Orthodox leaders evidently disagreed. They were the first to ask the Roosevelt administration to bomb both the rail lines and Auschwitz itself. Agudath Israel leaders in New York repeatedly met with, and wrote to, Roosevelt administration officials to plead for such bombings, but to no avail. Clearly the U.S. rabbinical leadership understood that any interruption of the mass murder process – even a brief interruption – would save some lives.
Mr. Goodman implies that there was a conflict between rescuing Jews and winning the war. In fact, many Jews could have been saved with only a minimal effort by the Roosevelt administration, and without interfering with the war effort in any way. For example, U.S. planes were already bombing German oil factories adjacent to Auschwitz; to drop a few bombs on the railway tracks or crematoria nearby was certainly feasible. America’s immigration quotas were almost never full; many more Jews could have been admitted without tampering with the existing immigration laws. U.S. troop supply ships were returning from Europe empty – in fact, they had to be weighed down with chunks of concrete to prevent them from capsizing; those empty ships could have brought Jewish refugees instead of concrete.
Contemporary criticism of FDR’s Holocaust record is not Monday morning quarterbacking, as Mr. Goodman claims. It is based on what was actually proposed at the time –including by the leading rabbis of the generation – and what the Roosevelt administration realistically could have done.
Dr. Rafael Medoff
Founding Director
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Washington, D.C.