Bombing of Auschwitz

I had no idea this had been made public so early. Thank you Kai.

 

Must say I was personally quite surprised to see the extent of the murdering they were aware of. The Jews working in the camps managed to take photos of the lines of naked people going to the "shower" and send these to the Allied.

 

and the, earlier mentioned link (by Kai-Petri) at:

The American Experience | America and the Holocaust | Primary Sources

says that:

In January 1943, the American legation in Switzerland sends information to Sumner Welles, Undersecretary of State, confirming reports of mass executions of Jews in Poland

In my collection is an allied leaflet airdropped over Germany as early as January 13 (!), 1943. It tells the German people a lot on the "mass murders" going on. I hope somebody else finds the time to translate these for the forum. See first two attachments:





As early as october 1942, leaflets with pictures were dropped over Germany:

 

Rebuilding a railway was hardly unheard of considering how often they were under attack, bombing the railways by the camp would just have meant there was a convenient labour force nearby.

I'm fairly certain that bombing raids were far from unheard of in Germany at the time, in fact (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) they were actually quite common. A raid would hardly have drawn that much attention. That aside, there was pleanty of evidence of what was going on in the camps anyhow, locals already knew, the raid wouldn't have changed that.

I disagree, actually I would have thought that bombing the camps would have destroyed more evidence than it created. The Germans KNEW the allies were aware of what was going on (albeit not the scale), they KNEW the advance would sweep past the camps sooner or later, they KNEW that if the allies won there would be little question of looking for evidence. A raid would have changed nothing.