Complicity

“The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Holocaust denial

In my previous Blog entry I quoted Jan Karski  who stated, “It was easy for the Nazis to kill Jews, because ...the Jews were abandoned by all governments, church hierarchies and societies..."
In my previous blog entry I also mention that President Bill Clinton from his keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 1993. In his address President Clinton became the first American president to ever explicitly acknowledge that the construction of the museum would, “redeem in some small measure the deaths of millions whom our nations did not, or would not, or could not save.”

President Clinton's acknowledgment reflects only partially the depth of the western worlds guilt and lethargic response in the “complicity” of the Nazi actions to exterminate the Jewish people. The President’s acknowledgment, that the Holocaust dealt with a genocide that lasted for several years on an unimaginable scale with hundreds of thousands of culprits and their helpers in large areas of Europe under the eyes of a huge number of spectators, was emphasized in his statement that there are, 

“those of us here today representing the nations of the West,”(who) …” must live forever with this knowledge--even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done.”

The most important statement in this view of “complicity” that the President made was, “Before the war even started, doors to liberty were shut”. These words by President Clinton’reveal a more sinister and deeper meaning in the use of the word “Complicity” in "Who will take them?" when one realizes where this statement was originally mentioned.

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich refers to the world's “tactic complicity” in his overview of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime to date at the opening of the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942. SS-Obergruppenführer ReinhardHeydrich emphasizied; “that the main aim of the 'Jewish policy', he said, was, firstly, forced migration.”
The men who sat at the table were among the elite of the "Third Reich". These were not your typical vision of anti-Semites for more than half of those present held doctorates from German universities. They were well informed about the policy toward Jews. Each understood that the cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious, unprecedented and comprehensive policy was to succeed.

Among the agencies represented were the Department of Justice, the Foreign Ministry, the Gestapo, the SS, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property. Also at the meeting was a representative of the General Government, the Polish occupation administration, whose territory included more than 2 million Jews. The head of Heydrich’s office for Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, prepared the conference notes. We learn of this from the one remaining copy, out of 30 top-secret copies of the meeting's minutes, that Adolf Eichmann had prepared and was found in 1948 and confirmed as authentic by Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem.
The real "burning" question is since ALL communiques sent to Hitler were monitored by the "Enigma" team at Bletchley Park was the copy of the meetings sent to Hitler intercepted by them and known to Churchill and Roosevelt?

In an HBO/BBC TV feature film co-production, "Conspiracy", General Heydrich (played by Kenneth Branagh) leads the meeting. He explains that Germany is facing the one drawback of world conquest: it continually increases its Jewish population as it annexes more and more neighboring lands.

 "Germany acquired 2.5 million Jews when we conquered Poland, and we will get 5 million more when we take Russia," he says. "Emigration of the Jews is not a solution, because: "Who will take them? Even in the US, as Jews are whispering in Roosevelt's ear, they turn them away." Then, with studied rhetoric, he announces: "From Lapland to Libya, from Vladivostok to Belfast, no Jews. Not one." This statement elicits an approving table-thumping by those present at the conference. 

A plaintive Yiddish ballad written in the 1930s by the Polish Yiddish actor Igor S. Korntayer, describes in stark terms the dilemma faced by German Jews desperate to escape from their homeland after Hitler came to power.

Vu Ahin Zol Ikh Geyn?
Tell me where shall I go,
Who can answer my plea?
Tell me where shall I go,
Every door is locked to me?
Though the world’s large enough,
There’s no room for me I know,
What I see is not for me,
Each road is closed, I am not free—
Tell me where shall I go.

America’s and the western worlds lethargic response "Who will take them?” to the Nazi measures that became embodied in the Holocaust is important to note in light of the discussion of  President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s proposal to the British to allow free Jewish immigration to the Palestinian Mandated Territory.

Just “How” complicit were the members of the US Department of State and the British Foreign Ministry-Whitehall - in thwarting Roosevelt plan and there by allowing the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe? 

In 1933 just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and began his administration Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party also came to power in Germany. When Hitler’s Nazi party took control they began a systematic campaign of persecution aimed at its Jewish population. Under the'Jewish policy' of the  Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935. Jews were excluded from German public life, deprived of their citizenship and forbidden to marry “authentic” Germans. The Nazis had succeeded in expelling much of the Jewish minority in Germany and in exiling those Jews still living in the country to an existence on the fringe of society. At the same time, the Nazis began to incrementally terrorize the Jews with the use of violence, which culminated in the nationwide pogrom known as Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) that took place in Germany and annexed Austria in November 1938.

The National Socialists had re-adjusted and manipulated the public opinion of Germany into the 'Third Reich' with it's dominance of racism: There was hardly any area in which the 'Jewish question' did not now play a major role in everyday life. With the official institution of 'dejudification' as a central part of German society  'racial legislation' and the 'Aryanisation' process had far-reaching effects upon the economy and in foreign policy, even before the war. The 'Third Reich' had succeeded in raising a 'Jewish question'. By means of compulsory emigration and expulsion, but also by repeated 'acts of revenge' and threats against the German Jews The Jews of Germany were held 'responsible' for the behavior of 'international Judaism' -"Communism" The extremity of the Nazi regimes persecution of the Jews in German controlled areas was made into an international problem that increasingly preoccupied the community of nations.

From 1933 -1941 the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration was largely inactive in response to these events. The Roosevelt administration’s effort to accommodate Jewish refugees from Germany and from Austria grew steadily in face of the escalation of their persecution in the years leading to World War II. Modest efforts were made and just as the war broke out and more and more of Europe’s Jews were caught in the Nazi grip, the U.S. State Department began cutting back at the bequest of the British who were fearful of the backlash from Arabs.

