53. PM, August 2, 1944, p. 2; Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1944, p. 1; New York Times, August 5, 1944, p. 1; New York Herald Tribune, August 5, 1944, p. 1; Washington Post, June 11, 1944; Sarah E. Peck, “The Campaign for an American Response to the Nazi Holocaust, ” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 15 (1980), p. 399; Wyman, Abandonment, p. 266. The arrival of the refugees may have aroused some concerns. It may have well been pure coincidence that the New York Herald Tribune chose to publish three days prior to the arrival of the Oswego-bound refugees a lengthy editorial extolling the fact that immigration had fallen since 1931. It attributed this “wholesome development” to the restrictions and “selectivity” of American immigration laws. Two months later it published an even more strident editorial on the same theme. The potential arrival of a group of refugees and the liberation of portions of Europe may have forced the New York Herald Tribune to focus on those who would “flock” to these shores and not on those facing destruction. New York Herald Tribune, August 2, October 3, 1944. For newspaper coverage of the refugees’ arrival see the collection of newspaper clippings in papers of the War Relocation Authority, Emergency Refugee Shelter, Temporary Havens in the United States, folder 5, record group 210, National Archives, Washington.
54. Washington Post, March 22, 1944, p. 2; New York Herald Tribune, March 22, 1944; Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), p. 234.
55. New York Times, June 4, 1944, p. 6.
56. Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1944, p. 3; New York World Telegram, June 16, 1944.
57. New York Times, June 20, 1944, p. 5, June 25, 1944, p. 5; Washington Times Herald, June 20, 1944.
58. For a detailed history of the release of the report see Gilbert, chap. 25.
59. The articles published on July 3 gave the higher figure in the range, 1,715,000; subsequent articles all referred to 1,750,000. Apparently the Lithuanian Jews were inadvertently dropped from the original list of victims. When they were added, the toll reached 1,750,000. New York Times, July 3, 1944, p. 3, July 6, 1944, p. 6; Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 1944, pp. 3, 7; Washington Star, July 3, 1944, p. 2; Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1944, p. 15; Washington Times Herald, July 9, 1944; Seattle Times, July 3, 1944, p. 2; Kansas City Star, July 3, 1944, p. 12; PM, July 6, 1944.
60. New York Times, July 3, 1944, p. 3.
61. Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 1944, p. 3; Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1944, p. 5.
62. Washington Post, July 7, 1944, p. 2; Washington Times Herald, July 9, 1944.
63. Brigham’s article ran the length of an entire column, while another story on the page on Eden’s warning to the Hungarians about harming the Jews was three-quarters of a column long. New York Times, July 6, 1944, p. 6.
64. New York Herald Tribune, July 6, 1944, p. 3; Washington Post, July 7, 1944, p. 2. Other reports on Auschwitz that appeared during this period included a Christian Science Monitor report on July 10 by a staff correspondent stationed in London that the “extermination and massacres of the Hungarian Jewish community” had already begun. PM carried one of the more extensive descriptions of conditions in Auschwitz based on information it had received from the Czechoslovakian government in exile. This information was based on the eyewitness report which had reached Switzerland in mid-June. A Czech diplomat, who described the report as “so revolting” that he was barely able to force himself to read it, told PM that though a few details in it might be incorrect, it was “indisputably clear” that terrible cruelties were being “carried out [in a] wholesale, systematic . . . deliberately organized” fashion. Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 1944, p. 7; PM, July 6, 1944.
65. Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 1944, pp. 1, 7.
66. Christian Science Monitor, August 12, 1944, p. 11. Christian Century, September 27, 1944, p. 1113.
67. New York Times, July 19, 1944, p. 5; New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1944, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1944, p. 10; Christian Science Monitor, July 20, 1944, p. 7.
68. Allied leaders had spoken out on this issue. The press tended to pay their warnings more attention than it paid the actual reports on Hungarian Jews. The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both placed the story of Hull’s warning on the front page, while the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Baltimore Sun carried it on page 3. New York Times, July 10, 1944, pp. 5, 10, July 15, 1944, p. 3; New York Herald Tribune, July 10, 1944, pp. 9, 10, July 15, 1944, p. 3, July 19, 1944; Baltimore Sun, July 15, 1944, p. 3; Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1944, p. 6, July 15, 1944, p. 1; Washington Post, July 15, 1944, p. 1; Washington Post, July 15, 1944; Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1944, p. 7; Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 1944, p. 7. For a description of widespread oppression in Hungary see column by Paul Winkler, “Pogroms in Hungary,” in Washington Post, July 15, 1944, p. 6. Earlier protests by Allied leaders had also been covered by the press. Washington Post, June 13, 1944, June 22, 1944, p. 5; New York Times, June 13, 1944, p. 1, June 22, 1944, p. 9, June 27, 1944, p. 6; New York Herald Tribune, June 27, 1944.
