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00:10In April 1944, with the outcome of World War II hanging in the balance, two Jewish prisoners
00:18lay hidden near the outer fence of Auschwitz concentration camp.
00:23It was almost impossible to escape from Auschwitz.
00:31So 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.
01:02They managed to stay there undetected for three days.
01:07On the 10th of April 1944, they abandoned their hiding place and cut through the fence.
01:16They had to be audacious. They had to be brave. They escaped in order to warn the world that Auschwitz
01:24was a killing mechanism.
01:27Their eyewitness account of the mass extermination of European Jews would lead to one of the greatest moral questions of
01:35the 20th century.
01:56This killing complex can turn several thousands of human beings into ash in just 24 hours.
02:10The failure to bomb Auschwitz, no one gave a damn. They didn't care. They didn't want to do it.
02:21Auschwitz should have had the most outrageous response while it was happening, and that's a moral failure of the West.
02:31Why was the greatest crime of modern history allowed to proceed unimpeded for almost two years?
02:39A million Jews perished there by gas.
02:43It wasn't because of lack of evidence.
02:52Rudolf Werber and Alfred Wetzler fled through Nazi-occupied Poland to the Slovakian town of Zielina, where they made contact
03:01with the Jewish underground.
03:04Slovakia is aligned with Nazi Germany, and it is the first country to voluntarily deport its Jews.
03:14Werber and Wetzler made it to a safe house. They were desperate to complete their mission. To let the world
03:20know what was happening to Jews in Poland.
03:25The extermination of the Jews was carried on in great secrecy. It wasn't advertised. Therefore, until then, we had no
03:31cogent or clear description of what went on at Auschwitz.
03:37Oskar Krasnanski of the Jewish underground was sent to interview Werber and Wetzler.
03:43My name is Krasnanski from Bratislava.
03:48How do I know you're not fantasists wasting my time?
03:5944070. I asked him, why have you put this tattoo on your arm? And then he looked at me and
04:06he said, where did you think I have been? In a sanatorium? And that's when he told me that he
04:14has been to Auschwitz.
04:16Why are you tattooed on your arm and you on your chest?
04:18The chest tattoos were imprinted with huge brutality. Many people fainted.
04:23Is that why they started tattooing people on their arms?
04:27No. No, they did that because the chest tattoos faded too quickly.
04:31You must tell me everything. Every detail that you know about Auschwitz-Birkenau.
04:37Yes. Auschwitz is a killing center.
04:40Not 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
04:48you a bullshit story.
04:55Auschwitz is not a household name in early 1944.
05:02There's a lot of confusion over what is this place. And so at the beginning, people just knew that Jews
05:09were being taken to Nazi-occupied Poland.
05:13The Polish underground had managed to smuggle some information about the camp outside.
05:18But on the whole, this information is fragmentary and sometimes contradictory.
05:31Werber and Wetzler's interrogation was meticulously recorded, as in a court of law.
05:43How did you escape?
05:46We kept to the forest, travelling only by night.
05:50How long?
05:52It 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, that Jews are killed there by gas machines and by mass electrocution.
06:12When you look at the way he did it, the professionalism, it reflects that this was someone who knew the
06:20information he was getting was potentially a game changer.
06:27The interview was done with the idea of we might bring legal charges and we are going to get nothing
06:35but the facts.
06:39The perimeter wire is electrified.
06:42But there are gas installations. Gas chambers.
06:46Go on.
06:47Four gas chambers, with crematoria for burning.
06:50The first crematorium opened in March 1943, when prominent guests from Berlin arrived to see the new installation.
06:58That 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?
07:08I worked as a registrar in the Burkinau 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
07:20not 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.
07:37I also got information about the precise operation of the gas chambers in crematoria from one of the Sonderkommando.
07:45Sonderkommando?
07:49You really know nothing, do you?
08:05The prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau who knew best what happened at the gas chambers in the crematoria were the members
08:12of the so-called Sonderkommando.
08:13These were prisoners who were forced by the SS to assist in the killing and cremation at the crematoria itself.
08:27Rudi and Freddy felt that they needed to have facts that would convince people that this really is happening.
08:37And it was their idea to write a report that could be distributed and shown as evidence.
08:46Werber and Wetzler wanted to include as much granular evidence as they could in their report and that included some
08:53drawings.
09:00Auschwitz is a massive place and it builds up over time and in different ways.
