Bush: US should have bombed Auschwitz

[David]

AP


JERUSALEM - President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.

Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.

Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

"Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," Shalev said.

At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

"We were talking about the often-discussed 'Could the United States have done more by bombing the train tracks?'" Rice told reporters later aboard Air Force One. "And so we were just talking about the various explanations that had been given about why that might not have been done."

The Allies had detailed reports about Auschwitz during the war from Polish partisans and escaped prisoners. But they chose not to bomb the camp, the rail lines leading to it, or any of the other Nazi death camps, preferring instead to focus all resources on the broader military effort, a decision that became the subject of intense controversy years later.

Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people were killed at the camp.

"We should have bombed it," Bush said, according to Shalev.

In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, "God bless Israel, George Bush."

The memorial was closed to the public and under heavy guard Friday, with armed soldiers standing on top of some of the site's monuments and a police helicopter and surveillance blimp hovering in the air overhead.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," Bush said.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said.

It was Bush's second visit to the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The last U.S. president to visit was Bill Clinton in 1994.

Bush, making the most extensive Mideast trip of his presidency, was accompanied on his tour by a small party that included Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

At the compound, overlooking a forest on Jerusalem's outskirts, Bush visited a memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, featuring six candles reflected 1.5 million times in a hall of mirrors. At the site's Hall of Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a Jewish prayer for the dead.

Shalev presented Bush with illustrations of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist Carol Deutsch, who perished in the Holocaust.

Deutsch created the works while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.

The originals are on display at Yad Vashem. The memorial recently decided to produce a special series of 500 replicas, the first of which was to be presented to Bush.

Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad Vashem employee whose grandfather was Deutsch's brother, said she was proud that Bush would be given her relative's artwork.

"These are not just his paintings, they are his legacy, and the fact that they survived shows that as much as our enemies tried to destroy the ideas that these paintings embody, they failed," she said.

Later Friday, Bush was to wrap up his three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a visit to Christian holy sites in Galilee before departing for Kuwait, the next stop on his Mideast tour.

[namvet]

im a little late chiming in here. but this was a very hot button issue on another board I worked. I did NOT agree with Bush's statement. I argued there was a moral issue here about killing helpless civilians. many argued with and against me. many stating yes bomb em. we would have done them a favor. they were dead anyway. other's argued just bomb the railroads that should do it. and so on.
.........before D-day these camps, most all , were out of range anyway. also the bombing of German industry were the high priority targets. but could you give bomber crews a mission assignment to bomb these camps?? would they do it??? could you be the one to push the bomb release button??? can you live with it ?? I saw an interview of 8th air force bomber crews on TV. and they were asked this question. to a man they said NO!!!! one citing he would prefer prison time to living with this.
........... but even survivors of these camps agreed they would have preferred to die fast rather than a slow agonizing death. including the late famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. I emailed one of the holocaust memorial sites and put it to them. they replied and confirmed the suvivors prayed every day/night the roar of bombers overhead would end their suffering. but they also referred me to a website. to a man named Michael Berenbaum who gave a 3 part story on this question of bombing Auschwitz and the other camps. I posted it on this board and the arguments ended. if you care to read it here it is:
the arguments

scroll down to the 3 parts. this cataclysmic event also runs parallel to another during this war. the A bombs of Japan: were they necessary or not??? another hot button.

[82Rigger]

I have always thought that when Bush said, "We should have bombed it" he was referring to the railroad system, not the camp itself.

I guess that is an assumption on my part, because it is unimaginable to me that the allies would even consider bombing the camp itself.

[David]

Please repost the argument here. I could not get the article from the site.

[namvet]

Originally Posted by David

Please repost the argument here. I could not get the article from the site.

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/author/mberenbaum let me know......

[namvet]

“work makes (one) free”.

if we bombed these what does that make us in history????

[David]

I was looking for it in the first post. I see it now thank you