69. Nation, July 31, 1944; Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 1944, p. 9, July 29, 1944, p. 1.
70. New Republic, July 31, 1944, p. 117.
71. PM, July 31, 1944.
72. Washington Post, July 25, 1944.
73. The Washington Post printed a letter from the director of the American League for a Free Palestine which contained the text of a cable sent to Winston Churchill demanding that as many Hungarian Jews as possible be saved by allowing them entry into Palestine. Washington Post, August 1, 1944, p. 8.
74. PM, August 2, 1944; New York Times, August 1, 1944, p. 17, August 9, 1944, p. 13, August 18, 1944, p. 5; Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1944, p. 3, August 9, 1944, p. 5; Washington Times Herald, August 5, 1944; Washington Post, August 18, 1944, p. 3; Baltimore Sun, August 18, 1944, p. 4; New York Herald Tribune, August 18, 1944; Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1944, p. 7.
75. New York Post, August 24, August 29, 1944; Washington Post, September 2, 1944; Nation, August 26, 1944, p. 229; New Republic, September 4, 1944, p. 261.
76. New York Post, August 7, 1944.
77. New York Daily News, August 14, 1944.
78. New York Herald Tribune, June 20, 1944; New York Post, August 7, 1944; New York World Telegram, June 16, 1944; New York Times, August 22, 1944, p. 10; New York Times, September 4, 1944; PM, September 3, September 4, September 5, 1944; Washington Post, August 30, 1944, p. 2.
Chapter 11
1. Charles Herbert Stember, Jews in the Mind of America (New York: Basic Books, 1966), p. 141; Vernon McKenzie, “Atrocities in World War II—What We Can Believe,” Journalism Quarterly, vol. 19 (September 1942), pp. 268-276; New York Post, April 2, 1943, p. 29.
2. Washington Post, March 21, 1943, sec. B, p. 7.
3. New York Post, April 2, 1943, p. 29.
4. Arthur Koestler, “The Nightmare That Is a Reality,” New York Times Magazine, January 9, 1944, pp. 5, 30; Christian Century, February 16, 1944, pp. 204-206.
5. Saturday Evening Post, October 28, 1944, pp. 18,19,96; In Fact, February 14, 1944, p. 3; Koestler, pp. 5, 30.
6. New York Times, October 27, 1944. The December 1944 Gallup poll asked people if they believed the stories that the Germans had murdered many people (the question did not mention Jews) in concentration camps; 76 percent responded affirmatively, while 24 percent did not believe it to be so. A follow-up question which was asked of those who had responded in the affirmative illustrated the depth of confusion even among those who were willing to acknowledge that many had died:
Nobody knows, of course, how many may have been murdered but what would be your best guess?
100,000 or less ..................
27%
100,000 to 500,000 .........
5
500,000 to 1 million ...........
1
1 million ...............................
6
6 million or more ..................
4
Unw
illing to guess .................
25
Although three-quarters of those polled accepted the charge “many were murdered” as true, they were strikingly ignorant about the number of victims in light of the fact that by this time tolls of well over 3 million were commonly cited. This number had been confirmed by varied sources, including governments in exile, the Inter-Allied Information Committee, church groups, Jewish and non-Jewish rescue organizations, the press, and, most importantly, the detailed eyewitness report on Auschwitz which had been released the previous month by the WRB. The report had been widely featured by newspapers all over the country, which considered it the official confirmation for which they had been waiting. Most of the headlines cited the death toll as being between 1,750,000 and 2,000,000. It was not until 1945 that Americans adopted more “realistic notions” of the number killed. By May 1945 the median estimate of the number of those killed was 1 million. This again included all victims, since the question did not mention Jews. Washington Post, December 3, 1944. George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York: Random House, 1972), vol. I, p. 472. Henry Cantril, Public Opinion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 383; Stember, p. 141.
7. Washington Post, April 16, 1945, p. 1; April 19, 1945, p. 2.
8. Studs Terkel, The Good War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 144; Washington Post, April 23, 1945, p. 6, April 27, 1945, p. 6, April 28, 1945, pp. 1, 2.