09:05So the first camp is Auschwitz I, which opens in 1940.
09:10Later they add Birkenau, a few miles away, which is where the gas chambers in the crematorium are located.
09:18This is an approximate sketch of the dark heart of Auschwitz main camp and Birkenau.
09:27This is one of the gas chambers in crematoria that the SS constructed in Birkenau.
09:34It'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.
09:53At 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?
10:12Yes. I belonged to a work command that took me to a place called The Ramp, which is where the
10:17trains 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,
10:27and to collect any dead bodies from the cattle cars.
10:36He sees how Jews are forced off the trains. He sees how they have to line up.
10:43He sees how the SS selects them and sends those deemed to be weak and ill and not fit for
10:50work towards the gas chambers.
10:54And 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 for labour.
11:08How many?
11:10It varied. A small percentage, five or ten percent.
11:15All this was done with force?
11:17Sometimes, but usually without.
11:19These people had no idea where they were going.
11:23I 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
11:32before.
11:35They were describing the details of genocide.
11:41How was it done?
11:44You were asking people to believe something that was literally beyond belief.
11:53You can't put it into words.
11:56Numbness.
11:57Fright.
11:59Anger.
12:00Fury.
12:02Rage.
12:05And then a feeling of...
12:09Oh my God.
12:10And probably a sense of incredulity of these guys out of their mind.
12:16How did the SS deal with these arrivals?
12:19So I've told you already that they were sent to the gas at...
12:24To the gas at Birkenau.
12:27Some of the groups would be frightened and disorientated.
12:33Others would be almost relieved, depending on how they'd been greeted by the SS.
12:39Sometimes they could be harsh, using 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.
12:52Werber's testimony had a horrifying climax.
12:55The Nazis' new plan for Auschwitz-Birkenau.
12:58They 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.
13:09I said, how do you know the intent to kill the Hungarian Jews?
13:15The SS.
13:16They talk.
13:17To you?
13:17I 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
13:40salami.
13:46Are you certain you heard this?
13:50I have to ask.
13:52Are you certain?
13:54I heard it more than once.
13:57It is why I knew I had to escape.
14:00To warn people of what is to come.
14:06Auschwitz 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.
14:28And 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.
14:43It 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 are trying to win the genocide.
14:57The 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.
15:15But it was no longer secret.
15:18Werber and Wetzler's harrowing testimony was turned into a detailed report.
15:23The Auschwitz Protocol.
15:28The 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.
15:47Thanks to the protocol, Jewish activists in Slovakia learned of the Nazis' plans for the Hungarian Jews.
15:54So the duty to act was theirs.
16:00Everybody 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.
16:33In the first week of May 1944, the protocol reached Michael Weissmandel, who worked secretly for the Jewish underground in
16:42the Slovakian capital.
16:44Rabbi Weissmandel was a very passionate man.
16:47He's in Slovakia to rescue people.
16:56His sole goal is to take care of his community.
17:01And he does it with whatever means he possibly can.
17:26Weissmandel was not only among the first to read these documents, but he was the first to fully believe these
17:33documents.
17:38The protocol had a devastating effect on Weissmandel.
17:42He had witnessed deportations.
17:45He now realized the full horror that awaited those who had gone.
17:52Getting the information was one part of the task.
17:56Disseminating the information was the other.
18:00It had to be done with great secrecy.
18:05Weissmandel is sending this report everywhere he can think of.
18:08He's trying to get it to the Jewish agency in Jerusalem.
18:11He's trying to get it to London, hopefully to the United States.
18:16He's sending them all in the hopes that one cry in the darkness will be heard.
18:32Our bedroom door is knocked down and two gendarmes are in our bedroom.
18:38Yelling and screaming.
18:40You have two minutes to pack a bundle we are taking away.
18:43Give up your jewelry, give up anything you have in possession.
18:48My father looked at us as though he wanted to save this picture in his memory of the family.
18:55He said, get out of the house.
18:58And said only this sentence.
19:02Just stay calm.
19:05Remember, calmness is strength.
19:08And they hit him, pushed him through the door and 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.
19:20You see, it was symbolic.
19:21The Jews are leaving town.
19:24In spring 1944, the world had little knowledge of what was happening to the Jews of Hungary.
19:31Most were looking elsewhere, because the war had reached a critical juncture.
