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00:00In April 1944, with the outcome of World War II hanging in the balance, two Jewish prisoners
00:17lay hidden near the outer fence of Auschwitz concentration camp.
00:23It was almost impossible to escape from Auschwitz.
00:30So many people were caught almost immediately and tortured and killed.
00:49The dogs didn't sniff them out because they put tobacco soaked in petrol around the hiding place.
01:00They managed to stay there undetected for three days.
01:08On the 10th of April 1944, they abandoned their hiding place and cut through the fence.
01:14They had to be audacious. They had to be brave. They escaped in order to warn the world that Auschwitz was a killing mechanism.
01:25Their eyewitness account of the mass extermination of European Jews would lead to one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.
01:36This killing complex can turn several thousands of human beings into ash in just 24 hours.
01:51The failure to bomb Auschwitz, no one gave a damn. They didn't care. They didn't want to do it.
02:06Auschwitz should have had the most outrageous response while it was happening. And that's a moral failure of the West.
02:21Why was the greatest crime of modern history allowed to proceed unimpeded for almost two years?
02:37A million Jews perished there by gas. It wasn't because of lack of evidence.
02:44Rudolf Werber and Alfred Wetzler fled through Nazi-occupied Poland to the Slovakian town of Žilina, where they made contact with the Jewish underground.
03:02Slovakia is aligned with Nazi Germany, and it is the first country to voluntarily deport its Jews.
03:09Verber and Wetzler made it to a safe house. They were desperate to complete their mission, to let the world know what was happening to Jews in Poland.
03:22The extermination of the Jews was carried on in great secrecy. It wasn't advertised.
03:29Therefore, until then, we had no cogent or clear description of what went on at Auschwitz.
03:38Oskar Krasnansky of the Jewish underground was sent to interview Werber and Wetzler.
03:44My name is Krasnansky from Bratislava.
03:49How do I know you're not fantasists wasting my time?
03:5244070, I asked him, why have you put this tattoo on your arm? And then he looked at me and he said, where did you think I have been? In a sanatorium? And that's when he told me that he has been to Auschwitz.
04:15Why are you tattooed on the arm and you on your chest?
04:18The chest tattoos were imprinted with huge brutality. Many people fainted.
04:22Is that why they started tattooing people on their arms?
04:26No. No, they did that because the chest tattoos faded too quickly.
04:30You must tell me everything. Every detail that you know about Auschwitz-Birkenau.
04:36Yes. Auschwitz is a killing center. Not here, not now. Separately.
04:43If you don't know who these men are, you want to interrogate them to make sure that they're not telling you a bullshit story.
04:55Auschwitz is not a household name in early 1944.
05:00There's a lot of confusion over what is this place. And so at the beginning, people just knew that Jews were being taken to Nazi-occupied Poland.
05:14The Polish underground had managed to smuggle some information about the camp outside.
05:19But on the whole, this information is fragmentary and sometimes contradictory.
05:24Verber and Wetzler's interrogation was meticulously recorded, as in a court of law.
05:43How did you escape?
05:45We kept to the forest, travelling only by night.
05:50How long?
05:51It took us eleven days.
05:54No, no. How long were you in Auschwitz?
05:56I arrived there on the 30th of June, 1942.
06:00We've heard rumours that there is gas.
06:05That Jews are killed there by gas machines and by mass electrocution.
06:11When you look at the way he did it, the professionalism, it reflects that this was someone who knew the information he was getting was potentially a game changer.
06:25The interview was done with the idea of we might bring legal charges and we are going to get nothing but the facts.
06:36The, er...
06:39The perimeter wire is electrified.
06:42But there are gas installations.
06:44Gas chambers.
06:46Go on.
06:48Four gas chambers, with crematoria for burning.
06:49The first crematorium opened in March 1943, when prominent guests from Berlin arrived to see the new installation.
06:59That day they were able to witness 8,000 Jews from Krakow gassed and burned.
07:04They were very pleased with that result.
07:07How do you know all this?
07:09I worked as a registrar in the Birkenau section of the camp.
07:13My daily duties included registering the survivors of each transportation, meaning those who had survived the train journey and had not on arrival at Auschwitz been selected for the gas.
07:24Clerks can move around the different sectors of the camp a little bit more freely than most other prisoners.
07:31And in this way, pick up even more detailed information about what exactly is happening there.
07:38I also got information about the precise operation of the gas chambers in crematoria from one of the Sonderkommando.
07:44Sonderkommando?
07:49You really know nothing, do you?
