Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea. Why were those trains allowed to roll unhindered into Poland? Why
were the tracks leading to Birkenau never bombed? I have put these questions to American presidents and generals and to high-ranking Soviet officers. Since Moscow and Washington knew what the killers were doing in the death camps, why was nothing done at least to slow down their “production”? That not a single Allied military aircraft ever tried to destroy the rail lines converging on Auschwitz remains an outrageous enigma into Poland? Why were the tracks leading to Birkenau never bombed? How does Wiesel’s choice of genre prove beneficial in the excerpt?
N this excerpt, the writer criticizes that the Allies did not respond strongly enough to the death camps in Germany and Poland. He argues that it was easy to postpone the deaths of some people and that one should fight at every instance against crime. It is clear that the author is against the opinion that countries should remain neutral or that people should avoid confrontation at all costs; when human lives are at stake one should mobilize and dispose of the mantle of neutrality. He would probably agree with the opinion that one should proactively fight injustice; this practice would have saved many lives during the holocaust. The correct answer is b. D is wrong because while he thinks that their stance was bad, they did not cause the Holocaust; they just handled it incorrectly.
