The Holocaust, i need your opinion?

Question

Why didn’t the Allied Powers, who knew that mass killings were taking place, focus their firepower on the ovens and the killing operations

Answer 1

Please read this post.
There is an answer in it.

But first:
Look at this amazing picture of Auschwitz taken by American bombers on August 1944:
http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/GALL31R/03198.htm

This is a real picture/
Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.

The Bombs in the picture are in their way to other target few kilometers from the extermination camp.

Others Pictures of Auschwitz taken in August 1944 by RAF Bombers, notice the "human smoke" on the chimneis of the crematoriums:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/europe_enl_1106663910/html/1.stm

To bbaby66 and others who answered the question, the ovens were NOT hard to get to.

As seen in the pictures Allies' bombers were flying above the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination camp during the days when most of the Jews of Hungary were gassed to death and burnt in them.
The bombers dropped bombs on an industrial zone few miles from the extermination camp, but not on the extermination camp itself.

On that time, it was already known to the Allies that the Germans are commiting their "final solution for the Jewish problem". The Allies knew that masses of people, most of them are Jews are being mobilized by trains to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

in June 1944, only weeks after the D-Day landings, Jewish organizations in the US had send letters to goverment officials calling for the bombing of Auschwitz’s gas chambers and the railway lines that led to the camp.

The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State at that time John McCloy, answered the letters and said that the proposed bombing of Auschwitz was impractical. Clarification: The bombing of the camp was fully practical, but when the possibility to bomb the camps was checked, someone along the chain of command decided that the bombing of the extermination camp was in a lower priority than the bombing of bridges and weapon factories in the same region of Auschwitz and recommended not to assign bombers to the mission of bombing te extermination camp.

The upper command and the goverment officials who were charged on this issue, accepted this recommendation as it is. All of them were probably not aware to the supreme moral importance of stopping the genocide of the Jews.

Prisoners at the extermination camp probably heard the bombers flying above their heads short time before they where taken into their planned murder.
The result was around 400,000 murderd Jews - most of the Jewish communities of Hungary were annihilated.

Sorry for my emotional reply, its an emotional subject for me. It's important to know the truth.

To the asker of this question:
There is a genocide happening right now in Darfur.
Why the west does practically nothing to stop the genocide in Darfur?
The answer is that right now public opinion on the US, UK and Europe is focusing on Iraq, on new findings of water on Mars, and on local stories on the news. Not in Darfur.

The Answer Is:
Today, EXACTLY as it was during WWII, most of the people on the west, whether they are goverment officials, high rank military officers, journalists, or ordinary citizens are too apathetic to acts of genocide.

Eli Weisel used to say that the essence of pure evil is apathy to the suffer of other humans.

(I am an Israeli Jew, grandson of a Holocaust Survivor, I'm not one of those self-rightous usually leftists "peace activists", and I'm ashamed that my goverment isn't doing anything to stop the genocide in Darfur)

Answer 2

The Allied Powers were NOT aware of the ovens. The Polish and German people for the most part, were not aware of them.
and those that were aware, chose to ignore it. Read the complete history of the Holocaust. This is just one site, there are too many to list here.
http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blholocaust.htm

Answer 3

Also, they were deep into Axis-held territory. Allied bombers couldn't penetrate that deeply into defended areas, they also didn't have the range until after the fall of the Third Reich.

The main bomber used in Europe was the B17:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flying_Fortress

It was superseded by the B29, which had a longer range and larger payload, but wasn't developed in time for service in Europe. It was produced in time to drop the world's first atomic bombs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B29

Answer 4

Because the weapons of the time were not as discriminating and accurate as they are today and it would have been allied bombs rather than Nazis killing the prisoners held inside those camps.

Answer 5

I am not sure that most people were aware how bad it really was, and we didn't have the weapons then that we do now. Also there were a lot of people in those camps.

Answer 6

because it was in the 40's, we did not have the accurate weapons we have today, but most of all, if they had fired on the camps they would have killed those they ended up freeing the Jewish prisoners

Answer 7

1. Because there were POW's in the concentration camps. Yes, Americans died in concentration camps too.

Answer 8

because the ovens were ahrd to get to..... and first there were the enemys to killl..... one of the worst events in human history