Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper Review

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(More customer reviews)I was turned on to this book by a friend and when I next saw him, he asked me, refering to the author Laurel Leff's revelations, "did you know that?" I answered that I didn't know that the Times had basically hidden the news of the holocaust but, on the other hand, finding this out didn't surprise me. Sulzberger was an assimilated Jew, the descendent of Rabbi Steven Wise, a renowned Reform Rabbi whose theology was very assimilationist. Thus, despite his Jewishness, the Times rarely ran a major story about what was going on in the concentration camps and the stories that were written were not positioned in a prominent place. If they made the front page, it would not be postioned as the lead story.
Incredibly, the coverage of the holocaust did not mention "Jews" specifically. By reading the Times, you would not have known the extent of the genocide nor would you have known that Jews were the major target of the Nazi extermination efforts. It is important to note that there was never a "smoking gun" uncovered, i.e., a memo or written directive from Sulzberger ordering the staff of the Times to soft pedal the events in the concentration camps. What is beyond dispute is that the Sulzberger family was secular and did not view Jews as a people. What is further beyond dispute is that the coverage by the Times was scant. Thus, whether by directive or not, the Times failed miserably in its role as "journal of record," making a mockery of its motto "all the news that's fit to print. What is particularly reprehensible is that members of the Sulzberger family were being rescued while the details of the holocaust were being quashed.
The Times, could have been influential but, tragically, it failed to exercise it's influence. Roosevelt basically looked the other way and, in sadness, we can only wonder whether he could have withstood the pressure and continued to do little if the Times had fully covered the events. Back then the Times obviously had an agenda and today, it still does. There was daily coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses with one breathless headline after another. That was the more recent Times' agenda, specifically, to discredit the efforts in Iraq, particularly in an election year when the events there might have been a campaign issue. Tragically, there were no such breathless headlines during the darkest hours of the holocaust.


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