The Nazi policies were carried over into the period after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, with the aim of driving the Jews out of Germany and the territories taken over by the Wehrmacht. In the meantime, Jews were being concentrated in ghettos and concentration camps. A change in Nazi policy toward the Jews occurred only after the German invasion into the Soviet Union with “Operation Barbarossa” in June of 1941. Following quickly on the heels of the Wehrmacht were killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen (“emergency squads”) which systematically rounded up and murdered Jews in the newly occupied Soviet territories.

By November 1941 the Nazis had reversed their previous policy of promoting mass Jewish emigration, forbidding all Jews to leave German or German-occupied territory. Since the beginnings of Hitler’s invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa it was becoming known in the upper reaches of the Nazi leadership and government offices that Hitler intended all the Jews of Europe to be deported to the eastern territories and, by some means, to be executed toward the beginning of 1942.
For that purpose in mind the first experiment with hydrogen cyanide in the form of Zyklon B. was carried out at Auschwitz in a shed turned into a gas the chamber on September 3, 1941. This method was instituted for the mass-murdered of the Jews and the bodies then incinerated in crematoria. Able-bodied Jews were enslaved as forced laborers, only to share the same destiny somewhat later.

At the Wannssee Conference, of January 20, 1942, a calculated, industrialized campaign for the total annihilation or “the final solution of the Jewish problem” was instituted. Though the final protocol of the Wannsee Conference never explicitly mentioned extermination it was "understood" that “evacuation to the east” - a euphemism for concentration camps and that the “final solution”,was to be the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.
At the core of the “evacuation to the east”  was the creation of extermination camps in occupied Poland, where Jews were to be sent by train from all Nazi-occupied territories.

Roosevelt’s Plan For Palestine

‎With the rise of Nazi Germany  during the years 1933 -1938 the Nazi regime free ‎immigration of the Jews of Europe was of the utmost issue for Jewish circles. The critical ‎period of 1938-1941 was the period of the beginnings of war in Europe. It was also the ‎period of British appeasement to the Arabs of the severe restrictions of Jewish ‎immigration in the White Paper of 1939.‎

President Roosevelt's interest in transferring Arabs from Palestine began in ‎‎October 1938 after a meeting with Justice Louis Brandeis. ‎‎Brandeis reported on this meeting to Felix Frankfurter who in turn passed on the report to ‎‎Stephen Wise and to presidential adviser and script-writer Ben Cohen. Brandeis pointed ‎out in his report of this meeting how Roosevelt appreciated the ‎significance of Palestine, ‎‎“the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish". He was ‎tremendously interested - ‎and wholly surprised - on learning of the great increase in Arab ‎population since the First ‎World War; and on learning of the plenitude of land for Arabs in Arab ‎countries, about ‎which he made specific inquiries.”‎

The Historian Zaha Bustami commented that it was, “…difficult to tell who brought up ‎‎this subject during the meeting, but the information on Arab demography was provided ‎‎by Frankfurter.” Who had met with FDR a few days earlier a meeting to discuss the ‎‎Palestine situation; however there are no records of what Roosevelt said at this meeting. ‎

On 25th of October 1938, Roosevelt had a meeting with the British Ambassador to the ‎‎U.S. Sir Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the fact ‎‎that the Arab population had increased by 400,000 since the establishment of the [League ‎‎Of Nations] Mandate.” ‎

FDR also contemplated the creation of a program of well-digging ‎across the Jordan. ‎Roosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to find that money ‎for the purpose”. ‎FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made ‎available for irrigation ‎and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it;

‎‎“should be set apart ‎for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ‎ought to be enough ‎to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be compelled to ‎emigrate to it. ‎Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.‎

‎FDR also added that it would “be necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be ‎allowed ‎to immigrate into Palestine, and no Jew into the Arab lands.” ‎‎

The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled that,” The President was full ‎‎of Palestine” and that FDR called on Ronald Lindsay to call a conference of Arab ‎‎princes. FDR was adamant in having them lay down; “say ‎‎$200,000,000 buying a farm ‎for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine, the money ‎chiefly to be used in digging ‎wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz.” Here, it is ‎quite clear that Roosevelt ‎intended the Arabs to "foot the bill" for the transfer of the Arabs of ‎Palestine.‎

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British Ambassador Lindsay therefore asked Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office to have someone prepare a “short answer to this scheme” to have in readiness, ‎‎although he stressed that he would not take the initiative in sending a reply to the ‎‎President. Lindsay’s request was first dealt with by Lacy Baggalay of the Foreign Office. ‎He first ‎quoted experts, who held that the possibilities of finding water in quantity by ‎boring in ‎Transjordan were, “quite restricted”. He then continued, “But even assuming ‎that water ‎could be found in large quantities, it is now out of the question that any Arabs ‎should be ‎‎'compelled' to emigrate to the lands thus brought into cultivation."

"Whatever ‎else may ‎remain uncertain about the problem of Palestine, the impossibility of ‎compulsion on this ‎scale is now beyond dispute."‎

There are those who blame the genesis of Roosevelt's idea of a forcible or voluntary ‎eviction of Palestinian Arabs ‎to Trans-Jordan or other neighboring lands on Roosevelt’s ‎contacts with Zionist circles in the summer of 1938 perhaps in discussions with Brandeis ‎and ‎Frankfurter.

