It's a given that The New York Times ignored the Holocaust, a sin of omission confessed by the paper itself.Think about the treatment of the Holocaust in the 1940s and see how it compares to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 or the Dafur genocide that is ongoing in Sudan. It's the same. Dafur gets treatment in the paper, but it is limited to stories buried deep in the paper; not on the front page where it should belong considering the human toll involved.
Now we have a book that says it ain't so - that from the beginning to the end of World War II, The Times published 1,186 stories about the extermination of the European Jews. It just buried the stories inside.
"Buried by The Times" is the title of the book, and it's more damning by far than anything the critics ever said about the paper's coverage of the worst mass murder in history.
This book proves that The Times not only knew about the Holocaust but printed many of the horrific details. In the six years of the war, just 26 pieces made the front page, half of them in 1944, when most of the Jews were dead. And only a half-dozen mentioned that Jews were the victims.
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.
In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
But Roosevelt didn't give a damn about the Jews. When the chips were down, they were expendable. He never lifted a finger to save them, and when faced with the 1944 election, for the first time he spoke out against the massacre and it made page 1: "Roosevelt Warns Germans on Jews."
If I have a cavil about this wonderful book, it's that the author doesn't blame FDR enough. It doesn't excuse Sulzberger, who, as a publisher should have exposed the Holocaust by himself. But as Passover approaches, we should remember that even Moses needed help at the Red Sea.
Other media outlets take their cues from the Times, so how the Times treats any given issue determines how many other media outlets treat a particular story. That relationship continues to this day, and stories like Dafur are given short shrift by those outlets because they see that the Times doesn't deem it newsworthy enough to be on the front page. With limited space in the paper for 'newsworthy' pieces, these papers limit their coverage on Dafur - all while the death toll rises.
And then wonder why I don't cut the Times any slack over its coverage of these issues. Their failing to cover these major news stories can cost lives. Thousands of lives. Even millions of lives.
2 comments:
Great find, lawhawk! Yeah, it's stunning how history repeats and the Times never learns.
Thank you for this post. I assure you I will read the book. My interest is rooted in the fact as a very young child in the 1940’s, my parents forbade the use of the word “Jew” as a reference to a people, only to a faith. Interesting that Sulzburger influenced FDR along the same lines. That may be the root of my parents’ conviction, but I am not so sure. As I have stated elsewhere in posted comments, my family was very aware of the deaths of Jews in Europe from the late 30’s onward, and stayed in communication by short wave radio with our relatives in England during the bombing of Britain, who were also aware. I was always told to refer to men and women as such, and that religious terms were adjectival. At the time, as is apparent from literature, the word “Jew” was pejorative in many places. I think that is how my Dad saw it, a misused term, one not to used in his home in reference to a people. He never connect “race” with people either from what I remember. I want to read the book now to see how much others knew and under reported or ignored, so that it might explain the blanks stares I often get when I say that my family did know. I am 62 years old, and not until this year, have I been able to say the word “Jew” comfortably in reference to a people. Makes it semantically easier for me to connect Israeli’s with Jews outside of Israel. Doesn’t seem like much, right? It took a long heart felt conversation with a Jewish friend on the subject, plus reading of the Hannah Arendt Papers, published by link on Discarded Lies, for me to get there.
My father was a simple man, in a machinery business, and did at least 50% of his business with Jewish men in business’s that needed his equipment. He would refer to his business associates with the same terms he used to refer to the Detroit Tigers or the Detroit Red Wings….e.g., “the boys.” He always insisted on reciprocal business relationships whenever possible, buying materials from his customers when available. At the same time, in the 40’s, and more so in the50’s and 60’s, my dad’s shop was never less than 35% to 40% minority employees, which usually meant black men working alongside white men. In the 60’s this simple man invested his time and money on behalf of the defense of a black soldier imprisoned in Germany for murder, under dubious circumstances at best, engaging one of the more prominent Detroit law firms to intercede, successfully, and bring the soldier home. My mother nor any of us ever questioned his use of our resources for this effort, never even occurred to us. His only “connection” to the soldier was that he knew his brother and his mother, and that the soldier and I had played together from time to time when both younger. In the entire 82 years of his life, and I was close to him for the entire time, not once did I ever hear my father, even in anger, say a racial epithet or derogatory ethnic curse of another person, not one single time, not of one single person. I believe his secular humanism is what formed his guidance to me.
I am no where near that steady a persona. But Dad was a simple Irishman, with farm roots, who enjoyed life and the people he met, most in business or amateur sports pursuits when he was young himself. When he introduced me to a Jewish business associate from time to time (all in his age group or within 10 years of it) he would always comment that your word, or theirs, and a handshake, was all that was ever necessary to consummate a deal, and that it was important for you to keep your word because they would keep theirs. It was all about simple honor loyalty to him. I later learned that many of his associates in the Jewish community were more or less directly evolved (nicest way I can say it) from the Purple Gang of Detroit notoriety. Some others were survivors of the Holocaust, with tattoos visible on the arms as they worked in the sun of a summer day. I recall one, named “Rosey”, a huge bull of a man, with tattooed forearm, who would hire no one but prison parolees, so convinced that fenced confinement in general was abhorrent. “Rosey” in essence, “trusted” no one, but could be trusted implicitly himself. Only a small number of “Rosey’s “ employees were in fact Jewish. It was just his “thing.” I also learned that many of the children of the Jewish associates of my father carried on the tradition of “your word”, and some others did not, betraying trusts. At the time, I recall thinking, that the later were turning in to “gentiles.” Odd, no? One aspect of what my father imbued in me that probably saved my life is that when sent off to war by the Army, I found it easy to associate and make friends with Vietnamese and Koreans, to respect and honor them in return for the same given to me. Do it first was Dad’s way, became my way, and when it was ugly, the loyalties no doubt kept me alive.
Since I am an old fart now, with an interest in history, I want to know more about what was known and what was not at the beginning of my life, because much of it shaped it. Thanks again for the post, and for putting up with this epistle.
Aridog 4/22/2005
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