Specific effort that was made to stop Hitlers genocide of the jews?

Answer 1

~Rheinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler ordered termination of Operation 14f13 in the spring of 1943 which immediately ended operations of the extermination camps. Auschwitz II (Birchenau) may have continued gassing folks for another few months. Other than Himmler and Heydrich, no one did anything to stop the Nazi genocide of the Jews - or of the Serbs or of the Romas or of the Slavs (or the mentally and physically defective and homosexuals but since they came in all races, I guess that wouldn't be genocide so they don't count). If you are really interested in the "holocaust", learn a little about it. The Jews were a minority of the people targeted and had the plans for the Slavs reached fruition, the Jews would represent less than 10% of the body count.

Edit to Erik: sorry but with all the cutting and pasting you fail to recognize that Auschwitz was NOT a death camp. Auschwitz I and Auschwitz III were labor camps (concentration camps) Generally when one discusses the Holocaust, one is referring to the Jews (to the great dishonor to the memories of all the other genocide victims of the Third Reich). That being the case, bombing Auschwitz would have had no effect whatsoever on the Holocaust. Auschwitz II (more correctly referred to as Birchenau) was the death camp and operations there were curtailed along with the other 5 death camps (6 if you count Jasenovac - but no one does because the victims there were Serbs, not Jews) in '43 at the order of Heydrich and Himmler. The ovens stayed in business until the camps were liberated, but the showers were not used. There is a HUGE difference. Use of the crematoria by '44 was for sanitary disposal of the inevitable deaths in the labor camps, not to dispose of the victims of executions. The concentration camps (like the American Indian reservations after which they were modeled) were not designed to kill people. They were to inter undesireables (like Gitmo today) and to use them for forced labor. The deaths were due to the conditions, starvation and disease, not organized murder and of the 10 to 12 million who died in the concentration camps, only about 3 million were Jews. The concentration camps (Auschwitz I and III for example) were simply not part of the Final Solution or the Holocaust unless you pervert the term beyond recognition and any meaningful effect. I am not suggesting by any means that the Final Solution did not occur. I AM suggesting that it is long past time that the other victims (who represent the majority of the dead) are remembered as well. The Jews did not hold a monopoly on Nazi atrocities.

Answer 2

This is a specious comparison. Hitler was a real threat to Europe and Western civilization. Iraq, by the time of the invasion, was a toothless tiger that was weak from various embargoes and boycotts. Hitler also presented ample reason for intervention: he marched into Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, and France. Iraq was not marching into any other country when Dubya invaded. As for making Iraq stable, that option is no longer on the table.The Brits took 40 year to stabilize Iraq before they pulled out in 1922; the Bushies won't be around that long and America is a country with Attention Deficit Disorder, so it won't be that patient either.

Answer 3

While there were some efforts to help Jews as individuals to escape the camps - people hid them, forged papers for them, that sort of thing - nothing was done about it other than defeating the Nazis and liberating the camps.

One problem was that a lot of people, especially in this country, reacted to tales of what was going on with a sort of opposite of the saying "too good to be true." What was being said was so unheard of, so terrible, that they thought it was "too horrible to be true." Nobody thought the Jews were being treated well, but they could not get their minds around the facts, the reality was too far for them to go...

In Germany, they ended up saying "we didn't know." They knew. They told themselves they couldn't do anything, even if they didn't approve.

Answer 4

"The British intelligence service had information about the concentration camps, and in 1942 Jan Karski delivered a thorough eyewitness account to the government. Although the actions of the Nazis were publicly condemned after Karski's visit, no attempts were made to compromise the functioning of the camps."

"Nazi concentration camps" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps#Camps_during_the_war

"Some information regarding Auschwitz reached the Allies during 1941-1944, such as the reports of Witold Pilecki and Jerzy Tabeau, but the claims of mass killings were generally dismissed as exaggerations. This changed with receipt of the very detailed report of two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which finally convinced most Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz in the middle of 1944."