07:50The prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau who knew best what happened at the gas chambers in the crematoria were the members of the so-called Sonderkommando.
08:09These were prisoners who were forced by the SS to assist in the killing and cremation at the crematoria itself.
08:21Rudi and Freddy felt that they needed to have facts that would convince people that this really is happening.
08:36And it was their idea to write a report that could be distributed and shown as evidence.
08:43Werber and Wetzler wanted to include as much granular evidence as they could in their report.
08:52And that included some drawings.
08:54Auschwitz is a massive place and it builds up over time and in different ways.
09:04So the first camp is Auschwitz I, which opens in 1940.
09:09Later they add Birkenau a few miles away, which is where the gas chambers in the crematorium are located.
09:15This is an approximate sketch of the dark heart of Auschwitz main camp and Birkenau.
09:26This is one of the gas chambers in the crematoria that the SS constructed in Birkenau.
09:33It's striking how much Werber and Wetzler got right about the layout of the camp, the mechanics of mass extermination.
09:44And even down to the names of individual prisoners.
09:54At the end of January, a large convoy of French and Dutch Jews arrived at Auschwitz.
10:01But only a small proportion of those reached the camp.
10:05What happened to the rest of them?
10:06They went straight from the trains to the gas chambers.
10:09Did you see these selections yourself?
10:11Yes.
10:12I belonged to a work command that took me to a place called The Ramp, which is where the trains came in.
10:18Sometimes one a day, sometimes five, sometimes through the night.
10:22My job was to deal with the personal property of those Jews who'd been selected for the gas and to collect any dead bodies from the cattle cars.
10:29He sees how Jews are forced off the trains. He sees how they have to line up.
10:42He sees how the SS selects them and sends those deemed to be weak and ill and not fit for work towards the gas chambers.
10:51And this really gives Weber a direct insight. He becomes an eyewitness of the Holocaust.
11:00Women, children, old people, people they considered unfit sent straight to the gas chambers.
11:05The fittest were separated out and kept the labour.
11:09How many?
11:10It varied. A small percentage, five or ten percent.
11:14All this was done with force?
11:17Sometimes, but usually without.
11:19These people had no idea where they were going.
11:22I want to emphasise this.
11:25A train would pull in.
11:27And those getting off would have no conception of what had just happened to those who'd arrived a few hours before.
11:35They were describing the details of genocide.
11:40How was it done?
11:43You were asking people to believe something that was literally beyond belief.
11:49You can't put it into words.
11:55Numbness.
11:57Fright.
11:59Anger.
12:01Fury.
12:02Rage.
12:04And then a feeling of, oh my God.
12:10And probably a sense of incredulity of these guys out of their mind.
12:15How did the SS deal with these arrivals?
12:20I've told you already they were sent to the gas.
12:24To the gas at Birkenau.
12:26Some of the groups would be frightened and disorientated.
12:33Others would be almost relieved depending on how they'd been greeted by the SS.
12:38Sometimes they could be harsh.
12:41Using the sticks, dogs, lots of shouting.
12:44Other times it would be, how nice that you have arrived.
12:47We are sorry it was not too comfortable.
12:49Things will change now.
12:51Werber's testimony had a horrifying climax.
12:54The Nazis' new plan for Auschwitz-Birkenau.
12:57They are preparing for the extermination of the Hungarian Jews.
13:04How do you know that?
13:06That is why they have built the new crematoria and extended the ramp.
13:10I said, how do you know the intent to kill the Hungarian Jews?
13:15The SS.
13:17They talk.
13:18I am dirt.
13:19To each other.
13:21I heard it more than once.
13:25They would always take the best food from the trains for themselves.
13:29They had a cosmopolitan diet.
13:33I overheard one officer saying that he was tired of Dutch cheese and looked forward to the arrival of Hungarian salami.
13:40Are you certain you heard this?
13:49I have to ask.
13:52Are you certain?
13:54I heard it more than once.
13:56It is why I knew I had to escape.
13:59Two warm people of what is to come.
14:03Auschwitz becomes the center of the Holocaust.
14:10And the catalyst for that is the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944.
14:22Hungary had the largest, mostly intact Jewish community in Europe.
14:27And the persecution starts almost immediately.
14:32On April 27th, 1944, Werber's warning comes true.
14:37The first 4,000 Jews were sent by train from Hungary to Auschwitz.
14:42It was a dress rehearsal for the planned annihilation of all 800,000.
14:50I would argue that the Nazis are losing the war and therefore they're trying to win the genocide.
14:55The crime that was being committed was so horrific, so unique, so outrageous, so evil, so awful.