19:37What was going on at that very time in the United States and 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, and that was an immense Herculean effort.
19:58They knew that as they moved closer to Japan, the 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 was working full steam.
20:17Stalin basically destroyed the entire German army in some of the greatest battles of modern history.
20:24While the Allies were focused on the battlefront, the protocol gained momentum.
20:30Weiss Mandel's transmission reached Roswell McClelland at 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 which specifically had the task of rescuing Jews.
21:03They were selected... for gassing.
21:08It gives the impression of the antechamber of a bathing establishment.
21:11It holds 2,000 people.
21:14From there, a door and a few steps lead down into the very long and narrow gas chamber.
21:21Roswell McClelland had a very personal reaction because he had gone to southern France working with Jews in internment camps
21:30in 1942,
21:31and he knows intimately who these people are.
21:34He had watched them go to Auschwitz, and now he's reading about what happened to them.
21:43When Rabbi Weiss Mandel sent the protocol, he added a dramatic postscript.
21:49It was an appeal for help, but also a rebuke for those who might refuse.
21:55And you, our brothers in all the free lands, what are you doing about the extermination which swallows 10,000
22:04every day?
22:05For God's sake, do something now and quickly.
22:10He turned the question of what to do about the death camp into one of the great moral issues of
22:15the 20th century.
22:17He demanded that the Allied air forces bomb Auschwitz.
22:22He was the first to do so.
22:23His call to bomb Auschwitz was essentially a call of desperation and a call of despair.
22:34When people first hear about the request of bombing of Auschwitz,
22:38it's quite remarkable because they're demanding that they bomb a camp where their own people are being held prisoner.
22:46It seemed very strange.
22:49Let's set the whole goddamn thing aflame. Let's destroy the entire thing.
22:54Then we have accomplished something and we've done something enormously significant.
23:01The clock was ticking.
23:04McClellan sent a summary of the protocol to Washington.
23:09Switzerland is completely surrounded by Nazi territory.
23:13You 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.
23:23Since 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 and exterminate Hungarian Jews in these camps.
23:58For three days and three nights, we were locked into that box.
24:05For three days and three nights, we were locked into that box.
24:07And they opened those shutters and they threw out dead bodies.
24:13With a tiny window for air and one pail for bodily needs, which turned out to be very, very embarrassing
24:29and unpleasant.
24:30Something has always been going around in my mind and I can't get rid of it and I feel so
24:37ashamed.
24:46Tell me, how can a 14-year-old child hope people should die so he'll have room where to sit
24:56down?
25:05It was early in the morning that we arrived.
25:08The door opened and screams.
25:12I hear out, hear out, schnell, schnell, los, los, los, los.
25:16And through the slits of the cart that we were in, I saw the word Auschwitz.
25:22I 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.
25:44It was sort of sweetish and burning.
25:48I thought it's a bakery and they're baking bread.
26:03And it's I noticed that to the left when people older and with glasses and children and women.
26:13My mother, my two little brothers and my baby in my mother's arm, my 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.
26:34And 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 and the plea to bomb the camp traveled from Switzerland
26:50to the headquarters of the War Refugee Board in Washington.
26:58It is urged by all sources of this information in Slovakia and Hungary that vital sections of the rail lines
27:05be bombed.
27:08They also urged that the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, especially the gas chambers and crematoriums, recognizable by their high
27:16chimneys, be bombed from the air.
27:21The 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. He really does believe that the United States can try to save people.
27:44Would you please ask Dr. Axon 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, they recognized that this was something different. This was something
28:01horrifying.
28:06Ben, I want you to take a look at this.
28:12It's from Roswell McClemon.
28:15Auschwitz?
28:15I think he means Auschwitz.
28:18Benjamin Axon is a lawyer. He grew up in Latvia and was an incredibly intelligent man. He's Jewish. He certainly
28:26still had family and friends back in Europe. He sees the War Refugee Board as a place where he can
28:31do some good.
28:40This is...
28:43It's...
28:45Inconceivable.
28:47Incredible.
28:49Unbelievable.
28:51One hundred and twenty five thousand a month?
28:57You can go straight to the president with this.
29:01What's so funny?
29:02It doesn't work that way, Ben.
29:05There are procedures.
29:06There are rules.
29:08There are no rules for this, surely, if it's true.
29:13You 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. Many 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.
29:33It's unprecedented, John.