So "Who" actually had given Roosevelt the idea that irrigation of the Transjordan desert would create a ‎‎suitable location for the Arab transferees? The indications are that it came from the State ‎‎Department where at that period Edward Norman was in contact with government ‎‎officials to advance his own transfer plans. Although Norman was at the time in contact ‎‎with the State Department, his plans were in fact to irrigate Iraq by means of the dams it ‎‎had recently constructed.‎‎ ‎

Roosevelt summoned Lindsay for a further meeting, presumably during the first half of ‎‎November. At this meeting, the President said that he thought that “the British should call ‎‎in some of the Arab leaders from Palestine and some of the leaders from the adjoining ‎‎Arab countries.”‎

"The British should explain to them that they, the Arabs, had within their ‎‎control large territories ample to sustain their people.” He also pointed out that Jewish ‎‎immigration to Palestine and Transjordan would not harm the Arabs since there was ‎‎plenty of room for everyone. Roosevelt then went on to propose transfer of Arabs, “Some ‎‎of the Arabs on poor land in Palestine could be given much better land in adjoining Arab ‎‎countries."

British Ambassador ‎‎Lindsay answered Roosevelt by saying that there was opposition in both the Arab and ‎‎Moslem world but the President “belittled this opposition and thought it due ‎largely to ‎British indecision and conflicting policy.”

Roosevelt had also thought of ideas of how to finance this transfer. He thought that “if a ‎plan was ‎devised for a settlement of 100,000 families costing $3,000 a family or ‎‎$300 million the ‎funds might be raised” by the American Government, the British and ‎French ‎Governments, and private subscriptions - largely Jewish; each of these bodies ‎would ‎contribute $100 million.‎‎

Towards the end of December the British Charge d'Affaires in Washington met with ‎‎Sumner Welles and handed him a memorandum on transfer received from the British ‎‎Government, adding that Roosevelt would probably be interested in it.‎‎ ‎After pointing out that the latest available evidence did not bear out the belief that any ‎‎considerable quantity of water could be obtained in Transjordan at shallow levels by ‎‎boring wells, the memorandum continued,

“Suggestions have also been ‎made that if the ‎free offer of cultivable land in Transjordan did not suffice to attract the ‎Arabs from ‎Palestine; they might be compelled to emigrate from it, with the object of ‎vacating land in ‎Palestine for settlement by Jews.”

Until the Wannssee conference of January 1942 there was still hope in Jewish / Zionistic ‎circles that the Nazis would allow mass Jewish immigration. With the inevitable invasion ‎of Poland by the Nazis in September 1939 the doors of Europe began to close and the fate ‎of European Jewry was sealed.

The British Government “Complicity” can be found in Whitehall’s fear of the repercussions in Britain, India and the ‎Moslem world if they should back Roosevelt's plan of Arab "resettlement". They saw the threat to the sources of raw materials and oil for the Empire ‎in agreeing to Roosevelt’s proposals. Their Empire would be in jeopardy due to their ‎promises made to the Jews. 

Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office brought, ‎in his words, the “fallacy” which Roosevelt was ‎using to try and solve the Palestine ‎problem in a reply sent to Lindsay saying that the British ‎government would not even ‎contemplate such an idea. That  His Majesty's ‎Government would be ‎accused of such a thing. That it would be “thoroughly ‎unjust” to compel the "long-established community" the Arabs to ‎transfer from Palestine “to make room for immigrants ‎‎[Jews] of a totally different race ‎who have had no connection with [Palestine] for at ‎least 2,000 years.”

The British Government also felt that the ‎problem of ‎‎“redistribution of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine and across ‎the Jordan”, ‎was not one of finance but rather of politics.‎On two occasions, Roosevelt raised his plan with British representatives but he was ‎‎‎“firmly told that no amount of financial inducement would move the Palestinian ‎Arabs.” ‎Roosevelt however, was unconvinced by this British reply.

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Chaim ‎Weizmann had his first meeting with Roosevelt in February 1940. At this ‎meeting, Roosevelt put forward ‎the idea of bribing the Arabs, asking Weizmann “What ‎about the Arabs? Can't that be ‎settled with a little baksheesh?” Weizmann replied that “it ‎wasn't as simple as all that. Of ‎course the Jewish people would compensate the Arabs in a ‎reasonable way for anything they got, but ‎there were other factors appertaining to a ‎settlement.”‎

In December 1942 two and a half years later, Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary, 

Henry ‎‎Morgenthau, “I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine, and I would begin to ‎‎move the Arabs out of Palestine.... I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part ‎‎of the Middle East.... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish ‎‎family.... But I don't want to bring in more than they can economically support.... It ‎‎would be an independent nation just like any other nation.... Naturally, if there are 90 per ‎‎cent Jews, the Jews would dominate the government.... There are lots of places to which ‎‎you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well because there is a large ‎‎underground water supply, and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really ‎‎live.” ‎

‎

In October 1943, the question of “barbed-wire” around Palestine came up again in a ‎‎conversation between Roosevelt and Judge Samuel Rosenman, Justice of the New York ‎‎Supreme Court and speechwriter and counselor to Roosevelt. Roosevelt had spoken of ‎‎the “possibility of settling the Palestine question by letting the Jews in to the limit that the ‎‎country will support them - "with a barbed-wire fence around the Holy Land.” Rosenman ‎‎thought that this would work but only “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the ‎‎Arabs out.”

What should be mentioned here is that Roosevelt already knew full ‎well of the extent Nazi program of mass genocide. He had been informed by Churchill in the ‎Casablanca Conference January 14 to 24, 1943, of the entire text of the Protocols of the ‎Wannssee conference gleaned from the transmission of the file through the Abwehr ‎G312 “Enigma” program at Bletchley Park. ‎Roosevelt had also read the Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski's note which had been addressed to the Governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942 entitled, "The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland", which provided the Allies with the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.

In addition to being informed by documents and Intelligence reports during the course of 1943 an officer in the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (abbreviation: ZWZ or Union of Armed Struggle) of the Polish underground, Jan Karski, traveled to Washington as an emissary of the Polish Resistance to meet with PresidentFranklin Roosevelt and report directly to the President on the European conflict and specifically conditions in his own country, Poland.