15:06The Nazis kept their extermination program a closely guarded secret to avoid resistance and disruption on the trains.
15:14But it was no longer secret.
15:17Werber and Wetzler's harrowing testimony was turned into a detailed report.
15:21The Auschwitz Protocol.
15:22The Auschwitz Protocol is very scientific.
15:31There isn't a lot of emotion and I think that was a deliberate choice on the part of the escapees.
15:36They weren't going to express their horror.
15:40The horror is there.
15:41Thanks to the protocol, Jewish activists in Slovakia learned of the Nazis' plans for the Hungarian Jews.
15:54So the duty to act was theirs.
15:56Everybody who worked as a courier had to be prepared to lose their own life.
16:06They would have been tortured to reveal where they'd gotten it.
16:10The last thing in the world Germany wanted to happen was that this information got out.
16:14In the first week of May 1944, the protocol reached Michael Weissmandel, who worked secretly for the Jewish underground in the Slovakian capital.
16:42Rabbi Weissmandel was a very passionate man.
16:47He's in Slovakia to rescue people.
16:55His sole goal is to take care of his community.
17:00And he does it with whatever means he possibly can.
17:05Rabbi Weissmandel was not only among the first to read these documents, but he was the first to fully believe these documents.
17:23The protocol had a devastating effect on Weissmandel. He had witnessed deportations. He now realized the full horror that awaited those who had gone.
17:44Rabbi Weissmandel was one part of the task. Disseminating the information was the other.
17:57Rabbi Weissmandel was one part of the task. Disseminating the information was the other.
17:59Rabbi Weissmandel had to be done with great secrecy.
18:02Weissmandel is sending this report everywhere he can think of. He's trying to get it to the Jewish agency in Jerusalem. He's trying to get it to London, hopefully to the United States.
18:14He's sending them all in the hopes that one cry in the darkness will be heard.
18:21Rabbi Weissmandel
18:31Rabbi Weissmittel
18:34Greg Weissmandel
18:40He's talking about نور
18:42Rabbi Weissrum
18:45orn
18:51wanted to save this picture in his memory of the family.
18:55He said, get out of the house.
18:58And said only this sentence, just stay calm.
19:04Remember, calmness is strength.
19:09And they hit him, pushed him through the door,
19:11and he was out.
19:13The rabbi was an elderly gentleman with a white beard.
19:17He was made to walk in the front of the column.
19:19You see, it was symbolic, the Jews are leaving town.
19:24In spring 1944, the world had little knowledge
19:28of what was happening to the Jews of Hungary.
19:31Most were looking elsewhere, because the war
19:33had reached a critical juncture.
19:37What was going on at that very time in the United States
19:41and Britain was the preparations for D-Day,
19:44which the total outcome of the war depended.
19:47Now, this took precedence over everything.
19:52The Pacific War was going on for the Americans,
19:54and that was an immense Herculean effort.
19:58They knew that as they moved closer to Japan,
20:01the fight was going to get harder and harder,
20:03because the Japanese were terrifically fierce fighters.
20:08On the other side of Europe, the Soviet army at the time
20:11was working full steam.
20:12Stalin basically destroyed the entire German army
20:20in some of the greatest battles of modern history.
20:24While the Allies were focused on the battlefront,
20:26the protocol gained momentum.
20:28Weiss Mandel's transmission reached Roswell McClelland
20:34at the War Refugee Board in neutral Switzerland.
20:47Is this it?
20:48The War Refugee Board was established by Roosevelt in early 1944,
20:52and it was the only body anywhere in the world
20:54which specifically had the task of rescuing Jews.
21:04They were selected for gassing.
21:08It gives the impression of the antechamber
21:09of a bathing establishment.
21:11It holds 2,000 people.
21:13From there, a door and a few steps lead down
21:16into the very long and narrow gas chamber.
21:21Roswell McClelland had a very personal reaction
21:24because he had gone to southern France
21:27working with Jews in internment camps in 1942,
21:31and he knows intimately who these people are.
21:34He had watched them go to Auschwitz,
21:37and now he's reading about what happened to them.
21:43When Rabbi Weiss Mandel sent the protocol,
21:46he added a dramatic postscript.
21:49It was an appeal for help,
21:51but also a rebuke for those who might refuse.
21:56And you, our brothers in all the free lands,
21:59what are you doing about the extermination
22:02which swallows 10,000 every day?
22:05For God's sake, do something now and quickly.
22:10He turned the question of what to do about the death camp
22:13into one of the great moral issues of the 20th century.