29:35And Roswell McClellan seems to think it's true.
29:39That's quite something, isn't it?
29:41It is.
29:44Take a look at this.
29:46It came in with a cable.
29:50It's a list of suggestions made by Jewish groups from Slovakia and Switzerland.
29:55Fielded by Roswell.
30:03There is a logic to it, isn't there?
30:05I mean...
30:08If you accept this, then...
30:11It kind of follows that you must do this.
30:19My 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.
30:29Can we react to this atrocity?
30:32Was it all unusual?
30:34I 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.
30:52That 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 for any 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.
31:46But I know what they'll say.
31:49It's a diversion.
31:53On June 24th, 1944, Paley passed the recommendations to bomb up the chain of command to John McCloy, the Assistant
32:03Secretary of War.
32:05But McCloy is not inclined to divert resources from the war, because the war was at such a critical moment
32:12at that point in time.
32:16Allied forces had landed successfully in France on D-Day.
32:20The supreme effort now was to drive towards Germany, reach Berlin, and force the unconditional surrender of the Nazis.
32:29Round-the-clock bombing missions against German cities, military and industrial targets were intensifying.
32:39On 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.
32:50No one really grasps that this was part of an effort to wipe out an entire people from one end
33:00of Europe to the other and beyond.
33:08Once you understand that Jews are being killed every day, you can't go on with business as usual.
33:14You can't imagine not doing something about it.
33:18You can't say, we shall win the war and then we'll worry about the refugees.
33:27This is the period in the whole history of Auschwitz where the killing reaches its frenzied climax.
33:35Never before have so many Jews been killed so quickly in Auschwitz-Birkenau as in the period between May and
33:42July 1944.
33:48437,402 Jews were shipped primarily to Birkenau on 147 trains.
33:55147 trains during 54 days meant an average of 2.7 trains a day, an average of 2,975 Jews
34:05per train.
34:30I didn't know what a crematorium was. I didn't know what a guest chamber was.
34:35I didn't have a clue. But we soon found out. It didn't take us long to find out.
34:44Somebody asked me, where's your mother with you? I said, no, she went left.
34:52Probably with the older women, now in another block.
34:57And we learned finally what happened, all those who went to the left.
35:02We didn't want to believe it. And he said only this sentence.
35:08That's where she went. She went through the chimney.
35:13So we all look back at these chimneys. And I keep thinking, how does a person go through a chimney?
35:20Were they going to burn my mother? My brother? I didn't believe it.
35:26They were absolutely incredulous. It's not true. It's not true. It can't be.
35:31We 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 in London.
35:53The Jewish agency representatives in London, Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertock, fixed an urgent meeting to make their plea directly.
36:05Chaim Weizmann was the president of the World Zionist Organization.
36:10And Weizmann understood very well the situation of the Jews.
36:15Moshe Shertock was later the second Prime Minister of Israel.
36:18Then we think some kind of reprisal needs to be considered. Something that will act as a deterrence to Germany.
36:26If the Auschwitz camp continues to function as a killing center, then...
36:30You bomb.
36:34The aim being to dislocate the machinery of annihilation and hope to save the remaining 300,000 Hungarian Jews from
36:43extermination.
36:44It's bold. It has imagination. It may even work.
36:51And Mr. Churchill?
36:53Also 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.
37:08In 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 in the whole history
37:20of the world.
37:23Churchill's instincts are genuine.
37:27He was one of the first to recognize the full gravity of what had been going on.
37:35He 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.
37:53Two of the most powerful men in Britain now supported the bombing of Auschwitz.
37:59Eden summoned the head of the Air Ministry, Sir Archibald Sinclair, to discuss the feasibility of the raid.
38:05Well, it was quite a surprise receiving this.
38:08I mean, it hasn't been raised at a cabinet, so far as I know.
38:11Unnecessary, according to Winston.
38:13Hmm.
38:14Well, there's a feeling in the Ministry that we shouldn't be disrupting the Normandy campaign right now with an operation
38:19of this nature.
38:19There is?
38:20Yes. Yes, it's quite a strong feeling.
38:23Also, isn't this a thing for our Soviet allies, anyway?
38:26Being much closer to the intended target than us, I mean.
38:29Stalin was as likely to bomb Auschwitz as he was to stand on his head in the Red Square in
38:34the middle of winter for a week.
38:36He wouldn't have done it.
