E. Berg Holt, the Christian Science Monitor’s special correspondent in London, also expressed these fears that Germany might actually free some Jews.
Supposing the Axis were to allow them to be transported to the Coast, how would the United Nations find ships to take them away? Where would they take them? How would they feed them?
Since the Allies could neither move nor care for this “excess population,” such an offer by the Axis would have to be rejected.33When British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was in Washington in March 1943 right before Bermuda, Secretary of State Hull raised the issue of rescuing the 60,000 to 70,000 Jews in Bulgaria who were threatened with death unless they could be rescued quickly. Eden responded, according to Harry Hopkins’s summary of the meeting, that the Allies should be very cautious about acting.
If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany. Hitler might take us up on any such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in the world to handle them.34
Because Bermuda was a military controlled area, access to the island was extremely difficult. Even if the proponents of various rescue proposals had been able to get to Bermuda, they would not have been allowed to present their ideas to the delegates. This was not fortuitous, but had been carefully planned by the organizers. Breckinridge Long, who was in charge of the arrangements for the American delegation, was particularly adamant on this point. He refused a last-minute British request that representatives of the English Jewish community be allowed to attend. No one who might raise embarrassing questions or stymie the public relations goals of the conference was to be present. When Jewish and non-Jewish groups criticized this decision, the State Department denied that Bermuda was being held, in the words of CIO President Phillip Murray, “behind closed doors.”35 But the Department’s denials could not alter the fact that the doors were closed—the meeting was on an island in a military area into which entry was completely controlled—and with good reason. Officials correctly feared that if the true nature of the proceedings was known, the criticism would be even more severe.
Surprisingly few papers were critical about being barred. No groups or individuals—other than the delegates—could monitor the proceedings, and the officials and experts accompanying the delegation were absolutely forbidden to talk to the press, but most reporters and editorial boards did not question these limiting conditions. In contrast, the press as a whole was vehemently critical of the efforts made to bar it from covering the United Nations Food Conference at Hot Springs, Arkansas, convened by Roosevelt and to be held shortly after Bermuda. Typical was Raymond Moley of the Chicago Journal of Commerce syndicate, who devoted two columns to the Hot Springs meeting. He argued that “access by the press to public officials” was a right.36 The president of the American Association of Newspaper Editors decried the limits that were to be placed on the press at the food gathering as a “dangerous precedent.” The New York Times discussed the controversy on its front page, and the Senate held an “extraordinary” closed session of the Foreign Relations and Agriculture committees to discuss the grievances of protesting journalists.37 Because of journalists’ protests Hot Springs was eventually opened to the press.
Few journalists had any protests about the arrangements at Bermuda because while their access to delegates and substantive information was extremely limited, they were not totally barred from Bermuda. One columnist who did complain was the Christian Science Monitor’s Roscoe Drummond. He wrote that the reason Bermuda had been chosen was that it was
nicely secluded from the press and radio . . . in a theater of war . . . . The lack of transportation means that the Administration has only to crook its finger in the direction of the War Department to prevent all correspondents from going to Bermuda.
In contrast to Drummond’s complaint, Raymond Clapper praised the conveners of Bermuda for not attempting to implement secrecy arrangements. He visited Bermuda right before the conference began and dismissed the charge being voiced by Jewish groups and the liberal press that it was being held at an “isolated island” as invalid. He then described the half-hour horse-and-buggy ride necessary for any member of the press corps to reach the meeting site! He also claimed that the delegates were accessible to the press. Clapper’s views were diametrically opposed to Congressman Emanuel Celler’s contention that Bermuda was being held under “hermetically sealed” conditions, or a Christian Science Monitor staff correspondent’s comments during the conference that the delegates were “exceptionally guarded in [their] occasional statements to the press.” At the conference’s end the same correspondent noted that reporters had only been allowed to interview delegates on “rare occasions and most of what they said was ‘off the record.’ . . . In no sense was the press encouraged” in its attempts to cover this gathering. But these complaints about the conference’s inaccessibility were the exception to the rule.38
Every time officials met with the press they elaborated on the tremendous problems facing them. The tenor of press comment throughout Bermuda reflected this. Headlines referred to “hurdles” and “problems” faced by the conferees. Anyone who read the wire service reports from Bermuda would have learned virtually nothing about what could be done and much about why the refugee problem was “insoluble at present.” While even Bermuda’s critics would not have taken issue with the contention that “winning the war [was] more essential than any other action for relief of oppressed peoples,” they argued that there were certain things that could be done even while the war was underway.39Some of the proposals which were either not considered at Bermuda or hastily rejected as not feasible included sending food to the victims; using neutral Portuguese and Spanish ships or empty American ships which had deposited men or material in Europe to transport Jews to a safe haven—including America; increasing the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States; changing Britain’s Palestine policy so that Jewish refugees could enter; and negotiating with satellite Axis countries regarding release of their Jews. Since it was becoming increasingly clear that the Allies would win the war, many people believed that the Axis satellites would have been anxious to win favor with the Allies and might have considered releasing Jews as a means of doing so.