22:16He demanded that the Allied air forces bomb Auschwitz.
22:21He was the first to do so.
22:23His call to bomb Auschwitz was essentially
22:27a call of desperation and a call of despair.
22:31When people first hear about the request of bombing of Auschwitz,
22:38it's quite remarkable because they're demanding that they bomb a camp
22:42where their own people are being held prisoner.
22:46It seemed very strange.
22:49Let's set the whole goddamn thing aflame.
22:51Let's destroy the entire thing.
22:53Then we have accomplished something and we've done something enormously significant.
22:57The clock was ticking.
23:03McClellan sent a summary of the protocol to Washington.
23:09Switzerland is completely surrounded by Nazi territory.
23:12You can't have a courier go in and out.
23:16So Roswell McClellan sends a cable and said,
23:19as soon as I can, you'll get the whole thing.
23:20Since early summer 1942, at least one and a half million Jews have been killed.
23:29There is evidence that from January 1944, preparations were being made to receive
23:34and exterminate Hungarian Jews in these camps.
23:50For three days and three nights, we were locked into that box.
24:05Every morning we were traveling, they opened those shutters and they threw out dead bodies.
24:13With a tiny window for air and one pail for bodily needs,
24:19which turned out to be very, very embarrassing and unpleasant.
24:31Something has always been going around in my mind and I can't get rid of it and I feel so ashamed.
24:38Tell me, how can a 14-year-old child
24:51hope people should die so he'll have room where to sit down?
24:56It was early in the morning that we arrived.
25:08The door opened and screams.
25:11I hear out, hear out, schnell, schnell, los, los, los, los.
25:15And through the slits of the car that we were in,
25:19I saw the word Auschwitz. I didn't have a clue what it was.
25:27Nazi soldiers standing there with rifles pointing at us.
25:32Others holding back, snarling, big dogs that were barking at us.
25:39The first thing was, you breathe in and it's a very strange smell.
25:43It was sort of sweetish and burning.
25:48I thought it's a bakery and they're baking bread.
26:03And as I noticed that to the left when people
26:06older and with glasses and children and women.
26:13My mother, my two little brothers and my baby in my mother's arm,
26:21my grandfather, grandmother and my aunt.
26:24My mother went to the left.
26:27With a flick of his hand to the left, they were walked off.
26:31We didn't even have time to say goodbye.
26:33And that's when I saw my father the last time.
26:37He was 60 years old.
26:42Roswell McClellan's cable, containing the summary of the Auschwitz protocol
26:46and the plea to bomb the camp, traveled from Switzerland
26:50to the headquarters of the War Refugee Board in Washington.
26:53It is urged by all sources of this information in Slovakia and Hungary
27:02that vital sections of the rail lines be bombed.
27:08They also urge that the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau,
27:12especially the gas chambers and crematoriums,
27:14recognizable by their high chimneys, be bombed from the air.
27:19The director of the War Refugee Board was a lawyer called John Paley.
27:26The decision about what to do with this startling information fell on his shoulders.
27:33John Paley was very measured and he was very diligent and dogged.
27:38He's not cynical.
27:39He really does believe that the United States can try to save people.
27:43Would you please ask Dr. Axin to step through to my office?
27:47Oh, and hold all incoming calls until he leaves.
27:51When people saw the level of detail and this atrocity,
27:55they recognized that this was something different.
27:59This was something horrifying.
28:03Ben,
28:07I want you to take a look at this.
28:08It's from Roswaal McClellan.
28:14Auserhitz?
28:15I think he means Auschwitz.
28:18Benjamin Axin is a lawyer.
28:20He grew up in Latvia and was an incredibly intelligent man.
28:24He's Jewish.
28:25He certainly still had family and friends back in Europe.
28:28He sees the War Refugee Board as a place where he can do some good.
28:38This is, uh...
28:42It's inconceivable.
28:47Incredible.
28:49Unbelievable.
28:52One hundred and twenty five thousand a month?
28:57You can go straight to the president with this.
28:59What's so funny?
29:01It doesn't work that way, Ben.
29:05There are procedures.
29:05There are rules.
29:07There are no rules for this, surely, if it's true.
29:12You have to be sure, that's all.
29:15It's very easy for us these days to close our eyes and imagine Auschwitz.
29:20We've seen photos.
29:21Many of us may have even visited Auschwitz.
29:23And so it's really hard to reconstruct how chaotic information about Auschwitz was.
29:28There are eyewitnesses, two of them.
29:31It is unusual, I grant.
29:32It's unprecedented, John.
