Letters to the Editor

To: The Editor

In a letter to the editor (Vol. 85, No. 3, September 1997), William D. Rubinstein asserted that the question of bombing Auschwitz “first implausibly surfaced in the mid-1960s.” Presumably, he meant that the Auschwitz bombing question was first publicly discussed in the mid-1960s, inasmuch as the issue had of course surfaced privately during 1944 when several requests for bombing Auschwitz were conveyed to the American and British governments by Jewish leaders and others. Although Rubinstein does not know it, the question also surfaced publicly during 1944. For example:

1. 1. June 27. Columnist Y. Fishman in the Yiddish-language Morning Journal (New York).

2. 2. July 7. Independent Jewish Press Service, report on “The Week in Editorial Paragraphs.”

3. 3. July 20. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Daily News Bulletin.

4. 4. July 28. National Jewish Ledger (Washington, DC), editorial “Horthy Promises Leniency.”

5. 5. August. Jewish Frontier, Labor Zionist monthly, editorial “Last Chance for Rescue.”

6. 6. August. A Year in the Service of Humanity, booklet published by the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, section on “Psychological Warfare.”

7. 7. September. Opinion (edited by Stephen Wise), column by Theodore N. Lewis.

The question of bombing Auschwitz also arose several times following World War II but before “the mid-1960s,” the point at which Rubinstein thinks it first surfaced. For example:

1. 1. Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys (1947), 123, 155–56.

2. 2. A Leon Kubowitzki (ed.), Unity in Dispersion: A History of the World Jewish Congress (1948), 167.

3. 3. At the Eichmann trial (spring 1961). This led to publicity about the Auschwitz bombing question in the British and American press during 1961. Further discussion occurred in the London Jewish Chronicle in 1962 and 1963.

4. 4. Ben Hecht, Perfidy (1961), 142–3, 264.

5. 5. Lucy Dawidowicz in Commentary, March 1962, 263.