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

