The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis - Hardcover

Rubinstein, W.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415124557 ISBN 13: 9780415124553

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

It has long been argued that the Allies did little or nothing to rescue Europe's Jews. Arguing that this has been consistently misinterpreted, The Myth of Rescue states that few Jews who perished could have been saved by any action of the Allies. In his new introduction to the paperback edition, Willliam Rubinstein responds to the controversy caused by his challenging views, and considers further the question of bombing Auschwitz, which remains perhaps the most widely discussed alleged lost opportunity for saving Jews available to the Allies.

About this title

About the Author

William D.Rubinstein

Reviews

In this revisionist history Rubinstein (History/Univ. of Wales, Aberystwyth) sets out to debunk as ``illogical and ahistorical'' the work of several established historians who raise the question of Allied culpability during the Holocaust. The key issues involve closed-door immigration policies that turned central and eastern European Jewish refugee movements into one long Voyage of the Damned; discussed but never executed attempts to bomb the railway lines to such concentration camps as Auschwitz; and aborted financial negotiations to ransom Jewish lives. Rubinstein's major thesis is that Hitler was too committed to genocide to be distracted by such efforts, but the author should have presented more documentation to prove that the Allies did what they could once they confirmed the reality of the Final Solution. His thesis is further weakened by many diversionary tactics, such as the presentation of Gallup polls showing that 80 percent of wartime Americans opposed anti-Semitism (but nearly 68 percent opposed immigration). The data in no way relieve the US State Department, Great Britain, and organizations like the Red Cross of culpability in not minimizing the number of Holocaust victims. Such serious charges as those in in Lucy Dawidowicz's work, that German extermination trains and railways were repeatedly spared by Allied bombers, are not addressed. There is too much here on what we already knew, such as that ``the Jews were the central obsession of Hitler's life,'' and too little on the paucity of efforts to save Jews in Europe during the war. Some valuable historical modifications may be lost due to a tone and strategy that make the author sound too much like an apologist for the Allies' inaction. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415124557
• ISBN 13: 9780415124553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298