"Detailed air reconnaissance photographs of the camp were taken accidentally during 1944 by aircraft seeking to photograph nearby military-industrial targets, but no effort was made to analyse them. (In fact, it was not until the 1970s that these photographs of Auschwitz were looked at carefully.)"

"Starting with a plea from the Slovakian rabbi Weissmandl in May 1944, there was a growing campaign to convince the Allies to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it. At one point Winston Churchill ordered that such a plan be prepared, but he was told that bombing the camp would most likely kill prisoners without disrupting the killing operation, and that bombing the railway lines was not technically feasible. Later several nearby military targets were bombed. One bomb accidentally fell into the camp and killed some prisoners. The debate over what could have been done, or what should have been attempted even if success was unlikely, has continued heatedly ever since."

"Knowledge of the Allies" in "Auschwitz concentration camp" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#Knowledge_of_the_Allies

"The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, did not see bombing as a solution, given that bombers were inaccurate and would also kill prisoners on the ground. The land war would have to be won first. Bombers were used against German cities and to carpet-bomb the front lines. Concerning the concentration camps, he wrote to his Foreign Secretary on 11 July 1944: "... all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out these butcheries, should be put to death..." In August 1944, 60 tons of supplies were flown to assist the uprising in Warsaw and, considering the dropping accuracy at that time, were to be dropped "into the south-west quarter of Warsaw". Seven aircraft reached the city."

"While the analysts' focus has been on the choices available to the western allies, the Red Army had taken areas in eastern Poland from the German army in July 1944, such as the town of Kovel, 300 km (200 miles) east of Warsaw, much nearer to Auschwitz than the American and British airforce bases in England. Its leader Joseph Stalin also decided not to bomb the death camps; he gave priority to the land campaign on a front that was over 1,500 km long."

"The Allies' considerations" in "Auschwitz bombing debate" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_bombing_debate#The_Allies.27_considerations

"You are correct in stating that the most recent research indicates that knowledge of the Holocaust was much more widespread then previously thought. This does not, however, invalidate the conclusions of previous research. Prior to the recent publication of many documents, the consensus of historians was that information about the Holocaust was sufficiently known to allow the allies to understand the genocide being committed by the Third Reich. The recent documents have only reinforced this conclusion and, therefore, many older works on this subject are still quite reliable."

"Your second question -- whether the allies could have had an effect on the progress of the Holocaust -- is far more controversial. There are many who argue that there were several avenues, such as the bombing of Auschwitz, which could have slowed down the killings. Others are not sure that any such effort would have had a discernible effect. While the failure of the allies to pay more attention to the genocide was one of the great failures of the alliance, there is no consensus as to what could have been done. Several of the books I have listed for you argue that the bombing of Auschwitz would have slowed down the killings. On the opposite side Lucy Dawidowicz, a leading authority on the Holocaust, argues that such bombing would have had no effect on the genocide."

"Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies"

"Arthur Morse, While Six Million Died"

"David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews"

"Walter Laqueur The Terrible Secret "

"A defense of the actions of the Allies can be found in: "

"Lucy Dawidowicz, What is the Use of Jewish History?"

"A balanced view of the arguments which also includes descriptions of other sources can be found in:"

"Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History"

"British: What Did They Know?", Yale F. Edeiken, The Holocaust History Project : http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/british.shtml

Answer 5

One effort was the liberation of the concentration camps by the Allied Forces when they went into Germany, Poland and Austria. I might add that the liberation of the camps could have taken place earlier. Other efforts were made by Jewish people living in the U.S. who early on were receiving reports of the the horrendous rounding up of innocent people and went to tell ther congressman what was happening. The U.S. might have actually tried to help earlier but didn't.

Answer 6

Aside of individual efforts, nothing was done on a wide scale to stop it. That includes Hitler's fierce extermination of others as well (gypsies, russians, homosexuals etc etc).

Answer 7

,,,,,,,,,none,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,