International response to the Holocaust

In the decades since the Holocaust, some national governments, international bodies, and world leaders have been criticized for their failure to take appropriate action to save the millions of European Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other victims of the Holocaust. Critics say that such intervention, particularly by the Allied governments, might have saved substantial numbers of people and could have been accomplished without the diversion of significant resources from the war effort.

Other researchers have challenged such criticism. Some have argued that the idea that the Allies took no action is a myth — that the Allies accepted as many German Jewish immigrants as the Nazis would allow — and that theoretical military action by the Allies, such as bombing the Auschwitz concentration camp, would have saved the lives of very few people. Others have said that the limited intelligence available to the Allies — who, as late as October 1944, did not know the locations of many of the Nazi death camps or the purposes of the various buildings within those camps they had identified — made precision bombing impossible.

In three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust.

Inaction by the Allied nations
See also: Auschwitz bombing debate, The Voyage of the Damned

While the Allies were at war with Nazi Germany, and were engaged in a massive military campaign of unprecedented scale against it, they did little if anything to either stop the ongoing slaughter of millions of Jews and other minorities, or to save and absorb refugees.

Evian Conference
The Evian Conference was convened at initiative of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July, 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees. For nine days, from July 6 to July 15, delegates from thirty-two countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France. However, most western countries were reluctant to accept Jewish refugees and the question was not resolved.

Bermuda Conference
The UK and the US met in Bermuda in April, 1943 to discuss the issue of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and the Jews who remained in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Bermuda Conference led to no change in policy; the Americans would not change their immigration quotas to accept the refugees, and the British would not alter its immigration policy to permit them to enter Palestine.

Inaction of the Red Cross
The International Red Cross did relatively little to save Jews during the Holocaust and discounted reports of the organized Nazi genocide, such as of the murder of Polish Jewish prisoners that took place at Lublin that the Red Cross discounted. At the time, the Red Cross justified its inaction by suggesting that aiding Jewish prisoners would harm its ability to help other Allied POWs. In addition, the Red Cross claimed that if it would take a major stance to improve the situation of those European Jews, the neutrality of Switzerland, where the International Red Cross was based, would be jeopardized. Today, the Red Cross acknowledges its passivity during the Holocaust, and has apologized for this.

Vatican
Although Pope Pius XII did not publicly speak out against the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust, the Vatican did take action to save many Jews in Italy from deportation, including sheltering several hundred Jews in the catacombs of St. Peter's Basilica. In his Christmas addresses of 1941 and 1942, the pontiff was forceful on the topic but did not mention the Nazis by name. The Pope encouraged the bishops to speak out against the Nazi regime and to open the religious houses in their dioceses to hide Jews. In recent years, the Vatican has expressed its remorse for not speaking out with more authority against the genocide.

Genocide
Towards the end of WWII, Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, aggressively pursued within the halls of the United Nations and the United States government the recognition of genocide as a crime. Largely due to his efforts and the support of his lobby, the United Nations was propelled into action. In response to Lemkin's arguments, the United Nations adopted the term in 1948 when it passed the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
After the atrocities of World War II and the planned extermination of Jews during the Holocaust, it was believed that the UN and its United Nations Charter did not sufficiently clarify the rights it protected. Inspired by these events, John Peters Humphrey of Canada led the effort to link human rights and ethics, and universalize basic rights for the peoples of the world. He was supported by Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States, René Cassin of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon, and P. C. Chang of China, and others. The vote in the General Assembly passed unanimously, but eight countries (the entire Soviet bloc, South Africa and Saudi Arabia) chose to abstain.

Nuremberg Trials
The international response to the war crimes of World War II and the Holocaust was to establish the Nuremberg international tribunal. Three major wartime powers, the USA, USSR and Great Britain, agreed to punish those responsible. The trials brought human rights into the domain of global politics, redefined morality at the global level, and gave political currency to the concept of crimes against humanity, where individuals rather than governments were held accountable for war crimes.