38:36This is all very interesting, Archie, but I asked you to examine the feasibility of a bombing raid on Auschwitz
38:41-Birkenau.
38:42That's what I've done, Anthony.
38:44Well, no, you haven't done that, you see.
38:46You've merely listed the objections the Air Force might have to such a mission and come up with a couple
38:51of fanciful suggestions of your own.
38:53What we need to discover, you and I, is whether the bombing raid on Auschwitz is actually feasible.
39:00I think you should coordinate your thinking with the Americans.
39:05Sinclair was very much playing the role that he was in as Secretary of State for Air, which was to
39:11protect the resources of the Air Force, focus them on the war itself.
39:16I think he did look at it and said, better hand it off to the Americans, they're in a better
39:22position to do it than we are.
39:25Eden's request for a feasibility study into bombing Auschwitz reached General Karl Spotts, one of the most powerful men in
39:33the Allied Air Force.
39:36Spotts says, yes, it sounds like something I would be willing to do.
39:40I can't imagine that anyone like Karl Spotts would not have been outraged and would not have wanted some kind
39:48of retribution or attempt to get at this with the instrument that was available to him, which is the long
39:56-range bomber.
39:59The moral question of should we bomb Auschwitz became a technical one.
40:05Could 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.
40:28Spy 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 that were producing synthetic
40:45fuel for the Germans, which was a critically important target.
40:51The photos were taken to RAF Medmanen, where they were analyzed in 3D.
40:58By chance, three of them showed Auschwitz-Birkenau.
41:01These were the images General Spotts desperately needed.
41:05The photographs covered a wide area, more than just the IG Farben site itself.
41:11They were picking up Birkenau. They had the crematoria in photographs. They just didn't know they had them.
41:26By August 1944, the tide of war was turning. The Allies finally had supremacy in the air.
41:34American bombers were attacking targets deep in Eastern Europe, including Poland.
41:40They were flying to many targets right in the vicinity of Auschwitz.
41:46So these airplanes were 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.
42:05Now this is extremely difficult. The gas chambers at Auschwitz 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.
42:23And the bombs they had then were extraordinarily primitive.
42:27If one bomb was going to hit each of the crematoria, you would need to send roughly 220 bombers, each
42:35of 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. It's very hard to do this.
42:54The word they used is bombs away.
43:01And where they land, nobody knows.
43:05And 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
43:20people.
43:22Despite the risks, General Spatz was ready to carry out the raid.
43:26He needed the aerial photographs, but they'd been overlooked.
43:30No one realized they showed the death camp.
43:37Meanwhile, pressure to act came from a new source.
43:41Rumors about Auschwitz were stoking public outrage.
43:46Rabbi Stephen Wise, the head of the World Jewish Congress, organizes a rally in Madison Square Park in New York
43:52City on July 31, 1944.
43:55And 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.
44:10Trains to Auschwitz continued relentlessly.
44:13Thanks 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.
44:24Mr. Kobowitski.
44:25Leon Kobowitski, of the World Jewish Congress, and Bezalel Sherman, of the Jewish Labour Committee, had very different views on
44:33the bombing of Auschwitz.
44:34You're torn. Of course you are.
44:37They were divided and they were fearful.
44:40One fear that they had was they didn't want to turn the war into a Jewish war because the future
44:45of 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
44:53of 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.
45:07But the fact is that the War Department still believes that such a bombing mission can be achieved only with
45:13considerable diversion of resources-
45:15Then divert.
45:15Divert.
45:19I'm sorry, Mr. Sherman.
45:21Divert.
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.
45:35Isn't that so?
45:36The Germans have created a factory in Poland whose sole purpose is the eradication by gas of an entire race
45:41of people.
45:43I say divert.
45:47Alright.
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?
46:01That's right, Mr. Sherman.
46:03Hell, 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.
46:27I believe in Hare Shah.
46:30I believe in saving those actually living.
46:33I don't understand what follows from that.
46:36You cannot kill the innocent in order to prevent a catastrophe.
46:40There 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,
46:49who 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.
47:01It would have been recognition that what was happening there was totally evil and unacceptable to the world itself.
47:07We 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.
47:18And now the ball's in my court.
47:20And 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.
47:32But 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.
47:48There is no evidence that Roosevelt has ever approached about the question of whether the United States should bomb Auschwitz.
47:58FDR 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.