One of the major “hurdles” facing those who wanted Bermuda to accomplish something concrete was that there still was a deep-seated anti-immigration feeling in this country. While Bermuda was in session, Editorial Research Reports predicted that it was “doubtful” whether Congress could be convinced “to make any sweeping change in immigration statutes to admit large numbers of European refugees.” At the last minute Congress had added an addendum to a bill to permit the “importation of aliens for agricultural work.” The addendum, which stipulated that these aliens had to be “‘native-born residents’ of North, South or Central America, or adjacent islands,” was added, it was explained on the floor, in order to bar the entry of “European refugees in the guise of farm laborers.”40
Even by the time the conference opened, the press was already ambivalent about how important this gathering was. While the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor carried the story on the front page, the San Francisco Chronicle placed it on page 6, the New York Journal American on page 4, the Chicago Tribune on page 8, the San Francisco Examiner on page 10, and the Los Angeles Times on page 11.41
On the same day that the delegates began their deliberations, the Inter-Allied Information Committee in London released a report replete with what Eric Hawkins, New York Herald Tribune bureau member, described as “sickening details of torture, massacre and butchery carried out by the Germans.” According to the report, one-eighth of the Jewish people had been killed and 5 million faced the peril of death. The article, which was on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune along with the AP dispatch on Bermuda, bore a bold five-line headline:
REPORT TELLS OF NAZI ANNIHILATION
OF 2,000,000 JEWS IN
EUROPE
Inter-Allied Committee, in Passover Document,
Tells of Butchery of Eighth of Jewish Peoples
and Peril of Death Facing 5,000,000 More
In contrast, the New York Times devoted twenty-three lines to the report, which it placed on page 11 as an addendum to the Bermuda story. The New York Journal American devoted twenty-five lines on page 4.42 Most other papers simply ignored the report.
After the opening day most of the reports on Bermuda in the major dailies were but a few paragraphs long and were to be found in fairly out-of-the-way corners of the paper. Reporters had little to tell except that the conferees faced “great limitations” in the action they could take, that any substantial programs or “large scale rescue” was “out of the question,” and that solutions were “unlikely.” Delegates claimed that progress had been made, though what that progress was remained a mystery. While Alexander Uhl of the liberal daily PM dismissed the official claims that the meeting was “getting to the heart of the problem,” other papers, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and even the New York Times, believed progress was being made.43 On April 22 the Monitor carried a picture of the delegates entitled “Envoys of Hope” and this headline:
Bermuda Parley Draws
Pattern for Refugee Aid
The St. Louis Post Dispatch also gave readers a feeling of progress:
Refugee Conferees’
Plan Taking Shape44
As the conference proceeded, both London and Washington knew that the delegates would be “under heavy pressure to disclose” the conference’s recommendations after it was over. In order to avert what the Secretary of State described in a telegram to Bermuda as the “adverse press and public criticism which may follow the withholding of information,” delegates told the press that nothing could be said because “Hitler will, if possible distort to his own purposes efforts of the conference.” The delegates’ silence was also explained as resulting from “anxiety lest premature publicity nullify the proposed steps.” In his telegram to the conference, Hull explained that he would not have raised the issue of the public’s disappointment if information was withheld at the end of the meeting “were it not considered of real importance from the point of view of public relations not only for the delegation but for the Department itself.”