9. Washington Post, April 28, 1945, p. 4; New York World Telegram, April 3, 1945, p. 1.
10. St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 20, 1945, p. 1d; Editor & Publisher, May 5, 1945, p. 40. The recollections of the soldiers are from the Fred R. Crawford Witness to the Holocaust Project, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, and are cited in Robert H. Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 138.
11. The Nation, May 19, 1945 p. 579, reprinted in James Agee, Agee on Film I (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969), pp. 161-162; Milton Mayer, “Let the Swiss Do It!” Progressive, May 14, 1945, as cited in Abzug, pp. 136-137, 186.
12. New Statesman and Nation, April 28, 1945, p. 267; Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 278; David Halberstam, The Powers That Be, (New York: Knopf, 1979), pp. 43-44.
13. Time, March 8, 1943, p. 29; Newsweek, September 13, 1943, p. 40.
14. San Francisco Examiner, April 23, 1945, p. 7; New York Times, August 4, 1944, p. 5.
15. Bill Lawrence, Six Presidents, Too Many Wars (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), pp. 90-91.
16. New York Times, November 29, 1943, p. 3; Lawrence, p. 95 (emphasis added).
17. St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 29, 1944, p. 1; Newsweek, December 6, 1943, p. 22; Los Angeles Examiner, November 29, 1943, p. 1; New York World Telegram, November 29, 1943, p. 10.
18. New York Times, November 29, 1943, p. 3 (emphasis added); Los Angeles Examiner, November 29, 1943, pp. 1, 2 (emphasis added).
19. New York Journal American, November 29, 1943, p. 1, December 11, 1943, p. 1; New York World Telegram, November 29, 1943, p. 10.
20. Manchester Guardian, November 29, 1943.
21. Los Angeles Examiner, November 29, 1943, pp. 1, 2.
22. Lawrence’s skepticism may also help explain why the New York Times used the figure of 50,000 in its headline and not the 100,000 figure that the New York World Telegram and New York Journal American did. St. Louis Post Dispatch November 29, 1943, p. 1; Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1943, p. 1; Los Angeles Examiner, November 29, 1943, p. 1; New York Journal American, November 29, 1943, p. 1; New York Times, November 29, 1943, p. 3.
23. New York Journal American, December 11, 1944, p. 1. In a strange quirk of journalistic practice the paper ran the story twice, once on November 29 and again on December 11.
24. Lawrence, p. 92; Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1943, p. 1.
25. New York Times, August 30, 1944, p. 1, August 31, 1944, p. 16; Lawrence, p. 102.
26. New York Times, August 31, 1944, p. 16; Lawrence, p. 102.
27. Atlanta Constitution, August 30, 1944, p. 1; San Francisco Examiner, August 30, 1944, p. 1; New York Sun, August 30, 1944, p. 3; New York World Telegram, August 30, 1944, p. 9; New York Herald Tribune, August 30, 1944, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1944, p. 6; Baltimore Sun, August 30, 1944, p. 3; Miami Herald, August 30, 1944, p. 2; Los Angeles Examiner, August 30, 1944, pp. 1, 4; Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1944, p. 4; Life, August 28, 1944, p. 34, September 18, 1944, pp. 17-18.
28. St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 30, 1944, p. 1; New York Herald Tribune, August 30, 1944, p. 4.
29. Newsweek, September 11, 1944, p. 64; Time, August 21, 1944, pp. 36, 38, September 11, 1944, p. 36.
30. Saturday Evening Post, October 28, 1944, pp. 18-19, 96.
31. Christian Century, September 13, 1944, p. 1045.
32. Michael Balfour, Propaganda in War, 1939-1945: Organizations, Policies, and Publics in Britain and Germany (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 332-334.
33. The Christian Century, September 13, 1944, p. 1045; Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), pp. 299-301.
34. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler’s “Final Solution” (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 91. An example of this attitude was to be found in the aide-memoire sent by the British embassy to the Department of State on January 20, 1943, in which the British proposed some kind of private conference to deal with the refugee problem. The British stressed that “the refugee problem cannot be treated as though it were a wholly Jewish problem which could be handled by Jewish agencies or by machinery only adapted for assisting Jews. There are so many non-Jewish refugees and there is so much acute suffering among non-Jews in Allied countries that Allied criticism would probably result if any marked preference were shown in removing Jews from territories in enemy occupation. There is also the distinct danger of stimulating anti-semitism in areas where an excessive number of foreign Jews are introduced.” FRUS, 1943, vol. I, p. 134. The British claimed that antisemitism had been “revived by the authoritative disclosures of the Nazis’ systematic massacres of the European Jews” and therefore it seemed best not to focus on them. Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale (London, 1979), pp. 164-166, as cited in Laqueur, p. 92. For discussion of American attitudes toward Jews during the war see Stember, pp. 142-145.