29:34And Roswell McClellan seems to think it's true.
29:38That's quite something, isn't it?
29:40It is.
29:41Take a look at this.
29:45It came in with a cable.
29:48It's a list of suggestions made by Jewish groups from Slovakia and Switzerland.
29:54Fielded by Roswell.
30:03There is a logic to it, isn't there?
30:04I mean, if you accept this, then it kind of follows that you must do this.
30:13You know, my first thought is they're right.
30:22We should bomb.
30:23Send them some air mail.
30:24I don't think the response, let's bomb this place, can we react to this atrocity,
30:32was it all unusual?
30:33I think all of us would have liked to have thought that's exactly the response we would have.
30:41This thing, John, it speaks of industrial slaughter.
30:47For a lot of people, it was the protocol that changed their mind.
30:50That in order to stop this mass killing, you had to take out the instrument of killing.
30:57And the only way to take out the instrument of killing was to bomb the camp.
31:01You see, I don't recall ever reading about or hearing about a proposal like this one.
31:10And I'm talking about in any war.
31:13To bomb friendly civilians?
31:16Civilians were committed to rescuing?
31:20And that's a moral leap into...
31:25I don't know what it is.
31:27Paley perceives that there's not much that we can do.
31:31The War Refugee Board is constantly trying to get information about what's going on in Europe.
31:35And I think he sees this as information, but not actionable intelligence.
31:43I'll make the suggestions to the War Department, but I know what they'll say.
31:48It's a diversion.
31:50I'll make it up here.
31:53On June 24th, 1944, Paley passed the recommendations to bomb up the chain of command to John McCloy,
32:02the Assistant Secretary of War.
32:05But McCloy is not inclined to divert resources from the War,
32:09because the war was at such a critical moment at that point in time allied forces had landed
32:17successfully in france on d-day the supreme effort now was to drive towards germany reach berlin
32:25and force the unconditional surrender of the nazis round-the-clock bombing missions
32:31against german cities military and industrial targets were intensifying
32:35on the eastern front the soviet army was advancing westwards towards poland
32:46the focus is on winning the war we can't be diverted by ashford's no one really grasps
32:53that this was part of an effort to wipe out an entire people from one end of europe to the other
33:01and beyond
33:08once you understand the jews are being killed every day you can't go on with business as usual you can't
33:14imagine not doing something about it you can't say we shall win the war and then we'll worry about the
33:22refugees this is the period in the whole history of auschwitz where the killing reaches its frenzied
33:34climax never before have so many jews been killed so quickly in auschwitz birkenau as in the period
33:41between may and july 1944. 437 402 jews were shipped primarily to birkenau on 147 trains 147
33:55trains during 54 days meant an average of 2.7 trains a day an average of 2975 jews per train
34:11191 326 1665
34:30i didn't know what the crematorium was i didn't know what the guest chamber was i didn't have a clue
34:36but we soon found out it didn't take us long to find out somebody asked me where's your mother
34:47with you i said no she she went left probably with the older women now in another block and
34:57we learned finally what happened all those who went to the left we didn't want to believe it
35:03and he said only this sentence this way she went she went through the chimney so we all look back
35:14at these chimneys and i keep thinking how does a person go through a chimney what they gonna burn
35:21my mother my brother i didn't believe it we were absolutely incredulous it's not true it's not true
35:30it can't be we got to know next day that it is true they were burning the families
35:43the protocol may have stalled in america but it reached the desk of foreign secretary anthony eden
35:49in london the jewish agency representatives in london chaim weitzman and moshe shirtock fixed an urgent
35:59meeting to make their plea directly
36:05chaim weitzman was the president of the world zionist organization
36:09and weitzman understood very well the situation of the jews
36:15moshe shirtock was later the second prime minister of israel
36:19then we think some kind of reprisal needs to be considered something that will act as a deterrence
36:25to germany if the auschwitz camp continues to function as a killing center you bomb
36:34the aim being to dislocate the machinery of annihilation and hope to save the remaining 300 000 hungarian jews
36:42from extermination it's bold it has imagination it may even work
36:51and mr churchill also in favor in principle
36:56what we should need to do now is examine its feasibility with the air ministry
37:02yes yes of course
37:04in a memo to eden winston churchill wrote about auschwitz
37:13there is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed
37:19in the whole history of the world
37:22churchill's instincts are genuine he was one of the first to recognize the full gravity of what had been
37:31going on he said to eden we should do something then he said get anything out of the air force you can
37:41and invoke me if necessary
37:47eden would have interpreted it as act quickly act decisively and you have my blessing
