The Times’s foreign editor during the war was Ted Bernstein, described by a colleague as ‘a brilliant Jew running away from his roots.’ Is it then any surprise that Jewish news, other than the Holocaust, was also shortchanged in the Times; that bylines such as A.H. Raskin and A.M. Rosenthal appeared rather than Abraham Raskin and Abraham Rosenthal?
Cyrus Sulzberger, a columnist covering the war, used his clout as a member of the family to discourage the hiring of too many Jewish reporters.
Changing Times
Of course the times and the Times have changed, and the journalism of today is significantly different from the journalism of the 1940’s. Now journalists are obsessed with sex and scandal, fires and sports, weather and murders, tilting toward sensationalism whenever the competitive opportunity beckons. Negative and cynical, they distrust the government and disparage politicians.
Back then, journalists operated in a narrower environment, with simpler rules. They marched to the government’s beat; they hated Hitler and Tojo; they supported the boys at the front.
It should be clear that the Holocaust was unique, the reporting of the Holocaust was unique, and neither can be duplicated. So long as there is a strong Israel and an articulate, influential Jewish community in the United States, I feel confident in saying that another Holocaust – another foreign, state-run program of extermination of the Jews – would be impossible. But other mass killings? These are not only possible, but likely.
If a story were to break today about another Holocaust, there is no doubt that it would be front-page news. Such horrible secrets can no longer be kept for months and years. Responsible officials are constantly reminded that what was tolerated during the Holocaust is unacceptable behavior today.
During a mid-1990’s visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, Strobe Talbott, at the time a deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, read John McCloy’s 50-year-old negative response to a demand by the World Jewish Congress that the Allies bomb the rail lines leading into Auschwitz. The response and the demand were on a museum wall flanking a huge blow-up of the death camps.
“Remember, Strobe,” said his companion, the museum’s then-director, Walter Reich, “any letter you write may end up on a museum wall.”
Marvin Kalb’s distinguished career in journalism encompasses 30 years of award-winning reporting for CBS and NBC News, as chief diplomatic correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, and host of “Meet the Press.” He is currently a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy (an institution of which he was founding director) as well as Faculty Chair for the Kennedy School of Government’s Washington programs.
This essay was adapted from a lecture delivered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