48:13At 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
48:24technical 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.
48:50We'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 carving again.
49:06Despite being written off as a diversion from the war effort, on the 13th of September 1944, the Allies did
49:13bomb Auschwitz-Birkenau.
49:16Some 2,000 or so bombs rained down.
49:21The bombs don't distinguish between prisoners and SS.
49:24Dozens of prisoners are killed, hundreds more are injured.
49:28However, it wasn't intentional.
49:31The target was the nearby IG Farben factory.
49:37Auschwitz was never a priority.
49:40Synthetic rubber was a priority.
49:43Synthetic gas and oil was a priority.
49:46IG Farben was a priority.
49:51If there was a target that they were intended to bomb was four miles away and they inadvertently bombed Auschwitz,
49:59it shows how amateurish the bombing was.
50:17All of a sudden the air is full of noise.
50:21I'm sure that some people were hoping they were going to bomb us, or at least the gas chambers, but
50:26I 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
50:55Jews.
50:57By 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
51:10the people inside Switzerland who can now send messages to the wider world.
51:15John Paley at the War Refugee Board finally received the full protocol in early November.
51:22What he read shocked him to the core.
51:26This version of the protocol is much longer.
51:29It reads more like a testimony.
51:32This is what Auschwitz is.
51:33It is a place where horrific things are happening.
51:35The difference when the full report is released is stunning.
51:41It's undeniable.
51:42You can put them side by side and you see a striking difference.
51:49Gassing took place as follows.
51:54The unfortunate victims were brought into the hall where they were asked to undress.
52:01Each person receives a towel and a small piece of soap issued to them by two men clad in white
52:07coats.
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.
52:20And there was a short pause.
52:27After which, SS men in gas masks climb the roof, open the traps and shake down a preparation in powder
52:37form from tin cans labelled Cyclone for use against vermin manufactured by a Hamburg consumer.
52:45It's this cyanide mixture that turns to gas at certain temperatures.
52:52And after three minutes, everyone in the chamber was dead.
53:08When Paley saw the entire report, his conscience could no longer allow him to be tentative or to sit quietly.
53:26Mr. McCloy.
53:28Good morning, sir.
53:29John Paley here.
53:32I have something I think you must see.
53:36It's a report from Auschwitz.
53:37His 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,
53:59I am now convinced that we need to use direct bombing action to destroy the gas chambers and crematorium in
54:06Auschwitz-Birkenau.
54:09Paley was told conclusively by Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy that bombing Auschwitz was not feasible from a military
54:18standpoint.
54:20He says there is considerable opinion to the effect that such an action, even if practicable, might provoke a more
54:28vindictive response on the part of the Germans.
54:33What's more vindictive than Auschwitz?
54:40The 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.
54:56Paley couldn't force the War Department to act.
54:59So instead, he leaked the full version of the protocol to newspapers, with a covering letter.
55:06So revolting and diabolical are the German atrocities,
55:10that the minds of civilized people find it difficult to believe they've actually taken place.
55:18Paley 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.
55:38And he played the media card very, very well.
55:43It got a great deal of attention.
55:45It was all over the newspapers.
55:48This is front page news nationwide.
55:51The 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, but 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.
56:35That they had seen something horrific beyond the imagination.
56:42I wish the British or the Americans had pushed for this target to have been bombed.
56:49As a statement of principle.
56:51As a statement to the Nazis that this is atrocious.
56:54And we as the human species will not stand for it.
57:00It's one of the most emotive things that's ever happened in modern history.
57:04You could say this is a great failure, but one has to understand that they're fighting a world war.
57:09And the fate of the surviving Jews of Europe largely depended on liberating Nazi-occupied Europe.
57:15And destroying the Nazi regime.
57:19I would advocate bombing as a statement of profound moral outrage.
57:26But do I think it would have solved the problem? No.
57:30And 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.
57:44Much, much better than nothing.
57:52I think it's important when people are being subjected to genocide for the world to say, we do give a
57:57damn.
57:58Because 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, and not only
58:09should the rail lines be bombed, but the crematoria should be bombed too.
58:14It's tragic that we didn't take this position in the first place, but that is the fact.
58:25Another powerful and resonant series currently on iPlayer depicts how Hitler seized power in Germany.
58:32Rise of the Nazis is available now.
58:36Rise of the Nazis
58:36Rise of the Nazis
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