Jews cannot rely on others to survive.

Peloni: A truly exceptional commentary.

George McGovern

Jews cannot rely on others to survive. George McGovern (Senator, Presidential Nominee & Historian) flew bomber miss

ions over Auschwitz, targeting nearby oil factories & admitted it was moral failure not to bomb the gas chambers, the crematoria, or the railways/bridges to Auschwitz.

By December 1942, the US government had irrefutable proof of the mass slaughter of Jews in the death camps, including Auschwitz.

Jewish organizations pleaded with the Allies to bomb the extermination camps & railways/bridges leading to them to at least minimize the slaughter. The Jews begged the Allies to do something, anything, to show the Nazis that the world knew what was happening & refused to permit it.

But the Jews’ requests were always dismissed out of hand.

Starting in Feb 1944, Allied photo-reconnaissance planes based in southern Italy carried out surveillance missions over Auschwitz. Those photos unequivocally showed the barracks and the plumes of smoke billowing over the constantly running crematoria, which were incinerating up to 12,000 Jews every single day.

The British too carried out bombing raids on synthetic oil factories adjacent to Auschwitz as early as May 12, 1944. But neither the Americans nor the British ever took any action intended to stop, or even somewhat slowdown, the extermination of the Jews.

Elie Wiesel later recounted in his best-selling book Night that he remembered seeing the Allies bomb of the oil factories when he was a 16-year-old slave laborer in Auschwitz.

He wrote: “[I]f a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death … Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time that the Allies were running these bombing missions taking them directly over Auschwitz, the Allies also knew that up to 800,000 Hungarian Jews were being rounded up for deportation along those same railways & bridges to Auschwitz for extermination.

But while actions were repeatedly taken against the oil factories next door, not a single bomb was dropped targeting those railways and bridges. Not a single bomb was dropped targeting the gas chambers or the crematoria.

How many could have been saved if the Allies took any action whatsoever against Auschwitz?

It’s not as if bombing railways and bridges was out of the ordinary. On the contrary, the Allies regularly bombed railways and bridges during the entirety of the war.

The sad truth is that during the war, those in charge of Allied military action, including political leaders, repeatedly showed near total disinterest in the Nazi industrialized slaughter of millions of Europe’s Jews.

And so, we love our friends today. We appreciate every one of them. We know the stories of the righteous among the nations who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

But we also know – and continue to reminded by the words and actions of world leaders today – that Jews have not the luxury of relying on the nations of the world to save us, to protect us, or even to care whether we live or die.

Only Israel ensures Jews will never again be left hoping the world will come to our rescue. Only Israel ensures the Jews will ultimately be responsible for our own destiny.