Defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust have been dealt a major blow, as a study by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has rejected a claim they frequently have made regarding the U.S. failure to bomb Auschwitz. The development comes just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), which commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
In numerous speeches, articles, and conferences in recent years, officials and supporters of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York, have claimed that then-Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion opposed bombing Auschwitz (for fear of harming prisoners). Roosevelt supporters have made the claim to deflect criticism of FDR for the U.S. rejection of requests to bomb the death camp.
But a newly completed two-year study by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has concluded that Ben-Gurion opposed bombing the camp only for a period of several weeks when he believed it was a labor camp, and then reversed himself when he learned more about the true nature of Auschwitz, and thereafter supported bombing. Ben-Gurion’s associates in Europe and the United States then repeatedly pressed Allied officials to bomb the camp.
“There is now broad agreement among Holocaust historians regarding the question of David Ben-Gurion’s position on bombing Auschwitz,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which had been urging the museum to study the subject in depth. “Roosevelt’s apologists can no longer use Ben-Gurion to whitewash the Roosevelt administration’s refusal to bomb Auschwitz.”
The Wyman Institute has issued a study of its own, “America’s Failure to Bomb Auschwitz: A new consensus among historians,” which will be made available this week on the Institute’s web site, www.WymanInstitute.org.
Among the many Jewish leaders who called on the Allies to bomb Auschwitz in 1944 were World Zionist Organization president (and later president of Israel) Chaim Weizmann, senior Jewish Agency official (and later Israeli prime minister) Moshe Sharett, veteran Jewish leader Nahum Goldmann, and Palestine Labor Zionist leader (and future Israeli prime minister) Golda Meir.
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, based in Washington, DC, is a research and education institute focusing on America’s response to the Holocaust. It is named in honor of the eminent historian and author of the 1984 best-selling book The Abandonment of the Jews.
The Institute’s Advisory Committee includes Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, members of Congress, and other luminaries. Its Academic Council includes more than 50 leading professors of the Holocaust, American history, and Jewish history. The Institute’s Arts and Letters Council, chaired by Cynthia Ozick, includes prominent artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers.