“What the Allied Powers in the Second World War Might Have Done to Save More
Jews: Some What Ifs of Holocaust History”
While World War Two was in progress in Europe, the Nazis embarked on campaign to
exterminate the Jewish populations of all countries that came to be occupied by
German troops. The Holocaust (or Shoah) began with so-called concentration camps in
which Jews and other inmates were starved to death, worked to death, and kept in
squalid conditions. It continued on the Eastern Front of the war with Einsatzgruppen —
bands of Gestapo and SS soldiers and security police charged with executing Jews and
others by firing squad. It culminated in dedicated SS-run death camps in Poland,
places whose names now stand in infamy: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor,
Majdanek, Belzec, Chelmno. There Jews were herded into gas chambers and
slaughtered. In the end, five to six million Jews (men, women, and children) and
millions of others (Poles, Soviets, Roma, and more) were dead.
The Allied Powers (including the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union) were well
aware of the Holocaust as it unfolded. After waves of intelligence washed over their
shores, those powers, great and small, Nazi-occupied and unoccupied, solemnly
declared on December 17, 1942 that the systematic transportation and massacre of the
Jews of Europe was taking place in Poland and other places. They condemned the
crime and pledged retribution against the perpetrators. Regrettably, there was little
redemption of this pledge.
What opportunities for the Allied leadership to save Jews were missed in the course of
the war? We plan to explore briefly several of these “roads not taken” including: (1)
facilitating migration of European Jews to Palestine and other places; (2) broadcasting
of information and warnings within Germany and occupied countries where massacres
were taking place; (3) possible military action and assistance — overt and covert; direct
and indirect.
The presentation will be given by Alexander Groth and Tony Tanke. Groth is a survivor
of the Holocaust (the Warsaw Ghetto) and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
UC-Davis. He is the author of Democracies Against Hitler (1999), Holocaust Voices
(2003), and Accomplices: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Holocaust (2011). Tanke is an
attorney practicing law in Davis and a law professor. He is the co-author (with Edward
Rabin, Professor Emeritus of Law at UC-Davis) of a forthcoming book chapter dealing
with the 1939 White Paper and the British Mandate for Palestine, and addressing
Jewish immigration to Palestine during and immediately after the Second World
War. Groth and Tanke are co-editors, and joint chapter and section authors, of a book
entitled: The Allied Powers Response to the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell Publishers,
London, Expected 2018). The Tanke-Rabin chapter, among others, will appear in the
book. The book is the result of an academic conference held in Jerusalem in March
2015, and co-lead by Groth and Tanke.
The presentation will be given Sunday, April 23, at 3:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of
the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, 1701 Russell Boulevard, in Davis (just past
Highway 113 in West Davis opposite new UCD housing; corner of Russell and Arthur;
parking lot on Arthur side). It is jointly sponsored by the Israel Matters Committee of
Congregation Bet Haverim and the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation. The event will
be of particular interest to students of the Second World War, the Holocaust, genocide,
and Jewish history. It is open to the public and all are cordially invited to join us. There
will be a reception following the presentation; coffee, tea and refreshments will be
served. The Israel Matters Committee and the presenters will make a special surprise
announcement at the conclusion of the event. Please come and share this moment
with us!