1. The Holocaust: Questioning Rescue
Jennifer Pagliaro

2. Overview: World War II 1933: Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
1939: Germany invades Poland, beginning WWII
:  Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass murder operations against the Jews
: Nazis deport millions of Jews to extermination camps where they were murdered using poison gas
1945: Germany fully surrenders to the Allies ending WWII

3. Hitler’s ‘Final Solution”
Hitler systematically destroyed millions of lives, which he viewed as not as superior as the Aryan race
“By war’s end, close to two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in the massive crime we now call the Holocaust.” (USHMM)
An estimated 6 million Jews were murdered as a result of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’

4. Rescue or Abandonment?
Could the Allies have done more to save the Jews?
Was is the Allies’ responsibility to save the Jews?
Did the Allies know about the genocide well enough in advance to make any sort of large scale rescue attempt?
What efforts did the Allies make to save the Jews?
Did the Allies have enough firepower, manpower or willpower to save a more substantial number of Jews and still win the war?
Would the bombing of death camps and railways have prevented millions from being murdered?

5. Thesis
The Allied Forces, because of their lack of knowledge regarding mass extermination, constricting immigration policies and commitment to end the war, could not feasibly have saved a more substantial number of Jews during the Holocaust.

6. (1) Lack of Knowledge
The Allied Forces had limited knowledge on the extensive organization Hitler had enlisted for the mass extermination of the Jews

7. “The general consensus among scholars who have studied the Holocaust is that the allied governments did not really recognize what was taking place until December of 1942, in other words, a year and a half after the German invasion. And even then, some government officials in London, as well as in Washington, continued to express skepticism about atrocity reports that were coming in.” (Robert Brietman, American University)

8. (2) Constricting Immigration Policies
Immigration policies within Allied countries, still suffering from the Great Depression, couldn’t accommodate mass Jewish migration. Additionally, Jews were restricted by Nazi regime to exit their own countries en masse

9. 1929: The stock market crash rocks the industrial world causing The Great Depression
North American citizens were at their rope’s end and the last thing they wanted was more job competition from immigrants
North America was barely standing on it’s own two feet and was in no position to harbour millions of immigrants
1938 Evian Conference
Jews were forbidden to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Europe by stages from 1939 to 1942 (Regulation For the Ban On Jewish Emigration From the Government-General, November 1940)

10. (3) Commitment to the War
The Allies had a primary commitment to end the war and remove Hitler and the Nazis from power

11. The Allied Forces had a responsibility to defend their countries and support their own military
This left little slack to spend time and money on attempting large scale rescue attempts in Europe
Hitler was seen as a ‘psychopath’ who would have done everything in his power to kill as many Jews as possible
Therefore the Allies primary commitment was to go after the source of the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler

12. Counter-Arguments
The Allies could have bombed Auschwitz-Birkneau and enemy railways
Allied knowledge of the Holocaust was present well enough in advance for the Allied Forces to be able to prevent more Jews from being murdered
The Allied countries had a duty to do everything in their power to save as many Jews possible regardless of other commitments

13. Works Cited
Feingold, Henry L. Bearing Witness: How American and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995
Grobman, Alex. “Fudging the Numbers: A Closer Look At the Use of Statistics By Some Critics of The Abandonment of the Jews.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Miller, Paul B. "David S. Wyman and the Controversy over the Bombing of Auschwitz." Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Newton, Verne W. FDR and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996
Rubenstein, William D. The Myth of Rescue. New York: Routledge, 1997
Untied States Holocaust Memorial Museum Sep. 2006
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“What the Allies Knew”. NewsHour. PBS. 20 Nov. 1996