The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies could not have saved more Jews from the Nazis
William D. Rubenstein
Routledge, 2000 (paperback edition)
xxx + 267 pages
“We should have done more.”
The more you dig into history, the more you become aware of historiographical debates. You learn of different schools of thought, different camps, etc. The Holocaust is no different. A very interesting debate (no not Structuralists v Intentionalists – it’s boring and settled) revolves round what the British and the Americans could have done during the war to save more Jews. One side says the Allies could have done much more and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. Why didn’t they then? Short answer: They were anti-Semites. On the other side sits William D. Rubenstein who argues nothing could have been done to save Europe’s Jews.
I became vaguely aware of one part of this debate as an undergraduate. I can’t recall the context, but I remember someone claiming the British and Americans should have bombed Auschwitz to free the Jews there or destroy the crematoria. Knowing something about the inaccuracy of bombing during the war, this struck me as insane. Wasn’t it likely the bombers would miss the camp entirely or worse hit the death camp inmates themselves? The Holocaust was not an area of history that interested me back then, so that was as far as my thinking went. I’m glad Professor Rubenstein covers this debate. More on that below.
The author examines what he believes are five myths within the “bystander” historiography. I will only cover the two I found the most interesting: “the Myth of Closed Doors” and “the Myth of Bombing Auschwitz.”
If the layman has any image of Jewish immigration in the 1930s, it is probably of ships loaded with Jews which cannot find a friendly port. The myth held by many is that Jews who wanted to leave Hitler’s Germany before the outbreak of war could not. The truth is that “Fully 72 per cent of Germany Jewry escaped from Nazi Germany before immigration became impossible, including 83 per cent of German Jewish children and youth.” (p. 16) Instead of a story of closed doors, the author argues that given the restrictions on all refugee migration in the interwar period, the efforts of America, Britain and other countries “constituted one of the most successful and far-reaching programmes of rescue of a beleaguered and persecuted people ever seen up to that time.” (p. 16) This was especially the case after Kristallnacht in November 1938.
What then of the other twenty-eight percent? Why didn’t these German Jews leave as well? As far as the author can discern, having talked to some who survived, is that they did not want to leave their homeland. These were, after all, German Jews with deep roots in their country and communities. They believed that Nazi persecution would “blow over” once the new regime settled into power. As one survivor Rubenstein quotes said, “I wasn’t afraid. No, I wasn’t afraid at the time [1937]. It was just something we couldn’t believe was happening, nor that it would last. When I mentioned going to Palestine to my father, he said ‘Oh, come on, it’s not going to last.’” (p. 21) Many German Jews changed their minds after Kristallnacht but not all, especially the elderly. Once the war broke out, it was too late. The status of German Jews ultimately changed from potential refugee to prisoner. Indeed, this became the status of all Jews who found themselves in countries conquered by the Nazis. As the author points out time and again, “after 1940-1 it was in effect impossible for Jews legally to emigrate from Nazi occupied Europe to places of safety.” (p. 82) The door was closed to immigration…by the National Socialists.
Historians, in my experience, are polite to a fault when reacting to poor arguments. They won’t call out their peers for shoddy logic or poor research. Not so with Professor Rubenstein. He is at his most castigating when discussing the proposed bombing of Auschwitz, “the notion that the Allies genuinely lost an opportunity – still less that they lost it through ill-disguised anti-semitism – appears to be even more dubious than the other components of an historiographical argument not notable for its cogency.” (p. 158)
Here are a few of the problems the author raises with this so-called lost opportunity. First, there was only one proposal ever discussed between military officials and the American War Refugee Board in late June 1944. The author points out that the proposal was to bomb just one railway line running from Hungary to Auschwitz. Had such a scheme even been successful, the Germans would have simply used a different line to send Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Moreover, many Jews themselves rejected the idea of bombing Auschwitz itself in August because it would likely have ended in killing many camp prisoners. (p. 163) Ill-informed historians often point to detailed RAF aerial photographs that would have helped the Allies bomb the camp. It was news to me, and apparently to many Holocaust historians, that these photographs remained as negatives until the 1970s. They were never developed during the war. Thus, the Allies had no target information for the camp which actually encompassed several square miles and dozens of buildings and even factories. Yet, the strongest part of Rubenstein’s argument is here
no detailed suggestions as to how the bombings should be carried out were made by anyone until much later. With the hindsight of many decades, schemes such as these can readily be devised by armchair historians and strategists, but no one did so at the time, and it is therefore utterly pointless to attach blame for the failure to bomb Auschwitz or to regard it as in any sense a lost opportunity. Second, and even more importantly, Wyman and his school are not military historians and have made no effort to take the realities of military strategy into account. (p. 174)
You can see what I mean about not holding his punches with other historians. David Wyman is the doyen of the “Allies should have done more school.”
I really enjoyed this book. It is meant for the intelligent layman. That, or Rubinstein just has a very accessible writing style free of verbosity or pretentiousness. For someone who has read a few books on the Holocaust, I would recommend this book. First, it goes into an area that may be ignored in a Holocaust survey or only given a few pages. Secondly, it is a great way to become acquainted with historiographical schools and debates. Finally, Professor Rubenstein writes courageously. Proving your fellow historians wrong and calling them out by name takes bravery. Few scholars have the daring.
