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PARTISAN REVIEW
bomb Au schwitz , or the ra ilway lines leadin g to the camp a nd ca rry–
in g, from the spring of tha t year , hundreds of thousa nds of
Hunga ri a n J ews to the gas chambers. "At the time of the I-eques t,"
writes G ilbe rt , "the Ameri can gove rnment possessed a great deal of
info rma ti on about Au schwitz, including both its locati on a nd its
fun cti on toge ther with the technical a bility to bomb both the ra ilway
lines leadin g
to
the camp a nd the gas chambers in the camp itself. "
As we have see n , the British we re info rmed a bout the na ture of
Au schwitz from the ve ry beginning of its ope ra ti ons, in 1942. e ithe r
the Ameri cans nor the Briti sh res ponded to the reques ts. And ,
again , the expl a na ti on give n us by M a rtin G ilbert is no t b as icall y
diHe re nt from the one oHe red by Laqueur : "In pa rt ," writes Gilbert ,
"the story o f the negati ve Alli ed response
to
ma ny o f the J ewish
a ppeals for help was one of lack o f comprehension a nd imagina tion ,
in the face o f the 'unbeli eva ble'. M a ny J ews likewi se found the scale
o f the sla ughter diHi cult to guess . .. ." Thi s is onl y pa rt o f the story,
though , as shown , fo r insta nce, in the case of Winston Churchill.
One man , writes Gilbert, who did understa nd the eno rmit y of
the crimes was Churchill , who wrote to Anthony Ede n in Jul y 1944 :
"The re is no doubt th a t thi s is proba bl y the greates t a nd mos t te rribl e
sin gle crime even committed in the whole hi story of the world. " But
then , as Gilbe rt adds, "in the ma king o f Alli ed policy, C hurchill was
not the fina l a rbiter , a nd in ma ny cases, not lea t among them the
bombing of Au schwit z, o ther voi ces a nd other conside ra tions
preva il ed".
Gilbert's study indeed shows how the lower mini ste ri a l level a nd
the milita ry a nd civili a n bureau cracies neutra li zed Churchill 's prod–
din gs on thi s iss ue. Bu t, one wonders nonetheless: the dec ision
was n't o f a ny crucia l importa nce fo r the Alli es; all in a ll , it h ad to do
with a routine bombing opera ti on ove r ta rge ts ampl y identifi ed , on a
rou te fo ll owed ma ny times by Briti sh a nd Ame rican a ircra ft , a t a
location no more tha n two or three mi les from sites a ttacked seve ral
times. Couldn 't Churchill have imposed such a "minor" dec ision , if
the whole iss ue had a ny real pl ace in hi s thinkin g?
It
seems tha t, as
we a pproach the end of the war, the iss ue isn't "di sbeli ef" a nymore,
but pl a in lack o f inte res t in the fa te of European J ews.
If
Lucy D awidowicz had cove red a ll the ground she se t out to
deal with, she would have mentioned the a rticl e published in 1977 by
the Germa n hi stori a n M a rtin Brosza t on "The G enes is of the Final
Solution. " Broszat's thes is is th a t there was no preesta blished pla n
a nd no single dec ision to extermina te a ll the J ews of Europe, but
