On the 78th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz death camp

Full Film: The Path to Nazi Genocide

Film Chapters:  Prologue (Starts at 00:00) 

Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Nazism, 1918–1933 (Starts at 00:58) 

Building a National Community, 1933–1936 (Starts at 12:22) 

From Citizens to Outcasts, 1933–1938 (Starts at 18:12) World 

War II and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Starts at 24:34) 

Sources and Credits (Starts at 37:25)

"Netanyahu: Allies could have saved 4 million Jews if they’d bombed death camps in 1942" The Times of Israel, 4/24/17
 

Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu condemned int'l complacency
to earlier intel of Nazi's mass murdering of Jewish people 
at Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance ceremony 

"In bitter Holocaust Remembrance Day speech citing new UN documents, Israel's PM castigates global indifference 81 years ago, says it persists today.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday launched a blistering assault on Allied policy during World War II, saying world powers’ failure to bomb the Nazi concentration camps from 1942 cost the lives of four million Jews and millions of others.

Citing recently released UN documents that show the Allies were aware of the scale of the Holocaust in 1942, some two years earlier than previously assumed, Netanyahu said in a speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day that this new research assumed “a terrible significance.”

Film stills from "What the Allies Knew" by Virginie Linhart,
produced by Fabienne Servan-Schreiber and Cinétévé

“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 4 million Jews and millions of other people,” he said at the official state ceremony marking the start of the memorial day.

Allies declined bombinb railways leading to genocide camps 

“The powers knew, and they did not act,” he told the audience 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 went on, “the powers knew and did not act.”

In a bleak and bitter address, the Israeli prime minister said that the Holocaust was enabled by three factors: the vast hatred of the Jews, global indifference to the horrors, and “the terrible weakness of our people in the Diaspora.”

Iran's "World without Zionism" (photo: BlazingCatFur)

Anti-Semitism had not disappeared, and “it would be naive to think” that it would do so in the foreseeable future, he said. It was being exacerbated by “hatred from the East,” led by Iran and the Islamic State, he added.

"Bombing Auschwitz" 75th Anniversary Preview: The Great Moral Dilemma of the 20th Century
In May 1944, Rabbi Michael Weissmandl sent the Auschwitz Protocol, along with a plea for help and a demand for Allied air forces to bomb Auschwitz, to Roswell McClelland at the War Refugee Board in Switzerland.

Should the Allies have risked killing Auschwitz prisoners and bombed the camp to stop future atrocities? Join historians, survivors and experts as they consider one of the great moral dilemmas of the 20th century.
 
Watch Secrets of the Dead on PBS Check your local PBS listings.

D-Day to V-E Day: World War II continued for almost 11 months after the successful Normandy landings in France on June 6, 1944, commonly known as D-Day.

American troops liberating Dachau Concentration Camp

At "The Liberators" documentary screening by the Zachor Foundation, Holocaust survivors, Ben Lesser and Joshua Kaufman discuss their reunions with the Yankee soldiers who liberated them from Dachau Concentration Camp.

   

Czech Republic's Consul General Pavel Sepelak and Prof. Abraham Sion of Ariel University in Samaria discuss the Allies' mistake of sacrificing Czechoslovakia to delay war with Nazi Germany.