37:51to the most powerful men in britain now supported the bombing of auschwitz eden summoned the head of
38:00the air ministry sir archibald sinclair to discuss the feasibility of the raid well it was quite a
38:05surprise receiving this i mean it hasn't been raised at cabinet so far as i know unnecessary according to
38:11winston well there's a feeling in the ministry that we shouldn't be disrupting the normandy campaign right
38:18now with an operation of this nature there is yes yes this is quite a strong feeling also isn't this
38:23a thing for our soviet allies anyway being much closer to the intended target than us i mean stalin
38:29was as likely to bomb auschwitz as he was to stand on his head in the red square in the middle of winter
38:35for a week he wouldn't have done it this is all very interesting archie but i asked you to examine
38:39the feasibility of a bombing raid on auschwitz-birkenau that's what i've done anthony well no you haven't
38:45done that you see you've merely listed the objections the air force might have to such a mission and
38:50come up with a couple of fanciful suggestions of your own what we need to discover you and i
38:56is whether the bombing raid on auschwitz is actually feasible i think you should coordinate
39:01your thinking with the americans sinclair was very much playing the role that he was in as secretary
39:09of state for air which was to protect the resources of the air force focus them on the war
39:14itself i think he did look at it and said better hand it off to the americans they're in a better
39:21position to do it than we are eden's request for a feasibility study into bombing auschwitz
39:29reached general carl spotts one of the most powerful men in the allied air force
39:36spots is yes it sounds like something i would be willing to do
39:41i can't imagine that anyone like carl spotts would not have been outraged and would not have wanted
39:47some kind of retribution or attempt to get at this with the instrument that was available to him which
39:55is the long-range bomber the moral question of should we bomb auschwitz became a technical one
40:03could we bomb auschwitz
40:09every target that was attacked was attacked after specialized intelligence was applied to it
40:16where is it located what does it look like what would be the best routes
40:22the allies had been gathering intelligence about the area since spring 1944
40:26spy planes flew over auschwitz birkenau but they were looking for factories not a death camp
40:36they had been photographing all around ig farben in order to support hitting the industrial areas
40:44that were producing synthetic fuel for the germans which was a critically important target
40:48the photos were taken to raf medmanen where they were analyzed in 3d by chance three of them showed
40:59auschwitz birkenau these were the images general spots desperately needed the photographs covered a wide
41:07area more than just the ig farben site itself they were picking up birkenau they had the crematoria
41:14in photographs they just didn't know they had them by august 1944 the tide of war was turning the allies
41:31finally had supremacy in the air american bombers were attacking targets deep in eastern europe including
41:38poland poland they were flying to many targets right in the vicinity of auschwitz so these airplanes
41:47were in fact within range of attacking the crematoria at birkenau
41:58one must remember that the idea of bombing auschwitz is to destroy the gas chambers without killing the people
42:04now this is extremely difficult the gas chambers at astrocious were the size of a tennis court
42:11there was nothing even remotely like precision bombing in the second world war
42:17the american b-17s flew over 30 000 feet at 300 miles an hour and the bombs they had then were
42:25extraordinarily primitive if one bomb was going to hit each of the crematoria you would need to send
42:33roughly 220 bombers each of them dropping 10 bombs each to have a high chance of one bomb landing on that building
42:46it's very hard it's very hard to do this
42:54the word they used is bombs away
42:56and where they land nobody knows and consequently there were mistakes
43:13all the options were bad options in a way because even a small miss could have killed a lot of people
43:20at their death camp in the their time for off and to have a reason left out of that
43:37the question of the question of the name is what i'm going to do is that in the name of the
43:38world in awe from the assurance to the death camp on that the death camp
43:39and the death camp on that one was almost a very heavy force of the death camp to the death camp
43:40to the death camp to the death camp to the death camp
43:41no one realized they showed the death camp
43:45Rabbi Stephen Wise, the head of the World Jewish Congress, organizes a rally in Madison Square Park in New York City on July 31st, 1944.
43:54And about 40,000 Americans attend this rally.
43:59It's a call for the bombing of Auschwitz.
44:01And I think it's a striking commentary on the level of public knowledge and the level of public concern.
44:09Trains to Auschwitz continued relentlessly.
44:12Thanks to the protocol, Jewish leaders now knew the fate of the deportees.
44:18They demanded a meeting with John Paley at the War Refugee Board.
44:23Mr. Kobowitski.
44:25Leon Kobowitski of the World Jewish Congress and Bezalel Sherman of the Jewish Labor Committee had very different views on the bombing of Auschwitz.