In 1942 Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to gather information about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him first hand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Karski had visited Bełżec death camp disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard and had gained first hand eyewitness to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments in 1942 on the situation in Poland and especially on the the extermination of the Jews. He had done so by smuggling out a microfilm with further textual information in German as proof from the Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in occupied Poland.

Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski , as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN, SP, SL, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary who reported the meeting directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a detailed statement on what Karski had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. Karski then traveled to the United States to report to President Franklin D.Roosevelt.

Roosevelt requested that Karski meet with Justice Frankfurter and Rabbi Stephen Wise, as it would be of vital concern for them to be apprised of the horrors befalling their fellow Jews in Poland. Frankfurter and Wise listened to Karski’s detailed eyewitness accounts from Belzec concentration camp of the program of extermination of the Jewish people carried out by the Nazis.

When Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Wise were told by Karski’s of the,“the unprecedented' extent of the genocide”, Felix Frankfurter stated that he was unable to "conceive the inconceivable" of the full extent of the methodical extermination of the Jewish people.

In April 1944 two prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz and the Polish Underground once more provided information that they gave to the Allies – together with intelligence gained from two other prisoners who escaped shortly afterwards. This information formed the basis on the workings of Auschwitz
that became known as the “Auschwitz Protocols”. This was the first absolute and conclusive proof the Allies received that mass murder was taking place at Auschwitz.

Limited information about the camp had reached the West before this date, but the Auschwitz Protocols removed any reasonable doubt about the scale and nature of the crime, and the Western media were quick to report the news. On 18 June the BBC broadcast a radio story about Auschwitz, and on 20 June the New York Times carried a report which explicitly mentioned the ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was elected President for an ‎‎unprecedented fourth term. A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation ‎‎with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. Roosevelt had developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine as time progressed as he heard from State Department ‎officials and Military Intelligence reports of the events happening in Eastern Europe ‎against the Jews. ‎Some believe that Roosevelt's views had become more extreme in his criticism of British policy in Palestine, which was ruled by Whitehall’s  pro-Arab Middle Eastern stance as Arab "complicity" with the Nazi regime became more apparent.

After telling Roosevelt of their ‎‎difficulties regarding Palestine, Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius wrote in his diary, “He thinks Palestine ‎‎should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it”. Roosevelt felt confident ‎‎that he would be able to “iron out” the whole Arab-Jewish issue. Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred thousand Arabs, Roosevelt eventually ‎‎stated unequivocally that “Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it.” ‎and that as stated in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate that, "The Mandated area of Palestine should be exclusive Jewish territory.”‎‎ ‎

Almost all the statements that are quoted on this subject were not written by Roosevelt ‎himself, but by the ‎various people he worked and met with. There are no recordings nor written notes ‎either. This however, is characteristic of Franklin D. ‎Roosevelt since he was a man who ‎always had one eye cocked on historians who would ‎someday assess his role in history. ‎He tried to cover his historical tracks, using ‎unrecorded telephone conversations and ‎unrecorded private interviews but we do have the recorded comments from those present with Roosevelt and their diary entries.  ‎

Franklin D. Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12 at the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia and with his death so did his Plan for a Jewish Palestine with out the Arab "Problem". Once again the infamous historic statement “What If” resounds through history…

‎“Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed?”‎

“It was easy for the Nazis to kill Jews, because they did it. The allies considered it impossible and too costly to rescue the Jews, because they didn't do it. The Jews were abandoned by all governments, church hierarchies and societies, but thousands of Jews survived because thousands of individuals in Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland helped to save Jews. Now, every government and church says, "We tried to help the Jews", because they are ashamed, they want to keep their reputations. They didn't help, because six million Jews perished, but those in the government, in the churches they survived. No one did enough." 

Jan Karski during an interview with Hannah Rosen in 1995. 

In August 1944 when Allied planes bombed the IG Farben plant, Eli Wiesel, noted author and survivor of Auschwitz who was imprisoned in Buna-Monowitz (Auschwitz III), the slave-labor camp of Auschwitz. Wiesel later recalled the event by writing;

“We were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.”

For nearly three decades the failure to bomb Auschwitz during the Second World War and the Holocaust was a minor side issue rarely discussed. It was not until American historian David Wyman wrote an article in the magazine Commentary of May 1978 titled “Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed” was the issue awoken. His article included the startling photographs published by two leading Central Intelligence Agency photographic interpreters, Dino Brugioni and Robert Poirier.

Allied aerial reconnaissance units under the command of the 15th U.S. Army Air Force took photos during missions dating between April 4, 1944 and January 14, 1945.  A typical sortie employed two cameras equipped with lenses of different focal lengths. The photos were used to plan bombing raids,  determine the accuracy of bombing sorties, or make damage assessment. These 1944 US Air Force photos were redeveloped with technology available in 1978 gave a vivid demonstration of what U.S. intelligence could have known about Auschwitz-Birkenau, if only they had been interested.

One of these photographs clearly shows bombs dropping over the camp—because the pilot released the bombs early, it appeared that bombs targeted for the Farben plant were dropped on Auschwitz-Birkenau. Other pictures reveal rows of Jews on the way to the gas chambers. Wyman's claims gained considerable attention, and the failure to bomb became synonymous with American indifference.

 Aerial reconnaissance photograph of Auschwitz II–Birkenau extermination camp in German-occupied Poland taken in September 1944 during one of four bombing missions conducted in the area. Enlargement shows bombs intended for an IG Farben factory falling over gas chambers II and III.

The often asked question; “Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed?” Is not only a historical question but it is also a extremely moralistic question symbolic of the lack of Allied military response to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust. The issue was launched in the late 1970s when aerial reconnaissance films, which had never been developed or seen by anybody during the war, were found by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts to show that U.S. bombers had flown over Auschwitz-Birkenau on their way to and from bombing other targets.

