Sudan and the Holocaust
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof (“The Secret Genocide Archive,” Op-Ed, Feb. 23) writes that unlike the current slaughter in Sudan, “during past genocides,” like the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis, “it was possible to claim that we didn’t fully know what was going on.”
In fact, verification of the Nazi genocide was provided by the Allied leadership early in the Holocaust.
On Dec. 17, 1942, the governments of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and eight Nazi-occupied countries issued a public statement confirming that “the German authorities … are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. From all the occupied countries, Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invaders are being systematically emptied of all Jews…. None of those taken away are ever heard from again.”
Thus, the Roosevelt administration publicly verified the Nazi genocide at a time when approximately two million Jews had been murdered but millions more were still alive and many could have been saved had the United States acted.
Likewise in Sudan today, if America’s leaders show the will, ways can still be found to save many lives.
Rafael Medoff
Director, David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Melrose Park, Pa., Feb. 23, 2005