Member-only story
“It isn’t always true that a critical end justifies desperate means.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich (1968-), American writer
A couple of recent exposures got me thinking.
I viewed a BBC presentation on what came to be called the ‘Auschwitz Protocol,’ a cogent, detailed account of what was happening during WWII in concentration camps like Auschwitz and Birkenau: the systematic mass execution by gassing of unfathomable numbers of European Jews.
This account was provided by two April 1944 escapees (Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler) from Auschwitz, who knew that, if captured, they would have been tortured and executed. The account, first in abbreviated, then expanded form, was passed on to the highest command of both England and the USA and confirmed that Jews taken to those camps in vast numbers were being exterminated, rather than ‘resettled,’ as Germans claimed.
The two erstwhile Auschwitz prisoners deemed their lives of little consequence compared with what they hoped to disclose to the world, at least some of whom believed German claims. Their small act paled in significance in comparison to the larger play.
The BBC presentation wrestled with the moral question of whether the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz and railroad lines leading thereto during the protracted, ferocious world…
