ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

have been humane and far-sighted”. 13 He also suggested that “perhaps not enough has
been made of [Churchill's] magnanimity”. 14
Without denying Churchill's critically important role in Allied victory in World War II,
the question nevertheless remains: just how humane and magnanimous was he when it
came to dealing with Jews? Churchill’s attitude to the unprecedented plight of the victims
of Hitler's Holocaust was, at best, one of relative indifference, even when by the
admission of his own government (if not Gilbert’s) he knew full well what the Nazis
were doing to the Jews of Europe.
Looking at specific events, what did Churchill do when he learned about the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising, as all the world did of course, in April 1943? Did he utter a public word?
Did he send planes with supplies to Warsaw, or even as a show of solidarity, as he did
when the Poles staged their ill-fated Warsaw uprising in August 1944? 15 Did he consult
Roosevelt and Stalin on these matters in 1943 as he did in 1944? Did he issue a
declaration supporting the Jewish Fighting Organization as his Foreign Secretary did for
the Polish Home Army in September 1944 demanding that the Polish freedom fighters be
treated by the Nazis as regular combatants with all the implicit threat of Allied
reprisals? 16 Did he call in the representatives of the Polish Government-in-Exile,
headquartered in London, to urge them to give Jews fighting in the streets of Warsaw
more help, especially from their fairly significant weapons' stockpiles (or perhaps
through diversionary actions)? 17 Did he call a single meeting of his staff or cabinet to
consider what, if anything, might have been done to assist the martyrs and heroes of the
Warsaw Ghetto?
At the time of the Polish uprising in Warsaw in August-September 1944, Churchill and
Roosevelt exchanged many messages concerning assistance to the Polish insurgents and
contacts with Stalin to facilitate it. The record speaks for itself. 18 In the case of the Jewish
Warsaw uprising in April-May 1943, they did not exchange a single message. (It is
noteworthy, of course, that Jewish resistance in Warsaw actually lasted longer than the
resistance of six sovereign states in the 1940-1941 period, i.e., Belgium, Holland,
Luxembourg, Denmark, Yugoslavia and Greece).
During the Polish rising, Churchill made two speeches in the House of Commons. On 26
September, 1944, he paid tribute to the heroism of the Polish insurgents in Warsaw and
specifying various ways in which Britain had been trying to assist them “despite the very
great practical difficulties and in the face of heavy losses [of Allied aircraft and crews]”.
13 Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heineman,1991) p959.
14 Ibid.
15 According to Gilbert’s account in Second World War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989) p596:
“In all, 306 Allied aircraft flew over Warsaw ... forty one .. had been shot down and at least two hundred air
men killed."
16 Note Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland, Pattern of Soviet Aggression (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1958) p90 and also Frank P. King, ‘British Policy and the Warsaw Uprising’, Journal of European
Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 1974, pp. 1-18.
17 See Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
This was an occasion on which much assistance could have been given. The Jews of Warsaw were badly in
need of weapons which the Polish Home Army had but shared very minimally. (p305; fn. 119)
18 On Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence see Warren F. Kimball (ed.) Churchill and Roosevelt, The
Complete Correspondence, Vols. II and III, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).