44:34You're touring. Of course you are.
44:36They were divided and they were fearful.
44:38Well, one fear that they had was they didn't want to turn the war into a Jewish war because the future of the world was at stake.
44:46We are faced, it seems, with a monstrous determination from Nazi Germany to pursue this criminal murder of the Jews of Europe to its bitter end.
44:55Hence the call to bomb these installations ourselves.
44:58The War Refugee Board fully appreciates the motives behind the idea.
45:04We know it wasn't suggested lightly.
45:06But the fact is that the War Department still believes that such a bombing mission can be achieved only with considerable diversion of resources...
45:14Then divert.
45:15I'm sorry, Mr. Sherman.
45:20Divert.
45:22We've read the testimony of these two men who escaped from the Auschwitz camp, the things they saw.
45:27We've been given corroborative evidence, too.
45:29As have we.
45:30So we all know.
45:31A picture is forming of something off the human scale.
45:34Isn't that so?
45:35No, the Germans have created a factory in Poland whose sole purpose is the eradication by gas of an entire race of people.
45:43I say divert.
45:47All right.
45:50Let's just say for a minute that the United States or Great Britain bombs this place.
45:57Can we know how many...
45:58How many Jews will be killed by our bombs?
46:00That's right, Mr. Sherman.
46:02Hell, if we miss the gas chambers, we destroy 30,000 prisoners instead.
46:09Wouldn't that give the Nazis a great alibi?
46:12I can hear it now.
46:14The Western Allies hate the Jews more than we do.
46:17The Germans took anything they could grasp for propaganda purposes.
46:21So there would have been a struggle over the narrative of who was being more brutal.
46:26I believe in Hare Shah.
46:29I believe in saving those actually living.
46:33I don't understand what follows from that.
46:35You cannot kill the innocent in order to prevent a catastrophe.
46:39There was a genuine debate that went on.
46:43There were very good people who were directly affected by the Holocaust, who had lost members of their family,
46:48who weren't sure that the bombing was a good thing.
46:52Mr. Sherman.
46:55All the excuses for not bombing Auschwitz omit the most compelling reason for bombing Auschwitz.
47:00It would have been recognition that what was happening there was totally evil and unacceptable to the world itself.
47:08We keep repeating the line that bombing Auschwitz would constitute a diversion, but how do we know that?
47:14Pelle might have said to himself, he may be right.
47:17And now the ball's in my court, and that's an awesome responsibility.
47:23I would bomb this infernal place, you know I would.
47:26And the railroads, too.
47:29That's what my gut is telling me, also.
47:31But we know it's not about the gut, is it?
47:35It's about what the War Department wants.
47:37Then bypass them.
47:39Go tell the President.
47:41Acquaint Roosevelt with the facts, and he'll act.
47:44There is no evidence that Roosevelt has ever approached about the question of whether the United States should bomb Auschwitz.
47:57FDR was not well to begin with.
48:00He was fighting polio.
48:02He was very subject to the flu.
48:05He had congestive heart failure.
48:07He didn't stop working, but he had to kind of come out of the public eye for periods.
48:12At the same time, Churchill's support for the plan was going cold.
48:19Chaim Weitzman, of the Jewish Agency, was informed by the British Foreign Office that technical difficulties prevented the bombing.
48:27One official dismissed the idea as fantastic, and concluded it should be dropped.
48:33Another complained that a disproportionate amount of time is wasted dealing with these wailing Jews.
48:39We're not going to believe atrocity stories.
48:52These stories are just being told to get us to let refugees in, to get us to let children in.
48:57And that level of anti-Semitism that creeps into so many decisions.
49:02Ah, those Jews are carbine again.
49:03Despite being written off as a diversion from the war effort, on the 13th of September 1944, the Allies did bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau.
49:16Some 2,000 or so bombs rained down.
49:20The bombs don't distinguish between prisoners and SS.
49:24Dozens of prisoners are killed, hundreds more are injured.
49:29However, it wasn't intentional.
49:32The target was the nearby IG Farben factory.
49:36Auschwitz was never a priority.
49:40Synthetic rubber was a priority.
49:43Synthetic gas and oil was a priority.
49:46IG Farben was a priority.
49:48If there was a target that they were intended to bomb was four miles away, and they inadvertently bombed Auschwitz, it shows how amateurish the bombing was.
50:01All of a sudden, the air is full of noise.
50:20I'm sure that some people were hoping they're going to bomb us, or at least the gas chambers, but I can't say I did.
