Golda Meir Wanted Allies To Bomb Auschwitz
Golda Meir, the future Israeli prime minister, wanted the United States and its allies to bomb Auschwitz, researchers have learned.
Researchers from the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies found documents in Israeli and American archives that shed light on Meir’s support for the unsuccessful campaign by Jewish leaders to persuade the Allied powers to bomb the Nazi death camp.
Meir, then known as Goldie Myerson, was serving at the time as a senior official of the Histadrut, the Jewish labor federation in British Mandate Palestine.
Amid reports of the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, Meir and a Histadrut colleague cabled the labor federation’s U.S. representative, Israel Mereminski, on July 29, 1944 saying that the Allied powers must be urged to bomb Auschwitz and the railways used to transport Jews to the camp.
Mereminski replied that he had contacted the U.S. government’s War Refugee Board, which conveyed to “competent authorities” their request for the “destruction of gas chambers, crematories, and so forth.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30