"Throughout
the war, and particularly in 1943, one of the main strategic goals of
the heavy Allied bombing was to damage the [German-controlled] railway network. Despite the
Allies’ enormous effort, the Germans - whose efficiency is beyond
dispute - managed to repair the damage quickly, and the trains
functioned on all fronts to the end of the war. So did the arms
industry, which, despite heavy aerial bombardments, continued to
manufacture and even increased its output.…The tale that an Allied bombing of the railway lines
could have saved the Jews from destruction during the Holocaust needs to
be eradicated, once and for all."
Rail lines to Auschwitz
Asher Izrael writes in Ha'aretz:
…Could the bombing of railway lines really have prevented the Holocaust? The Americans bombed the city of Cluj in Transylvania at midday on June 2, 1944. I was there that day, in a temporary concentration camp located inside a brick factory.
Most of the Jews were no longer there because they had been deported to the camps in Poland, on transports that left by train every other day. The bombing was something that can never be forgotten. Twelve hundred bombs were dropped on Cluj in less than half an hour. The industrial zone where the remaining Jews were - including my mother and myself - was bombed. So was the downtown area and the train station, as well as the railway lines leading outside the city.
The purpose of the bombardment that day was not to stop the deportation of Jews, but rather to stop the transportation of German reinforcements three days before the Normandy invasion. Cluj suffered heavy losses and damage, but despite the damage to the railway terminal and the lines, the last transport of Jews to Auschwitz left the brick factory two days later.
By luck and extraordinary coincidence, my mother and I were not among the group that was deported to Auschwitz. At the last moment, thanks to my mother’s remarkable initiative, we were placed among a group of 350 Jews who later became known as “the survivors of the Kastner train.”
Throughout the war, and particularly in 1943, one of the main strategic goals of the heavy Allied bombing was to damage the railway network. Despite the Allies’ enormous effort, the Germans - whose efficiency is beyond dispute - managed to repair the damage quickly, and the trains functioned on all fronts to the end of the war. So did the arms industry, which, despite heavy aerial bombardments, continued to manufacture and even increased its output. We saw that very well when we were in Bergen-Belsen and on the way there, when we passed through large sections of Germany in the summer of 1944.…
[T]he tale that an Allied bombing of the railway lines could have saved the Jews from destruction during the Holocaust needs to be eradicated, once and for all.