 

The first time an American president had ever explicitly acknowledged the refusal of the U.S. to take military action to disrupt the mass murder process was at the delivery of the keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 1993. President Bill Clinton said the construction of the museum would “redeem in some small measure the deaths of millions whom our nations did not, or would not, or could not save.” President Bill Clinton referred to America’s lethargic response to the Holocaust as constituting “complicity” in what happened. “For those of us here today representing the nations of the West, we must live forever with this knowledge--even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done,” the president said. “Before the war even started, doors to liberty were shut and even after the United States and the Allies attacked Germany, rail lines in the camps within miles of militarily significant targets were left undisturbed."

The former Foreign Minister of Poland Władysław Bartoszewski in his speech at the ceremony of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27 January 2005, said: "The Polish resistance movement kept informing and alerting the free world to the situation. In the last quarter of 1942, thanks to the Polish emissary Jan Karski and his mission, and also by other means, the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States were well informed about what was going on in Auschwitz-Birkenau."

Auschwitz-Birkenau “The Death Camp”

Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. It was a complex of camps, including a concentration, extermination, and forced-labor camp. It was located at the town of Oswiecim near the prewar German-Polish border in Eastern Upper Silesia, an area annexed to Germany in 1939. Auschwitz I was the main camp and the first camp established at Oswiecim. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the killing center at Auschwitz. Trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau almost daily with transports of Jews from virtually every German-occupied country of Europe. Auschwitz III, also called Buna or Monowitz, was established in Monowice to provide forced laborers for nearby factories, including the I.G. Farben works. At "least" 1.1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, and about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.

The capacity to hit targets in Silesia (where the Auschwitz complex was located) by the 12th Air force was possible as evidenced by the reconnaissance photos in July 1944. US and British officials decided not to bomb Auschwitz based on the technical argument that their aircraft did not have the capacity to conduct air raids on such targets with sufficient accuracy, and in part with a strategic argument that the Allies were committed to bombing exclusively military targets in order to win the war as quickly as possible.

As early as May 1944 the U.S. Army Air Forces had the capability to strike Auschwitz at will. The rail lines from Hungary were also well within range, though for rail-line bombing to be effective it had to be sustained. On July 7, 1944, American bombers flew over the rail lines to Auschwitz. On August 20, 127 B-17s, with an escort of 100 P-51 fighter craft, dropped 1,336 500-pound bombs on the IG Farben synthetic-oil factory that was less than 5 miles (8 km) east of Birkenau. German oil reserves were a priority American target, and the Farben plant ranked high on the target list. The death camp remained untouched. It should be noted that military conditions imposed some restrictions on any effort to bomb Auschwitz. For the bombing to be feasible, it had to be undertaken by day in good weather and between July and October 1944.

There are those who claim that the question of bombing Auschwitz first arose in the summer of 1944, more than two years after the gassing of Jews had begun and at a time when more than 90 percent of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust were already dead. These detractors claim that it could not have arisen earlier because not enough was known specifically about Auschwitz, and the camps were outside the range of Allied bombers.

However the truth is, as I mentioned in the quote by the former Foreign Minister of Poland Władysław Bartoszewski in his speech,  that in 1942 a World War II Polish resistance movement fighter Jan Karski had reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments on the situation in Poland, especially on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust of the Jews. He had also carried out of Poland a microfilm with further information from the underground movement on the extermination of European Jews in German-occupied Poland. The Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski provided the Allies on this basis one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust. A note by Foreign Minister Edward Raczynski entitled The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland, addressed to the governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942, would later be published along with other documents in a widely distributed leaflet

Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Prime Minister, as well as members of political parties such as the Socialist Party, National Party, Labor Party, People's Party, the Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, giving a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In July 1943 Karski again personally reported to Roosevelt about the situation in Poland.

With the German invasion into Hungary in March 1944 the Nazis confined the Hungarian Jews to ghettos. Between May 15 and July 9, the Nazis deported some 438,000 Jews on 147 trains from Hungary to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. To accommodate the large quantity of newly arriving Hungarian Jews, the Nazis built a special railroad spur directly into Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At this time the Free Polish Underground sent the Allies more explicit information about the process of mass murder from eyewitness testimony that the Nazis were sending four of the five arriving Jews directly to their death. On some days as many as 10,000 people were murdered in its gas chambers as the extermination camp was strained beyond capacity. The Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers were now operating around the clock, and the crematoria were so overtaxed that bodies were being burned in pyres in open fields with body fat fueling the flames.

Given here below is US Air Force Recon photographic proof of a  huge transport of some 85 boxcars is present at the Birkenau rail-head. Details of the compound, including the expansion into Section III necessitated by the large influx of Hungarian Jews, were observed.
A large column of prisoners, estimated at some 1,500 in number, is seen marching on the camp's main north south road. There is activity at Gas Chamber and Crematorium IV, and its gate is open; this may be the final destination of the newly arrived prisoners. In Auschwitz I, we have the other part of the drama, those sent "to the right," being enacted at Birkenau.
In front of the Main Camp Registration Building, a long line of prisoners is visible. This was undoubtedly the group spared death in the gas chambers but condemned to a living death in an SS work detail. They stand frozen in time, awaiting their tattoos and work assignments.
The prisoners sent "to the left" were deceived into thinking they were going to be showered and disinfected. After undressing in an anteroom, they were herded into the shower/gas chamber and put to death by means of Zyklon-B gas crystals introduced into the chamber through exterior vents. The bodies were then moved to the crematoria or external burning pits for disposal.

Approximately 310,000 out of the 438,000 Hungarian Jews where murdered by the Germans immediately upon arrival at the killing center between May 15 and July 11, 1944 a period of only 57 days or 5400 Jews exterminated per day.