The British were equally sensitive to how Bermuda and Allied government actions might appear to the public. They agreed that a small number of refugees be removed from Spain to North Africa so that neutral Spain would not be blocked as an escape route. Their main impetus for considering the transfer of these refugees out of Spain was that if they did not do this, world “public opinion” would conclude that there was no “serious endeavor to deal with the refugee problem.” Toward the end of the conference the chairman of the American delegation, Harold W. Dodds, fearful of public reaction to the conference, cabled Long urging that the British proposal for the removal of Jewish refugees from Spain to a camp somewhere in North Africa be seriously considered. It was important that this be done because this would “impress public opinion as matching British measures which otherwise will monopolize attention.” The only concrete result of Bermuda was the transfer—over a year after Bermuda ended—of 630 refugees to a North African camp.45
Long after the meeting’s conclusion, whenever the lack of concrete results was mentioned, the official explanation continued to be that “the most strategic work of the conference could not be made public for security reasons.”46 In the short run, whether for lack of information or just loss of interest in the issue, when the conference ended the New York Herald Tribune, which had placed the story regarding its opening on page 1, ran the story on page 8. The New York Times, which had also placed the opening story on page 1, carried this news on page 9. The New York World Telegram put it on page 27. Other papers followed suit.47
If the framers of the Bermuda conference intended to “pull off a propaganda coup,” they did not meet with total success: critics charged that Bermuda was designed to quiet public criticism, not save lives. While the gathering was still underway, Ida Landau, the Overseas News Agency representative at Bermuda, described it as “floundering in its own futility” as the delegates “pursue their deliberations in an attitude of doleful defeatism.” She suggested that they might “better go home” where they could make a “better contribution to the war effort by puttering in their victory gardens.”48 Freda Kirchwey considered Bermuda a “farce” devoted to formulation of excuses for the failure of Britain and America to “do anything effective.” It was an “excuse for inaction.”49 Congressman Emanuel Celler condemned the meeting as a “puppet show” in which even the “strings were visible.”50He believed that his prediction that Bermuda would “labor and bring forth a mouse” was justified.51 Even the Christian Science Monitor expressed some disappointment in Bermuda, which it described as “essentially a political meeting,” and noted the absence of those most familiar with the refugees’ situation—the representatives of refugee relief agencies such as the Red Cross, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Joint Distribution Committee. Even the final press communiqué, the Christian Science Monitor wryly noted, “said as little as it was possible to say in 300 words.”52
The New York Herald Tribune believed that Bermuda had been characterized by a false compassion. This was an “empty sentiment” because it neither eased the lot of those already suffering nor “avert[ed] any like suffering.” The New York Post demanded that the unallocated immigrant quotas for that year be used for refugees. The Boston Globe described the news on Bermuda’s accomplishments as “not encouraging.” It called upon the British Foreign Office and American State Department to recognize the “rescue of victims of Hitlerism [as] one of the things for which the people of the United Nations are fighting.” Celler termed the conference a “blooming fiasco.” The New Republic declared it “simply not true” that nothing could be done for the Jews until Hitler was defeated.53
The Jewish community was in the forefront of the ranks of the critics. After the conference Wise called the meeting a “tragic disappointment,” and the Bergson group placed full-page ads condemning Allied inaction. One ad stretched across six columns of the New York Times and carried the following headline:
TO 5,000,000 JEWS IN THE NAZI DEATH-TRAP BERMUDA WAS A “CRUEL MOCKERY”
Both the “mainstream” and Bergson factions had proposed different rescue alternatives, including revision of American immigration laws, permission for “a reasonable number of victims” to enter England, immediate consideration of havens in British territories, revision of Latin American regulations which made it difficult for Jews to enter the countries there, the opening of Palestine, the creation of something like the “Nansen” passport system which had been in operation after World War I for refugees and stateless people, and the establishment of an intergovernmental agency with “full authority . . . to save the remaining millions of Jewish people.”54
The most sustained press criticism came from PM and its foreign news editor, Alexander Uhl. Even before the conference opened, PM found it a cause for disappointment because it was exploratory, no Jewish organizations were invited, it was being held in a place which was inaccessible to the press, and it had been too long delayed in getting started. When the conference organizers claimed that even the most general information had to be kept from the press because it might be of use to the Germans or “embarrass negotiations with other countries,” Uhl observed, “it is unlikely that the Conference will pull anything out of its hat that will embarrass anyone.”55 After the meeting, on May 2, Uhl accused the State Department of not being interested in “getting too deeply involved in this refugee problem.”56 His final word on the meeting came on May 9: “Never was there a conference with so many good reasons, so eloquently and patriotically presented, to do so little.” Moreover, Uhl recognized that those who criticized or asked the delegates embarrassing q
uestions were on the defensive. “You had the strange feeling that . . . somehow you weren’t being a very good American.”57
Not all the articles on the gathering’s close were so pessimistic. The New York Times headline offered a different impression:
HOPEFUL HINT ENDS
BERMUDA SESSIONS
Communique Says Substantial
Number of Refugees May
Obtain Relief as Result58
The Chicago Tribune was also convinced that the conference had accomplished its goals. Its page 1 headline left little doubt:
End Refugee Parley;
Agree on Aid Plans59
Although the conference met with criticism, it succeeded in at least temporarily lessening the “considerable pressure” of demands for action. As the months passed, fewer editorials calling for rescue appeared in the press, and the general clamor for action was no longer as audible. After the first flurry of criticism about the absence of results, the press accepted with little more comment the official explanation that nothing could be done until victory. There were those who perceived of Bermuda as a “valuable contribution towards post-war planning and a lasting peace,” while others simply were convinced that all that could be done was being done.60 In June staunch anti-immigrationist Breckinridge Long observed that the “refugee question has calmed down. The pressure groups have temporarily withdrawn from the assertion of pressure.”61 Though the Jewish community and long-time critics like The New Republic, The Nation, PM, and the New York Post were not silenced, the press in general seemed satisfied by the official explanations given. Most newspapers and other periodicals did not question Britain or America’s commitment to rescue. It would be over six months before Washington would be compelled to act and establish the War Refugee Board. By then the tragedy would have reached far greater proportions.
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