THROUGHOUT 1943 Churchill sought to respond to the request from the Jewish leadership to continue the pressure on the Germans to realize that their responsibility would be held to account. Leaflets in which this was set out were prepared and dropped by the Royal Air Force over Germany. There were already some small film clips, some of which are in the Museum, of what had been happening in Germany in 1938-39. These were made into a film which, at Churchill's insistence, was shown to all United States servicemen beginning to gather in Britain during 1943 for the invasion of Europe in 1944.
On 24 July 1943, at Chequers, Churchill discussed the war with two of his guests, the air ace, Wing-Commander Guy Gibson and his wife Eve. Churchill wanted Gibson to go on a goodwill tour of Canada and the United States. Eve Gibson later recalled: "We were shown a film, captured from the Germans, depicting the atrocities inflicted on the Jews and inhabitants of the occupied countries. It was quite ghastly and the Prime Minister was very, very moved. He told me that it was shown to every American serviceman arriving in this country"
Five prisoners escaped from Auschwitz in order to bring news to the West of what was happening to the Jews there. Four were Jews. One was a Polish Catholic medical student. The moment their information reached the West, the moment the "unknown destination" was revealed as Auschwitz, and the truth of the gas chambers there made clear, there was a tremendous and understandable outcry. (The first thing that has always struck me is: what would have happened if these escapees had made their way West in 1943 or even at the end of 1942?)
The impact of their report on the Jewish and non-Jewish world was dramatic, and traumatic. Immediately an exceptional flurry of activity began in an attempt to do something to save those Hungarian Jews who had been, or were about to be, deported. The two most senior members of the Jewish Agency, Dr. Weizmann and foreign minister Moishe Shertok, apprised of this information, went personally to London. The Agency was the British-appointed liaison between the Jews in Palestine and the British government. On 6 July 1944, in a meeting with Anthony Eden, Weizmann and Shertok made five urgent and desperate suggestions. The first was that the allies should publish a declaration expressing their readiness to admit Jewish refugees (or as they called them, "fugitives") from any territory into the neutral countries (Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey) adjacent to Nazi-controlled Europe, persuading these countries to give what was called "temporary shelter" to those escaping the massacres. Eden and the British government responded immediately and with alacrity to this request.
The second suggestion was that those governments with diplomatic representation in Hungary should be asked to request their representatives in Budapest to issue protective documents for the Jews of Hungary And this, too, was done. As you know from 9 July, three days later, Raoul Wallenberg began issuing his protective documents in Budapest.
The third request, which was acceded to immediately, was that a "stern warning" be issued, published and broadcast to Hungarian officials, railwaymen and the Hungarian population in general: that anyone convicted of having taken part in the rounding up of Jews or their deportation would be considered a war criminal and treated accordingly Again, one sees the tremendous reliance on, and belief in, the war criminal path towards halting war crimes: that if people knew they were to be brought to trial as war criminals, they would cease their crimes. To this, too, the British government acceded immediately: broadcasts were made in Hungarian to Hungary: those participating in deportations will be treated as war criminals.
The fourth of the five proposals made with such urgency, on receipt of the facts about Auschwitz, was that Stalin, whose forces were in the Carpathians, should be asked to issue a similar warning on Hungary on behalf of the Soviet Union. Not only was this acceded to, but when Anthony Eden showed this request to Churchill, Churchill himself drafted a declaration for Stalin to issue in Moscow, in which it was stated among other things that the Red Army and retribution would enter Hungary together.
The fifth and final request of the Jewish Agency was, "that the railway line leading from Budapest to Birkenau, and the death camp at Birkenau and other places, should be bombed." WHEN Churchill was shown this request by Eden, he did something I've not seen on any other document submitted to Churchill for his approval: He wrote on it what he wanted done.
Normally, he would have said, "Bring this up to War Cabinet on Wednesday," or, "Let us discuss this with the Air Ministry" Instead, he wrote to Eden on the morning of 7 July: "Is there any reason to raise this matter with the Cabinet? Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary." I have never seen a minute of Churchill's giving that sort of immediate authority to carry out a request.
Churchill's meeting of July 7th gave Eden the full authority of the Prime Minister to follow up the request to
bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. As you know from the exhibition upstairs, two days later the deportations on the railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz ceased, and the priority of the surviving Jews of Hungary, and of all those concerned with them in the West, Jews and governments alike, was the issue of protective documents to enable them to find some place where they might have a safe haven. I suppose it is a great tragedy that all this had not taken place on 7 July 1943 or on 7 October 1942. For when all is said and done, by 7 July 1944 it was too late to save all but a final 100,000.