Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday slammed western powers during his speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, saying that Allied powers knew of the atrocities happening to Jews in death camps and had they have acted on that knowledge they would have saved the lives of four million Jews and millions of others.Yes, and that indifference is exactly what's turned several areas in Europe into hellholes, as self-hating European politicians turn against their own populations. It's considerable damage that's going to take ages to repair, and until then, the chances of another world war are very possible.
The prime minister cited newly released documents from the UN that show the Allied forces were aware of the extent of the Holocaust in 1942 – two and half years earlier than previously assumed.
It was a “chilling revelation,” Netanyahu said.
“If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved four million Jews and millions of other people,” he said at the official state Yom HaShoah ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
“When terrible crimes were being committed against the Jews, when our brothers and sisters were being sent to the furnaces,” he said, “the powers knew and did not act.”
According to Netanyahu, the Holocaust was the result of three elements coming together: a deep hatred of the Jews, global apathy to the horrors that occurred, and “the terrible weakness of our people in the Diaspora.”
Anti-Semitism had not disappeared, and neither was it likely to in the foreseeable future, he said. It was made worse by Iran and the Islamic State, he added. This was to be the only mention of the Islamic republic in his speech, a marked departure from previous years in which he would single out Iran several times.
Global indifference was still alive today too, Netanyahu said.
Here's more about Netanyahu giving a stern warning Islamofascist countries like Iran.
I'm not saying that the Jews should have armed themselves and resisted the Nazis, but it would have been a better ending than being worked to death, starved or executed.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, I think that the allies moved as quickly as they could into Europe. Most of the death camp locations were either in Eastern Europe or in Eastern Germany. Blaming the death of so many Jews shouldn't be laid at the feet of the Allies, but at the feet of the people who murdered them.
I concur with LL.
ReplyDeleteI think we got there about as soon as we could have..... and might not have ever got there if Russia hadn't wore down the Germans.
We didn't enter WW2 to save the Jews.
.... Should have Bombed the Camps repeatedly?
.... Camps full of Jews?
Something rational must have been lost in the translation.... or I'm just missing his point.
Should we bomb the concentration camps in North Korea as well?
I can't imagine anyone making the decision to bomb camps full of Jews.
ReplyDeleteI assume the point being sacrificing thousands to save millions. Not an easy choice then, impossible to make now. Case in point the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
ReplyDelete“If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved four million Jews and millions of other people,”
ReplyDeleteMaybe, maybe not. Upon the repeated bombings, Hitler might well have lined up the Jews in the streets and murdered them in that manner -- mass executions.
I understand, as anonymous said, the point being sacrificing thousands to save millions. Still, I think that those particular words from Netanyahu send a bad message, and I don't think that those words are valid, either.
If FDR (who had evidence brought to him in secret by his Treasury Secretary) had moved as early as 1942 to destroy the rails and camps by bombers (and the camps were for the most part at the EXTREME ranges of bombers, and BEYOND the ranges of escorting fighters), IMO, it would have achieved NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteIs there anyone, anywhere, who thinks Himmler, Heydrich, and and Hitler would NOT have rebuilt again, or used more expensive bullets, or carbon monoxide, or TABUN AND SARIN, which they had invented?
It is an UGLY FACT that there it was NOT within the power of the USA an allies to END the slaughter unless that was made a PRIME GOAL of hostilities and then we would have been lengthening the war by doing so, and while that was going on, jews, roma, homosexuals, the less fortunate in general would simply have been killed in more decentralized fashion.
Genocide can hardly EVER be stopped by the time it is ready to get underway.
It has to be stopped when it is INCIPIENT in men's hearts in small, radical influential groups.
#HOWITIS
Epa,
ReplyDeletethe camps were for the most part at the EXTREME ranges of bombers, and BEYOND the ranges of escorting fighters
That is important information!
BTW, I hesitated to weigh in here because I'm not Jewish and, therefore, have no way of understanding the extent of the Holocaust's psychological impact upon the Jewish people, both then and now.
RT,
ReplyDeleteShould we bomb the concentration camps in North Korea as well?
Netanyahu seems to be implying that.
RE - being jewish and the holocaust ... it's important to bear in mind that 39-45 came at the SEEMING..(things are no different, are they?) end of 2500 years of attempts at genocide (Xerxes' PM), antisemitism (Cicero, Council of Nicaea, Crusades, expulsions, pogroms etc), and Islamic Quranic jew hate ... it did not spring out of nowhere to the western mind the way Rwanda and Cambodia did, or out of political instant calc the way the Kulaks did in the 30's or from some semi ignored status the way Turkey/Armenian genocide did.
ReplyDeleteAntisemitism was ingrained in the way of culture and religion in Europe and the levant and north africa.
That is what distinguishes the Holocaust, and the way jews feel in the world today. And it IS growing among even the most progressive.
That's a very good point, cjk.
ReplyDeleteThe whole world is ignoring the genocide against Christians.