an attempt to assign blame retrospectively for the failure to take steps which might have saved so many lives, “Levin said.

“I do not think, however, that we could learn a great deal about how our society and its decision-makers react to humanitarian crises. The vicissitudes of the current Administration’s human rights policies demonstrate that we, as a nation, still have not resolved this critical problem of how humanitarian concerns should be interrelated with what are perceived to be our overriding political and military interests. This conflict is nowhere more poignantly illustrated than in our reaction to the inestimable tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust.”

INEFFECTIVE RESPONSE TO HOLOCAUST

Levin expressed “hope the President will direct all federal agencies to release all information which bears upon these events, so that we may reconstruct with greater accuracy the historial record of that era, and draw from it lessons which may help guide our future conduct.”

Levin also pointed out that “the investigation and prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals, further demonstrates this country’s ineffective response to this terrible tragedy. Despite Congressional direction the immigration and Naturalization Service has not seen fit to wholeheartedly investigate and prosecute the hundreds of persons who were involved in the Holocaust and who have entered this country illegally since then.”

In his address to the Senate, Proxmire declared that “two and one-half million Jews are reported to have been killed at Auschwitz, 12,000 each day. While aerial photographs were being taken, nearly one million Hungarian Jews were being transported in boxcars to Auschwitz.”

By June 1944, Proxmire continued, “Washington knew all about Auschwitz, yet the rail line leading to the camp, as well as the gas chambers, were never bombed. Why is this? why did we overlook the wholesale murder of millions of Jews?” Thirty-five years later, said Proxmire, who has been fighting against genocide every business day in the Senate for II years, “Auschwitz is history But for some, the memory of Auschwitz the memory of having witnessed genocide — is terrifyingly vivid.”