In desperation, Jewish organizations made various proposals to halt the extermination process and rescue Europe's remaining Jews. A few Jewish leaders called for the bombing of the Auschwitz gas chambers; others opposed it both sides feared the death toll or the German propaganda that might exploit any bombing of the camp's prisoners. 

It is important to note that before the summer of 1944, Auschwitz was not the most lethal of the six Nazi extermination camps.
In actuality at Treblinka the Nazis had exterminated 750,000 to 900,000 Jews in the 17 months of its operation, or some 1780+ Jews per day 
At Belzec 600,000 Jews were  exterminated in less than 10 months or some 2000 Jews per day. The Nazis closed both camps these camps with the completion of their mission, the destruction of Polish Jewry in 1943. It was during the summer of 1944 that Auschwitz overtook the other death camps not only in the sheer number of Jews murdered but in the pace of their extermination. The condition of the remaining Jews of Europe was desperate.

In April 1944 two prisoners, Rudolf Verba and AlfredWetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz made contact with Slovak resistance forces and produced a substantive report made contact with Slovak resistance forces and produced a substantive report on the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in great detail. They had documented the extermination process, replete with maps and other specific details. This was forwarded to Western intelligence officials along with an urgent request to bomb the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Once more the Polish Underground had provided information that they gave to the Allies together with intelligence gained from two other prisoners who had managed to escape shortly afterwards. This information became known as the "Auschwitz Protocols".

The report, forwarded to the U.S. government's War Refugee Board by Roswell McClelland, the board's representative in Switzerland, arrived in Washington between July 8 and July 16, 1944. The complete report, together with maps, did not arrive in the United States until October, since U.S. State Department representatives “neglected” to  mark the material as urgent.(see President Clinton's statement of "Complicity")

This was the first absolute and conclusive proof the Allies received that mass murder was taking place at Auschwitz. Limited information about the camp had reached the West before this date, but the Auschwitz Protocols removed any reasonable doubt about the scale and nature of the crime, and the Western media were quick to report the news. On 18 June the BBC broadcast a radio story about Auschwitz, and on 20 June the New York Times carried a report which explicitly mentioned the ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz/ Birkenau.

With the disclosures from Karski, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. together with his subordinate officials, demanded in late 1943 to remove responsibility for the refugee and rescue issues from the State Department- (Why was this done?)- in favor of an independent agency. At the same time, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, one of the major Jewish rescue organizations, persuaded a dozen influential Congress members to support such a move. Additional support and public interest consequently accumulated, and legislation seemed imminent.

Until early 1944, the Roosevelt administration declared policy was "rescue through victory," that is, rescue of Jews could only be accomplished through a military victory over the Germans on the battlefield.

Suddenly with these disclosures FDR issued an Executive Order on January 22, 1944 creating a War Refugee Board officially headed by the Secretaries of Treasury, State and War. Avoiding direct mentioning of “Jews”, the presidential Executive Order creating the WRB authorized it “to take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death and otherwise to afford such victims all possible relief and assistance consistent with the successful prosecution of the war.” The order directed all government agencies, and in particular the State, Treasury and War Departments, to provide the Board with whatever help it needed in fulfilling its mission. The Treasury Department housed the WRB and provided most of its staff, including its executive director, John W. Pehle.

In the War Department, because Secretary of War H.L.Stimson could spare almost no time out of his regular wartime duties, the responsibility in respect of the Board was relegated to his assistant, John J. McCloy, who in private was skeptical that the military should play a role in rescue efforts.

The Vrba-Wetzler report provided a clear picture of life and death at Auschwitz. As a result, Jewish leaders in Slovakia, some American Jewish organizations, and the War Refugee Board all urged the Allies to intervene. However, the request was far from unanimous. Jewish leadership was divided. As a general rule, the established Jewish leadership was reluctant to press for organized military action directed specifically to save the Jews. They feared being too overt and encouraging the perception that World War II was a “Jewish war.” Zionists, recent immigrants, and Orthodox Jews were more willing to press for specific efforts to save the Jews. Their voices, however, were more marginal than those of the established Jewish leadership, and their attempts were even less effective.

 By June 1944 information concerning the camps and their function was available—or could have been made available—to those undertaking the mission. German air defenses were weakened, and the accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to order the bombing.

In 1944 the World Jewish Congress implored the American government to bomb Auschwitz. In August, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy wrote to Leon Kubowitzki of the World Jewish Congress, noting that the War Refugee Board had asked if it was possible to bomb Auschwitz. McCloy responded:

After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources. There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.

The War Department had decided in January that army units would not be “employed for the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression” unless a rescue opportunity arose in the course of routine military operations. In February an internal U.S. War Department memo stated, “We must constantly bear in mind, however, that the most effective relief which can be given victims of enemy persecution is to insure the speedy defeat of the Axis.” This was the internal policy of the Roosevelt administration to reject all the requests because it was opposed to diverting any military resources for humanitarian objectives from victory in the war effort.

There are those who assume that anti-Semitism or indifference to the plight of the Jews—was the primary cause of the refusal to support bombing, this may have been however the issue is much more complex. In a meeting of the Jewish leadership in Palestine embodied in the Jewish Agency executive committee, met on June 11, 1944 in Jerusalem and refused to call for the bombing of Auschwitz. Chairman of the executive committee David Ben-Gurion, said, “We do not know the truth concerning the entire situation in Poland and it seems that we will be unable to propose anything concerning this matter.”

Once the Vrba-Wetzler report arrived in Palestine, along with new information from the Zionistic Partisans and members of the Socialist Bund movement over the pace and extent of extermination. Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency executive committee had come to understand what was happening in Poland and they were forcefully calling for the bombing by July.