50:28We didn't care. We were hoping that they should bomb the place.
50:34And I said, my God, you know, finally they arrived.
50:38And I said, keep bombing the hell out of this place, no matter what happens.
50:47In April 1944, Werber and Wetzler had escaped from Auschwitz to warn the world about the extermination of the European Jews.
50:55By September, still nothing had been done.
51:03The American army reaches the border of Switzerland at the end of September, freeing for the first time all of the people inside Switzerland who can now send messages to the wider world.
51:16John Paley at the War Refugee Board finally received the full protocol in early November.
51:21What he read shocked him to the core.
51:26This version of the protocol is much longer.
51:29It reads more like a testimony.
51:31This is what Auschwitz is.
51:33It is a place where horrific things are happening.
51:36The difference when the full report is released is stunning.
51:40It's undeniable.
51:42You can put them side by side and you see a striking difference.
51:49Gassing took place as follows.
51:53The unfortunate victims were brought into the hall where they were asked to undress.
51:59Each person receives a towel and a small piece of soap issued to them by two men clad in white coats.
52:08They are then crowded into the gas chambers in such numbers that there is only standing room.
52:13When they were all inside, they closed this heavy door.
52:17After which, SS men in gas masks climb the roof, open the traps and shake down a preparation in powder form from tin cans labelled Cyclone for use against vermin manufactured by a Hamburg concern.
52:42It's this cyanide mixture that tends to gas at certain temperatures.
52:51And after three minutes, everyone in the chamber was dead.
52:58When Paley saw the entire report, his conscience could no longer allow him to be tentative or to sit quietly.
53:16Mr. McCloy.
53:27Good morning, sir.
53:29John Paley here.
53:32I have something I think you must see.
53:35It's a report from Auschwitz.
53:38His reaction was, it's worse than I thought.
53:42I thought it was extraordinarily evil.
53:47This is, by a magnitude, even more than that.
53:53He goes back to John McCloy.
53:55He sends him a copy of the protocols with a cover note that says,
53:58I am now convinced that we need to use direct bombing action to destroy the gas chambers and crematorium in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
54:07He says there is considerable opinion to the effect that such an action, even if practicable, might provoke a more vindictive response on the part of the Germans.
54:30What's more vindictive than Auschwitz?
54:35The officials who made the decision that this shouldn't be done, they weren't concerned about the people in the camp.
54:46From everything we know, the vast majority of them just sloughed it off.
54:53Paley couldn't force the war department to act, so instead, he leaked the full version of the protocol to newspapers with a covering letter.
55:05So revolting and diabolical are the German atrocities that the minds of civilized people find it difficult to believe they've actually taken place.
55:15Paley understood his responsibilities, and that was his greatness.
55:24I regarded John Paley as one of the great American heroes.
55:30And he said, we did too little and we did too late.
55:36Paley knew what he was doing, and he played the media card very, very well.
55:42It got a great deal of attention.
55:45It was all over the newspapers.
55:48This is front page news nationwide.
55:50The Washington Post publishes an editorial entitled Genocide.
55:54It's the first time that word appears in a national newspaper.
56:02The day that this information is released to the American people, the Nazis destroy the gas chambers.
56:09It was an attempt to destroy the evidence.
56:12But it didn't work.
56:16Two months later, on the 27th of January, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.
56:26The Soviet soldiers who entered Auschwitz were moved and shaken by what they saw.
56:31They understood that they had come across something unique.
56:34They understood that they had seen something horrific beyond the imagination.
56:39I wish the British or the Americans had pushed for this target to have been bombed as a statement of principle, as a statement to the Nazis that this is atrocious.
56:54And we, as the human species, will not stand for it.
56:58It's one of the most emotive things that's ever happened in modern history.
57:04You could say, you could say this is a great failure, but one has to understand that they're fighting a world war and the fate of the surviving Jews of Europe largely depended on liberating Nazi-occupied Europe and destroying the Nazi regime.
57:16I would advocate bombing as a statement of profound moral outrage.
57:26But do I think it would have solved the problem?
57:28No.
57:29And I think the critics who say that it would have, haven't read the history well.
57:36But moral protest in the wake of genocide is much better than nothing.
57:43Much, much better than nothing.
57:45I think it's important when people are being subjected to genocide for the world to say, we do give a damn, because you don't know where it's going to happen next.
58:03We came to the position that we had to recommend this and that it should be done.
58:08And not only should the rail lines be bombed, but the crematoria should be bombed, too.
58:13It's tragic that we didn't take this position in the first place, but that is the fact.
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