Did countries know about the holocaust happening but refuse to take action?

Question

I need help finding information about rather or not the countries of Europe as well as the United States knew about the holocaust going on but chose to ignore it. I've searched and search and I can't come up with any good sources. Help! =]

Answer 1

Is WWII enough of an example of taking action for you?

Answer 2

Yes and no..

They knew that Hitler was rounding up and/or persecuting the Jews

but the grim, shocking reality of what he was doing to them was largely hidden, often until the camps were liberated.

Answer 3

Other people have been answering this first question...long story short, yes, yes they did know, and no they did not take action, partly due to the general sense of anti-Semitism that was big at that time, and partly due to the fact that the war was already raging and telling the n***s to stop really wasn't going to have much of an effect.

But more importantly, since you've been searching for information, here you go:  (and I literally mean go, as in to the library)

First, go find a book by Deborah Lipstadt called "Beyond Belief".  This book is all about the press and its coverage of the Holocaust.  What it points out is that word got out about what the n***s were doing by 1942, and information was available.  The English and US were much more focused on fighting and figured that defeating the n***s would solve the problem, rather than focusing on trying to free each camp.

You also should look up two books by David Wyman, Paper Walls and The Abandonment of the Jews, which deal specifically with the US foreign policy.  Paper Walls notes that FDR may have been sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, but did little to open up strict immigration laws, fearing anti-Semitic backlash and a loss of his own political power, and the State Department (on its own, not due to FDR's commands) made it even tougher, not easier, for refugee Jews to enter.  The second book deals with why the US did not do anything during the lead up to the war and the war itself specifically to help the Jews and why the US didn't bomb the tracks leading to Auschwitz.

You also should look into Haskel Lookstein's Were We Our Brother's Keepers, about the pressure brought to bear on FDR by the American Jewish community, which as it turned out, wasn't much.

Those books will also have links to other books (the bibliographies) and primary sources to look up.  

Good luck.

Answer 4

I guess obliterating Germany's armies, economy and infrastructure and leaving their buildings in a pile of rubble wasnt' good enough?

I think you may be asking is why didn't we conquer the German's sooner? But even that question is a little out of context, as the Allies went about the invasion of the Atlantic Wall and the Eastern Front as fast as they could...although i see that the Red Army stopped just short of Warsaw during the Polish uprising, causing more Poles to die than there should have.

Some people wonder why the railways leading into Auswitz weren't bombed. I have to believe that the extent of the state-sponsored genocide was not known and that the few reports that did get out were too fantastic to believe.

Answer 5

They knew of the persecution of the jews before 1939 but most did not want to take refugees.

Britain took a lot of the children.

The death camps were known about during the war but by then it was too late to take much action to stop the killing.

Answer 6

Well, countries certainly knew about atrocities being committed against the Jews in Germany before the war but chose to hush it up because they didn't want war.  My mother had a boyfriend who was a journalist for a well-known English newspaper, and he was in Berlin and saw what was going on.  He sent reports back to his paper, but they wouldn't publish them.

I don't think the holocaust as such actually got underway until after the war had started, by which time most countries were either fighting Germany, or had surrendered.

Answer 7

No, while it is true that the U.S. and England knew to some degree about the holocaust before it was known to the public it is completely unfair and inaccurate to claim they took no action.  More people died fighting the n***s then died in the camps so I would hardly call that refusing to take action.

Answer 8

yes because most countries were still repairing from WWI and they also didnot want tio get into another war.

Answer 9

This has been a lie or a skewed version of the truth for years.

The simple answer to your question is ABSOLUTELY NOT.

What the allies did know is that the Jews were imprisoned, made to work at labor camps, but did not know the extent of the madness of the n***s and the elimination of the Jews en masse. Do not believe anything different that is stated here.

Especially don't listen to the "U.S. History" teacher because he or she is probably only reading and teaching stories about how the U.S. is so bad and we are the world's worst enemy because that is what liberal haters do, especially when they are in a position of "power" like a teacher. Just remember that those that can't do, teach.