Jewish Agency officials appealed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who told his foreign secretary Anthony Eden on July 7, “Get anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if necessary.” Similar requests were also made to American officials to bomb Auschwitz.

At the same time that the Jews were asking for the bombing of Auschwitz the Free Polish Army and underground were begging for aid in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 by bombing the city.

Yet the Americans denied the requests to bomb Auschwitz, citing several reasons: military resources could not be diverted from the war effort (as they were to support the non-Jewish Poles); bombing Auschwitz might prove ineffective; and bombing might provoke even more vindictive German action. On the other hand, the Americans did not evoke the claim that Auschwitz was outside the range of the most effective American bombers.

Military historians have challenged Holocaust historians in an ineffectual debate whole books have been written in recent years arguing about the practicalities of bombing Auschwitz. There is a general expert consensus that there would have been little point in bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz  since the Nazis would have simply diverted the transports to another track or found alternative means of getting the Jews to the camp.

So "What IF" if the gas chambers II and III would have been destroyed? 

The Germans had two previous gas chambers – known as Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 – which pre-dated these larger killing factories  which were still available for use at Auschwitz/Birkenau  that the Auschwitz Protocols had not mentioned

Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 would therefore not have been destroyed by any Allied bombing attempt, and they offered all the killing capacity the Germans needed from the summer of 1944 onwards, since by then the massive influx of the Hungarian Jewry had already been exterminated at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

So the debate rages on.

"Was bombing feasible, and when?" 

From what air fields would the bombers take off, and where would they land? 

What airplanes would be used?

What escorts would be required, and at what cost in men and material?

Could lives have been saved and if so how many?

And at what cost to the Allies?

But in addition to military considerations, political questions were at issue.

To whom and how deeply did the plight of the Jews matter?

Were Jews effective or ineffective in advancing the cause of their brethren abroad?

Did they comprehend their plight?

Were they compromised by their fears of anti-Semitism or by the fears they shared with American political leaders that the World War would be perceived as a Jewish war? 

Historians are uncomfortable with the counter-factual speculation “What if…” but we still bow our heads in shame and whisper "What if."

UNWRA: The Real Story

The subject of US Government funding for UNRWA has recently been addressed  in the news media following Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) attempt to have an amendment attached to the funding bill for the State Department, for fiscal year 2013, that would require the State Department to provide to Congress:

1) the number of Palestinians physically displaced from their homes in what became Israel in 1948, and

2) the number of their descendants administered by UNRWA (that is, on UNRWA's rolls today as refugees).

UNRWA is the only international refugee agency in the world dedicated to one group of refugees, the Arab "refugees" of the League of Nations Mandated Territory of “Palestine”.  UNRWA was created by General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) on December 8, 1949, with the initial mandate to provide “direct relief and works programs” to Palestine refugees, in order to “prevent conditions of starvation and distress… and to further conditions of peace and stability”.

As stated on their web site:

• UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – education, health, relief and social services – to 5 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East.
• When the Agency started working in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees.
• One-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.4 million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

All other refugees of the entire world are cared for by the UNHCR -UN High Commission for Refugees under which, in total deference to UNWRA, works to get refugees resettled as quickly as possible so that they might get on with their lives.

UNHCR will assist these refugees in their resettlement even if the only alternative is settling them permanently in the place to which they had fled or to a third place.

UNRWA functions from an orientation that is not only highly politicized but extremely anti-Israel. It says that "its" refugees continue to be refugees even if they get citizenship elsewhere, that their status as refugees will end ONLY by "returning" to the area within Israel. UNRWA says that even the descendants of refugees are also refugees, indefinitely via the patrilineal line. Which means UNRWA promotes "return" to Israel of people who have never been here, and whose parents or even grandparents have never been here either.

So how did all this begin?

On December 11, 1948 the UN resolution (UNR194) which later created UNWRA, the United Nations Relief Agency, called for the return of ALL refugees to their homes and defined the role of the U.N. United Nations Conciliation Commission as an organization to facilitate peace in the region. UNR194 was adopted by a majority of 35 countries from among the 58 members of the United Nations on December 11, 1948; however all of the six Arab countries, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen who invaded the Mandated Area and participated militarily and lost were then represented at the UN and voted against it.

At the time of the vote Israel had yet to have been admitted to the UN. 

Only with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 was Israel admitted to the United Nations on May 11, 1949 after Israel consented to implement other UN resolutions including resolutions 194 and 181.

It is important to note that UN resolution (UNR194) was passed before the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War was ended in the 1949 Rhodes Armistice agreement.

Furthermore, the 1949 Rhodes Armistice agreement was a “Ceasefire” agreement that established Demarcation Lines between Israeli forces and the Arab forces most notably by that of the Transjordan Legion which occupied the West Bank, also known as the “Green Line”.  It was hoped that at this time that separate peace treaties would be negotiated within a short time.

This implies that there is in fact only a temporary ceasefire agreement still in place. That an actual state of war still continues to exist between Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen, the countries that invaded the Area of the Mandated Territory from 1948,

ONLY two Arab nations that invaded the League of Nations Mandatory Area in May of 1948 have signed negotiated and finalized peace agreements with the State Of Israel; Egypt March 26^th 1979 and The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan October 26^th, 1994.

Resolution 194 deals with the situation in the region after the majority of the Palestinian population who fled in mass, at the encouragement of the invading Arab “Liberators” and by mass hysteria spread by Arab propagandists of falsified atrocities, from areas of the Mandated Territory that came under Israeli control.

Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's, admitted that on the instructions of Palestinian notable Dr. Hussein Khalidi,  he fabricated a false press release stating that at Deir Yassin atrocities were committed including murder of children and rapes of pregnant women.  Another interviewee, Abu Mahmud, emphatically denied the atrocity and rape stories.

