Did the Pope ever read a history book? Few, if any, knew about the atrocities that were taking place in these death camps. What a putz.
And if you “bombed” the railway lines, the SS would have just killed the prisoners where they stood, put them in trucks or force-marched them to the camps. Who are his advisors?
As I recall, FDR did know and there were Jewish leaders who met with him begging him to bomb the camps. He wouldn’t. IIRC, his response was that those bombs would best be used to quickly end the war.
“Few, if any, knew about the atrocities that were taking place in these death camps. What a putz.”
The “Jewish Death Camps” were largely thought to be unsupported rumors, or propaganda by the German underground, (such as it was). When the Russians liberated the first of the “Death Camps”, Lublin, in Early August 1944, they equated it with their own Work/Death Camps, and while they tried to use it for some propaganda, they didn’t make a big deal out of it.
These camps, including Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka had largely already been dismantled in late 1943, because there weren’t very many jews left in Poland to kill.
The Western allies didn’t really believe it until jan 1945, when they overran Ohrdruf and other camps in Central Germany.
Although I may be confusing death camps, that is what I understand from TV documentaries about Auschwitz. The Allies supposedly new nothing about the death camps until after they explored Germany after Hitler had been stopped.
In fact, I understand that the gas chamber building possibly had simple landscaping around it so that the prisoners wouldn’t suspect that it was a gas chamber. Corrections welcome.
But I’ll give the Pope a break since he possible never saw death camp documentaries when he was in Argentina.
On the other hand, I also understand that he doesn’t use the “evil” Internet and may be a little too isolated from the rest of the world if such is the case.
“Did the Pope ever read a history book?”
I bet he has.
“Few, if any, knew about the atrocities that were taking place in these death camps. What a putz.”
No. All of the allied powers KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING ON BY LATE 1942. This has been documented ad nauseum. Many simply refused to believe it was happening on that scale it was because it seemed too fantastic to be true, but they knew the Nazis were killing thousands and thousands in an assembly line like process. The Vatican first received reports of mass murder before the full camp system was even set up. Vatican officials struggled to believe it was true because it seemed - again - to be too fantastic. They had talks with the allies about what they were informed about by Polish priests and bishops. The allies were getting their own information shortly after that.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/when.html
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394663#20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_the_Holocaust
Have you ever been to Auschwitz?
I have.
Actually the first indication of what was going on was in the New York Times in 1943.
The New York Times did report on the Holocaust, but made an editorial decision to downplay the reports. An entire book was written on the subject: ‘Buried by the Times’ by Laurel Leff.
There was also the Rabbis March on Washington in 1943. Very public.