ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

Auschwitz book, p322 for example, to prove that his allegation was absurd. If the Allies
bombed targets in the immediate vicinity of Auschwitz, then obviously they could reach
Auschwitz. If they flew from Italy or Britain to Warsaw, then obviously they could have
flown the shorter distance to Auschwitz, too. When the Allies liberated Rome on 4 June,
1944, they were only about 600 air miles from Auschwitz. Could anyone seriously claim
that this was too far to fly for all the planes in the Allied arsenal? The distance between
South-East England and Warsaw is about 900 air miles. Even in early 1943, with some
realistic fuel tank modifications, several Allied planes, including the British Lancaster
bomber, the American B-17 and Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25, were all capable of reaching the
Polish capital. Much could have been done if only the Allied leadership had had a
sufficient moral and political interest in the matter.
Gilbert’s latest relevant contribution is a book titled Churchill and the Jews, A Lifelong
Friendship, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2007 [Reviewed by John Simon in the
Rosh hashanah 2008 issue of Jewish Affairs – ed.]. Insofar as this work deals with
Churchill’s role vis a vis Jews during the years of the Holocaust, it is nothing short of a
monumental intellectual travesty.
Gilbert tells us that the Prime Minister proposed in December 1942 to the Royal Air
Force that it might conduct “two or three heavy raids” over Berlin with warnings to the
Germans that such raids were “reprisals for the persecution of Poles and Jews”. 33 He
notes that the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, told Churchill that any actions
“avowedly conducted on account of the Jews would be an asset to enemy propaganda”.
Sir Charles was perhaps entitled to an opinion, but Gilbert, amazingly, concludes:
"Churchill had no power to overrule his air chief on operational matters but he continued
to keep a vigilant eye on Jewish issues." 34
How could Portal's opinion about a subject so clearly political - the question of what
would or would not make effective enemy propaganda and how that might count in a
decision - be defined as an “operational issue”, and one over which even the Prime
Minister had no power to overrule a bureaucratic subordinate? Was antisemitism an
‘operational’ issue?
Gilbert mentions the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but takes no note of Churchill’s failure to
address that event. 35 He does not mention anywhere in this book the name of Szmuel
Zygielbojm.
On the subject of refuge, especially in Palestine, Gilbert says:
...the number of [Jewish] refugees able to escape Nazi-dominated Europe was
minimal. If more had been able to leave, there were still 33000 unused Palestine
did fly from Libyan bases to the vicinity of Vienna and from Egypt to Ploesti-Romania, during the June
1942 through September 1943 period. Those were substantially longer distances than flight from Southeast
England to Warsaw.
33 Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, p197.
34 Ibid., pp. 197-198. Emmanuel Ringelblum noted in a 25 June, 1942 entry: “Day in, day out, in hundreds
of cities throughout Poland and Russia, thousands upon thousands of Jews are being systematically
murdered according to a preconceived plan, and no one seems to be taking our part”. See Jacob Sloan (ed.)
Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto, The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, (Berkeley: Ibooks, 2006), p301.
35 Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, pp. 198-9.