To: The Editor: William D. Rubinstein The essay by Rafael Medoff (“New Perspectives on How America, and American Jewry, Responded to the Holocaust,” Vol. 84, No. 3, September 1996) and his exchanges with Richard H. Levy and James H. Kitchens (Vol. 85, No. 1, March 1997) present a view of the possibility of bombing Auschwitz which is inaccurate and misleading and requires comment. First of all Medoff fails to point out that no one, anywhere in the world, Jewish or non-Jewish, actually proposed the bombing of Auschwitz, the railway lines to Auschwitz, or the bombing of any other extermination camp, prior to April or May 1944. To give a striking illustration of the novelty of these proposals, in February or March 1944 the newly-created U.S. War Refugee Board asked all of America’s leading Jewish and pro-refugee bodies to submit suggestions to it which might help to rescue European Jews, and received 120 separate proposals. Not one suggested bombing Auschwitz, the railway lines to Auschwitz, or any other extermination camp. (Virtually all were, in fact, utterly useless as practical proposals.) When proposals to bomb first surfaced, the natural reaction of many who heard them was one of the greatest caution. As with the Executive of the Jewish Agency, the immediate response of many was that Jews would be unnecessarily killed. These proposals were not viewed as a panacea. They were, in fact, not mentioned (as far as I am aware) by any commentator on or historian of the Holocaust as a lost opportunity until the 1960s. With hindsight, Medoff is exaggerating the importance of bombing Auschwitz given to it by contemporaries. Second, the only proposal seriously considered by the U.S. War Refugee Board prior to October 1944 (shortly before gassings ceased at Auschwitz) was not a proposal to bomb Auschwitz, but to bomb one railway line leading to Auschwitz, that between Preskov and Kosice in Slovakia. John Pehle, head of the War Refugee Board, specifically refrained from proposing the bombing of Auschwitz to John J. McCoy prior to 3 October 1944. Leaving aside any question of the technical feasibility of the railway bombing proposal, even if carried out this suggestion would have been useless in saving Jews: the Hungarian Jews transported along this particular line had already come and gone; there were, moreover, six other rail lines from Hungary to Auschwitz which criss-crossed each other. If one believes that bombing Auschwitz was a lost opportunity (which it wasn’t), requiring a villain (which it doesn’t), one can look no further than John Pehle, head of the War Refugee Board. [End Page 333] Thirdly, Medoff takes it for granted, as a fact requiring no further explanation, that the U.S. War Refugee Board would automatically have listened to and taken heed of a basic change in attitude by the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, even assuming that a completely fundamental shift in attitude by the Executive occurred between June and July 1944, which he fails to demonstrate. (For instance, he claims (Vol. 85, No. 1, p. 103) that the Agency initially believed that Auschwitz was a “labour camp” and changed its mind once it learned its true purpose. This is quite false. Yitzhak Gruenbaum, at the meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency of 11 June 1944—the meeting disputed by Medoff and Levy—proposed explicitly that “airplanes of the Allies should bomb the death camps in Poland, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc.” It was this proposal which was rejected by the Executive.) But the U.S. War Refugee Board responded primarily to pressures and suggestions emanating from American sources. It was inherently unlikely to respond to proposals from the Yishuv (or even to know about them) without the mediation of a significant American lobbying body or Jewish group. Yet the signals it was receiving from American groups were anything but firm or unanimous in their advocacy of “bombing Auschwitz.” For instance, on 16 September 1944 Peter Bergson, head of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (whom Medoff repeatedly champions in his book on his question, The Deafening Silence) wrote to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff with a proposal...