PURELY COMMENTARY

4 | SEPTEMBER 29 • 2022

opinion
Ken Burns’ Holocaust Documentary
May Be Hard on America,
But Not Hard Enough
S

eventy-eight years ago,
David Ben-Gurion
rose before the Asefat
Hanivcharim, Palestine Jewry’s
elected assembly, and delivered
an explosive “j’accuse” against
the Allies for
abandoning
Europe’s Jews
during the
Holocaust.
The words of
the man who
would soon be
Israel’s first prime
minister take on
added signifi-
cance in view
of the release
of Ken Burns’
three-part, six-
hour PBS docu-
mentary The U.S.
and the Holocaust. Its official
website says the film “dispels”
the “myth” that America
“looked on with callous indif-
ference” during the Holocaust.
By contrast, Ben-Gurion told
the gathering of Jewish com-
munity leaders in Jerusalem on
Sept. 12, 1944: “
As millions of
Jews were taken to the slaugh-
ter — young and old, infant
and newborn, mother and
daughter — the world leaders,
those who shout slogans about
democracy and socialism,
looked away from the blood-
shed and did not undertake
rescue action — they did not
even try to rescue them.”
Two months earlier, Ben-
Gurion had spoken in similar
terms at a ceremony on the

40th anniversary of the death
of Theodor Herzl. Addressing
himself to the Allies, he thun-
dered: “What have you allowed
to be perpetrated against a
defenseless people while you
stood aside and let them bleed
to death, never lifting a finger
to help? ... Why do you profane
our pain and wrath with empty
expressions of sympathy, which
ring like mockery in the ears
of millions who are being daily
burnt and buried alive in the
hell centers of Europe?”
These words were not
uttered after the fact. The
Holocaust still raged as Ben-
Gurion spoke. Trainloads of
Jewish deportees were being
sent to Auschwitz every day.
On the day of the Herzl speech,
July 10, three trainloads of
Hungarian Jewish deportees
arrived in Auschwitz. Over the
course of four days that week,
more than 30,000 Jews were
gassed.

FAILURE TO BOMB
THE RAILWAYS
For a few weeks earlier that
summer, Ben-Gurion and his
colleagues in the leadership
of Palestine’s Jewish Agency
had mistakenly believed that
Auschwitz was a labor camp.
But when they learned in late
June that it was, in fact, a death
camp, they lobbied Allied diplo-
mats in Europe, the Middle East
and the United States to bomb
the railways and bridges leading
to Auschwitz or the gas cham-
bers or both.
Future Israeli president
Chaim Weizmann and future
prime ministers Moshe Shertok
(Sharett) and Golda Meyerson
(Meir) were among those
promoting the proposal in
meetings with Allied officials.
In early September, just before
the aforementioned meeting of
the Asefat Hanivcharim, Jewish
Agency official Eliyahu Epstein
(Elath) reported to Ben-Gurion

about his unsuccessful efforts
to persuade a Soviet diplomat
in Cairo that the Allies should
bomb the death camps.
Roosevelt administration
officials falsely asserted that the
only way to strike the railways
or the death camp would be
to “divert” planes from distant
battle zones, thus undermining
the war effort. That claim is
repeated in the Burns film as if
it were a fact.
In reality, American planes
were already flying over Ausch-
witz, bombing the oil factories
in the death camp’s industrial
zone (where Elie Wiesel was
among the slave laborers) —
less than five miles from the gas
chambers. One of those raids
took place on Sept. 13, 1944, the
day after Ben-Gurion’s speech
to the Jerusalem assembly.
In Ken Burns’ film, inter-
viewees belittle the proposals
to bomb the railways on the
grounds that the Germans
could have quickly repaired
them. But that was true for all
U.S. bombing attacks on rail-
roads in Europe, yet it never
deterred the Roosevelt admin-
istration and its allies from tar-
geting them as part of the war
effort.
George McGovern, the
future U.S. senator and 1972
Democratic presidential nomi-
nee, was one of the young pilots
who undertook those raids
(including bombing the oil fac-
tories at Auschwitz). In a 2004
interview, McGovern argued
that even if the railway lines

A U.S. Ford “Liberator” shown over Kiel, Germany, Jan. 4, 1944. On
July 10, 1944, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on an appeal
by Auschwitz escapees for the Allies to bomb the death camp.

U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES/DESIGN BY MOLLIE SUSS

continued on page 6

Rafael
Medoff
JTA.org

Monty N.
Penkower
JTA.org