Nusseibeh, told the BBC that the fabricated atrocity stories about Deir Yassin were "our biggest mistake," because "Palestinians fled in terror" and left the country in huge numbers after hearing the atrocity claims.

As the signatories seem to be under the impression that all Israeli attacks on Arab villages were unprovoked, I strongly recommend that they visit Arab villages, which remained neutral in 1948 such as the flourishing village of Abu Ghosh. Mohammed Abu Ghosh has been quoted as saying;

"What we did, we did for Abu Ghosh, for nobody else. Others who lost their land, hated us then, but now all over the Arab world, many people see we were right. If everyone did what we did, there'd be no refugee problem . . . And if we were traitors? Look where we are, look where they are."

Little if any heed is taken of the Jewish population that had been similarly expelled by the Arab Legion from their homes in Jerusalem's Old City and in the West Bank. Nor of the Jewish refugees of the 22 Arab nations.

Some 900,000 Jews fled, or were forced to flee, their homelands following the creation of the State of Israel. As a result, the Jewish population of the Middle East (excluding Israel) and North Africa shrank from 856,000 to just 4,400 today. These Jews of Arab lands who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and properties did not wallow in victimization or becoming consumed by hatred and revenge, they resettled elsewhere with little fanfare and no attention whatsoever from the UN grateful to their adopted lands for making it possible.

Since the inception of UNR 194, not once have the "Arab refugees" of the Mandated Area of “Palestine”, through their leaders or those leaders of the Arab nations that invaded the area in 1948, have accepted any resettlement resolution.

The resolution called for the return of ALL refugees to their homes and defined the role of the U.N. United Nations Conciliation Commission as an organization to facilitate peace in the region.

The resolution consists of 15 articles, the most quoted of which are:

• Article 7: protection and free access to the Holy Places
• Article 8: demilitarization and UN control over Jerusalem
• Article 9: free access to Jerusalem
• Article 11: calls for the return of refugees

Many of the resolution's articles were not fulfilled, since they were rejected out right by the Arab states or were opposed by Israel for being too biased and untrue, or were overshadowed by war as the 1948 conflict continued until Armistice in 1949 between Israel and Transjordan.

Israel continues to reject the biased resolutions which call only on it to make concessions and to allow only “Palestinians” the right to return. Israel continues to point out that Arab countries expelled and have denied more than 900,000 Jewish refugees of their confiscated their property. 

Since General Assembly resolutions are not binding, and only serve as advisory statements, there can be no obligation or enforcement of Resolution 194

Now let us review some historical facts of how the conflict began.

In the aftermath of World War I the “Great Powers”, England and France, or as they are referred to in the League of Nations as the “Principal Allied Powers” divided the defeated Ottoman Turkish between them.

In this division of the Middle East new countries arose overnight where none had existed beforehand as stated in the Mandate Resolution:

"Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand-alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

The “Great Powers”, England and France, realized that they needed to appease the Arab leadership for there participation in World War I and to win concessions in the production of oil. They therefore conceded to the Pan-Arab Nationalistic movement and grudgingly allowed the creation of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and later Trans-Jordan.

Article 2 of the League of Nations Mandate For Palestine states that: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble...”

Under Article 22 of the League Of Nations, The United Kingdom – the Mandatory power -was appointed as the administration of the territory of Palestine as a “sacred trust”.

• Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

• Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,

The Europeans nations knowing full well their obligation towards the “Native Inhabitants” included:

it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

So who are the antagonists of this conflict?

The Jewish people, who with the establishment of the State of Israel in May of 1948 became “the Israelis”, and the Arabs or “non-Jewish” inhabitants of the Mandatory Area who since 1948 have come to identify themselves as the “Palestinian”.

For over one hundred years animosity primarily among the Moslem “Arab” inhabitants towards the native Jewish population began to grow. The slow but steady influx of religious Jewish immigrants prior to 1900, who yearned to return to a homeland lost known in biblical terms as Zion, had at times felt the hatred in acts of humiliation, violence and banditry.

The waves of a more Secular Jewish immigration envisioned in the birth of the Zionistic Movement in the post 1900 period began to settle outside of the five major religious centers in agricultural areas. These Jews with the help of philanthropists such as Baron Rothschild and the Jewish National Fund began to acquire land in areas though to be useless by absentee Arab landlords. With the successful conversion of these previously unmanageable swampy lands into fruitful areas the Arab neighbor’s animosity and anger grew.

During this same period the growth of the Pan Arabism nationalistic movement began to spread among the Arab peoples of the Ottoman Empire and with it the growth of hatred towards the Jews.

The influx of Jewish refugees from Europe during and after the Holocaust era and most particularly with that of the 900,000 displaced Jews of Arab lands, the fires of hatred in the Arab world grew proportionally.

“So then what of the rights of the “minority” Jewish population which had been "ethically cleansed and expelled by the Arab Legion from their homes in Jerusalem's Old City and in the West Bank”

Article 11 UNR194:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation,

So what exactly is the purpose of UNWRA?

Is it to perpetuate hatred and hostility by the "embarrassed" Arab countries who lost in their initial effort to eradicate Israel in the "Nakba" disaster of 1948?

Only in UNRWA's mandate is refugee status accepted as "hereditary."It's "Mandate" encompasses Palestinians displaced by the 1948 War in the Mandated Area of Palestine, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children.

THEN

“If the UN recognizes Gaza and the area of the Palestinian Authority as a country called “Palestine” does this not terminate UNWRA?”

AND

"If so will not the Arab countries need to absorb those “Palestinian Refugees” born in Lebanon, Egypt, Gaza,Jordan and Syria?

“Where in resolution 194 is there a provisional allowing for the assisting of descendants of refugees of 1948 and the granting of them refugee status?”

Than if there is no provision than is UNWRA in violation of UNR194?