ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

As is evident from the Rosenman collection of presidential pronouncements, Franklin
Roosevelt, just like Winston Churchill, did not make a single speech or broadcast
touching on the issue of the Nazi extermination of the Jews during the whole course of
the Second World War. The closest reference was a statement issued in the Presidents'
name and behalf on 24 March, 1944, shortly after Nazi troops entered the territory of
Hungary. 22
From the perspective of ‘results’, it is clear that under Churchill's stewardship, and
without opposition from Roosevelt, British warships did much to keep the few Jews
escaping Hitler's European inferno from reaching the shores of British-occupied
Palestine. Under the Prime Minister’s direction, various partisan organizations
throughout Europe, Yugoslav and Polish among them, received all sorts of weapons,
equipment and technical and material assistance, but no such things were offered to the
Jews. Many Allied planes were lost over Warsaw in 1944 in what was, for the most part,
a futile attempt to supply Polish insurgents, but none could be found or flown to help
Jews in 1943. An attack on Auschwitz was talked about in official British circles, with
apparent support from Churchill, in 1944 but nothing came of it.
How accidental was it, one might reasonably ask, that while literally thousands of trains,
carrying their suffocating Jewish cargo, rolled endlessly toward extermination camps in
Poland from places that were geographically close to Britain (and also to southern Italy
from 1943 onwards), none were ever attacked by Allied aircraft or commando units?
There were trains from France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Western Germany,
Norway, Hungary, Italy, and also from Yugoslavia and Greece. Was it not the case that
the safest job in the German military-security apparatus during World War II was killing
Jews at Auschwitz and elsewhere because the Allies never sought to interfere with the
killing process? The Nazi crews escorting Jewish death trains during the Holocaust
suffered literally no casualties in carrying out their ghastly tasks. Death camp guards and
doctors lived exceedingly well.
If there would have been clear symbolism in Allied attacks on German railroads
employed in the Nazi Final Solution, the British Government did not appear interested in
it. Perhaps the balance of political benefits seemed to be on the side of modest
indifference to ‘humanity’ as far as Jews were concerned. In any case, we do know that
on 1 August, 1946, Churchill, somehow, managed to say publicly that he “had no idea
when the war came to an end, of the horrible massacres [to which Jews were
subjected]”. 23
Gilbert’s few references in his biography to Churchill's interface with Jews or Jewish
concerns during the Second World War are, necessarily it would seem, few. The most
extensive discussion occurs in just three very short paragraphs on pages 783-4; these
indicate Churchill's support for an Auschwitz bombing mission in July 1944, support
which, somehow, of course, did not sufficiently impress the Royal Air Force to cause it to
carry out the mission; and there are some references to British intervention with the
22 See Samuel I. Rosenman, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 Vols. (New
York: Macmillan, 1941-1950).
23 This statement was made by Churchill in the House of Commons on 1 August, 1946. It is included in a
speech titled ‘Palestine’ which appears in the collection edited by his grandson, Winston S. Churchill,
Never Give In, The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (New York: Hyperion, 2003)., pp. 425-426.