Why didn the Allied powers attempt to save Jewish prisoners from concentration camps during WWII?
It’s a good question. The most basic reason is because the Germans kept the holocaust a secret and for the most part the true extent of the horror was not revealed until Allied forces rolled up to the concentration camp gates. Remember, the camps for the most part were hidden in remote forests, the Nazis knew what they were doing was a terrible crime by most standards, and tried to hide it as well as they could. However, in at least one instance, in Poland I believe, Resistance fighters did know what was going on and sent info to the Allies…begging them to bomb the rail junctions the Germans were using to ship prisoners to the camps. The Allied high command decided the information wasn’t credible enough and there were far more important military targets to bomb…so it wasn’t acted on. Short answer: The Allies really had no idea just how bad it was, and there was little they could do about it even if they had.