35. PM, April 30, 1943, p. 8.
36. The statement by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin is contained in the report by Justice Jackson to the President on International Conference on Military Trials, Department of State Publications, 3080, 1949, pp. 11-12 (emphasis added). For discussion of the implications of the statement see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jewry (New York: Harper, 1979), p. 682. The Allied policy resulted in what today can only be described as rather absurd decisions. When the Nazis interned American civilians who had been stranded in Europe when the war broke out, they separated the American Jews from other American citizens. Two camps were created, one for the Jews and one for the non-Jews. Although the reason for the existence of the two camps was known to the State Department, it refused to officially acknowledge the fact that Jews had been separated from non-Jews. As far as it was concerned, “there were simply two American men’s camps in Germany.” Baltimore Sun, March 19, 1944.
37. Washington Post, April 24, 1945, p. 1; Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970), p. 227; Arthur Sweetser to Leo Rosten, February 1, 1942, as cited in Eric Hanin, “War on Our Minds: The American Mass Media in World War II,” Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1976, pp. 104-105; Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Warner Books, 1979), pp. 76, 246; Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (
New York: Knopf, 1965), p. 53.
38. Christian Science Monitor, January 30, 1943, pp. 2, 11 (emphasis added).
39. New York Times, January 24, 1940, p. 20, January 30, 1940, p. 18. In March 1940 the Greenville (South Carolina) News also condemned the “ruthless . . . persecution of the Polish people” and the “deliberate program of exterminating the Polish people.” It too failed to cite the Jews. That same month the Fort Worth Star Telegram believed that the Jews would fare better than the Poles, who could be expected to “dig their own graves and occupy them.” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 22, 1940; Greenville News, March 22, 1940; Fort Worth Telegram, March 9, 1940; Asheville Citizen, November 22, 1941.
In 1942 Victor Bienstock, the popular syndicated columnist, described the Nazis as bent on the extermination of Poland and its incorporation into the Reich. The sole difference, he argued, between the Poles and Jews was a matter of degree: the Jews would be killed more rapidly than the Poles; otherwise both groups faced the same ultimate fate. New York Post, January 5, 1942; Philadelphia Record, January 4, 1942.
40. Los Angeles Times, January 30 1943, sec. II, p. 4.
41. Time, August 21, 1944, pp. 36, 38; Atlanta Constitution, August 30, 1944, p. 4; Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1944, p. 4; St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 30, 1944, p. 1; Los Angeles Examiner, August 30, 1944, p. 1.
42. Saturday Evening Post, October 28, 1944, p. 96; New York Herald Tribune, August 30, 1944, p. 4; Atlanta Constitution, August 30, 1944, pp. 1, 3.
43. Newsweek, September 11, 1944, p. 64; Life, September 18, 1944, p. 17; St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 30, 1944, pp. 1, 12; Time, May 7, 1945, pp. 32, 35.
44. Life, August 28, 1944, p. 34.
45. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President Elect, 1890-1952 (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1983), p. 400.
46. Those participating included Julius Ochs Adler, vice president and general manager, New York Times; Malcolm Bingay, editor, Detroit Free Press; Amnon Carter, editor, Fort Worth Star Telegram; Norman Chandler, general manager, Los Angeles Times; William L. Chenery, publisher, Collier’s; E. Z. Dimitman, executive editor, Chicago Sun; John Hearst, publisher of the Hearst papers; Ben Hibbs, editor, Saturday Evening Post; Stanley High, associate editor, Reader’s Digest; Ben McKelway, editor, Washington Star; Glen Nevill, executive editor, New York Daily Mirror; William I. Nichols, editor, This Week Magazine; I. K. Nicholson, president and editor, New Orleans Picayune; Joseph Pulitzer, editor and publisher, St. Louis Post Dispatch; Gideon Seymour, executive editor, Minneapolis Star-Journal; Duke Shoop, Washington correspondent, Kansas City Star; Beverly Smith, associate editor, American Magazine; Walker Stone, editor, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance; and M. E. Walter, managing editor, Houston Chronicle.
Beyond Belief Page 42