Within the title of the recent volume The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted To Do It? lies the tragic paradox that is at the heart of contemporary discussions about the Allies and Auschwitz. The title asks whether the Allies should have attempted to bomb Auschwitz, and much of the book consists of essays arguing over whether or not they had the military capability to do so. Yet the reality is that Allied bombers did bomb Auschwitz—five times. On August 20, 1944, a fleet of U.S. bombers dropped more than one thousand bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz, situated less than five miles from the gas chambers. On September 13, American bombers struck the factory areas again; this time, stray bombs accidentally hit an SS barracks (killing 15 Germans), a slave labor workshop (killing 40 prisoners), and the railroad track leading to the gas chambers. U.S. bombers carried out similar raids on December 18, December 26, and January 19. The frequent Allied bombings of seven other synthetic oil refineries near Auschwitz during 1944-1945 included a January 20 raid on Blechhammer, forty-five miles from the death camp, which made it possible for forty-two Jewish slave laborers to escape.1 In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls how he and other Auschwitz prisoners reacted when the bombers struck: We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, 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!2 While half the essays in The Bombing of Auschwitz argue that Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria could likewise have been bombed, the other half assert either that an Allied raid on Auschwitz was militarily unfeasible, or that it would not have saved any significant