shoah in the news: patterns and meanings of news coverage of

SHOAH IN THE NEWS:Patterns and Meanings of NewsCoverage of the Holocaust

by

James Carroll

Discussion Paper D-27October 1997

PRESS POLITICS

PUBLIC POLICY

The Joan Shorenstein Center

Harvard UniversityJohn F. Kennedy School of Government

SHOAH IN THE NEWS:Patterns and Meanings of NewsCoverage of the Holocaust

by

James Carroll

Discussion Paper D-27September 1997

James Carroll 1

James Carroll, for whom “why?” is a fre-quent question and “ethics” a compelling con-cern, spent his springtime ’97 fellowship at theShorenstein Center on the Press, Politics andPublic Policy at Harvard researching and writingthis extraordinary essay. “Shoah in the News:Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of theHolocaust” is a thoughtful, provocative andpowerful study that deserves wide distributionand analysis.

Carroll, who is a columnist for the BostonGlobe and author of many books, including AnAmerican Requiem: God, My Father, and theWar That Came Between Us, which won the1996 National Book Award, raises a set of ques-tions that at first seems only fascinating but oncloser examination emerges as a profound por-trait of the press, politics and personal loss—andin the background yet another question that hasabsorbed Carroll for many years: what explainsthe Vatican’s problematic approach to theHolocaust?

Carroll in this essay examines the yearsl995-1997 and wonders why, after decades ofsoft-pedaling the story and for many years sim-ply ignoring it, the press has suddenly beendevoting so much front-page attention to theHolocaust. More than 600 stories have appearedin the New York Times in this relatively briefperiod—just about one a day. Thousands of oth-ers have appeared in other American media.Whether the stories have focused on Swissbanks, plundered artwork, Madeleine Albright’srecently-discovered Jewish roots or DanielGoldhagen’s book on Hitler’s WillingExecutioners, the Holocaust angle has beenprominently featured.

Why? Why now? “What historical event,”Carroll asks, “has generated as much or morenews coverage” fifty years after it was firstreported, in the spring of 1945, as this one?Other 50th anniversary stories, such as the endof World War II and the first use of atomicweapons in war, were also treated as major sto-ries in 1995, but two years later they could nolonger lay claim to the front page of any news-paper. They were already comfortably ensconcedas history. But not so the Holocaust, which notonly remained a major story but seemed almostto grow in scope. Part of the reason wouldappear to be that as this millennium draws to a

close people are attempting to define its princi-pal characteristics. Among them none appar-ently stands more gauntly on center stage thanthe Holocaust. “The Nazi death camps,” writesCarroll, “have become the pre-eminent symbolof the world gone mad, a distillation of the evilthat swamped the century.”

The Holocaust, as a news story, has a verystrange, twisted history. During the war, whenit occurred, it barely intruded into the main-stream press. Intelligence filtered out of theThird Reich to the effect that hundreds of thou-sands and later millions of Jews were being sys-tematically slaughtered—gassed and burned bythe ovenful; and yet when occasionally thisnews appeared in the New York Times or theBoston Globe, it was almost as an afterthought,a brief three or four paragraph story on page 15,a neutral bow in the direction of historic horror.Even when the war in Europe ended on May 8,1945, Times correspondent C. L. Sulzbergerreported from Moscow that 4,000,000 peoplehad been killed at the Nazi death camp atAuschwitz. Though he himself was Jewish and amember of the Sulzberger family, which ownedthe Times, he did not mention the ratherinescapable fact that most of the victims wereJewish.

After the war, as one decade of cold warrolled into another, leading to the 50th anniver-sary celebrations of the end of World War II,Carroll notes in his careful research that therewere appropriate moments when the Holocaustwas mentioned in the press—in 1965, on the20th anniversary of the discovery of the deathcamps, in 1985, on the 40th anniversary—but itwas rare. Indeed, the word “holocaust” did notappear in the Times index until 1980.

In 1995-1997, though, as the Holocaustbecame big news in the American media, forreasons Carroll discusses, the stories broke intofour categories: confessions, challenges, newly-discovered information and finally old informa-tion freshly-packaged. Confessions includedpowerful statements by leaders, such as,Germany’s von Weizacker in 1985 and Poland’sLech Walesa in 1991. Challenges pitted Jewishleaders against Swiss banks and French art dealers. New information highlighted declassi-fied U.S. and Soviet archival data. Old informa-tion, republished with a new top, also became

INTRODUCTION

2 Shoah in the News

big news, and this struck Carroll as “mostprovocative.”

After all, it had been known for some timethat the Nazis had stashed much of their plun-der in secret Swiss accounts and that manyJews, “as they saw the Nazi cloud approach,”had put their assets into Swiss banks, assumingboth confidentiality and financial security.Those Jews killed in the camps never returnedto claim their assets, and the accounts grew. Inthe 1970s and 1980s, this story appeared inmany newspapers and magazines, though it wasusually not fronted or featured, and in the early1990s John Loftus, who once headed the StateDepartment’s Office of Special Investigations,wrote two books (Unholy Trinity in 1992 andThe Secret War Against the Jews in 1994) detail-ing the exceptional story of secret Swiss bankaccounts opened decades before by the Nazisand by Jews fleeing the Nazis. And yet, obvi-ously, the story of the secret Swiss bankaccounts did not make any waves—there was, touse publishing parlance, no buzz. As late as1992, a Nexis search of the Times produced nota single news story. In 1995, according toCarroll’s research, there were only four stories.

Then the latest remarkable chapter in theHolocaust story began—two years of one storyafter another, from every possible angle; andthere does not yet appear to be a let-up. Perhapsthe explanation lies in the fact that the “agingand dying people” of the World War II genera-tion are coming to terms with the “unfinishedbusiness”of those years. Carroll notes deathbedrevelations by Poles, French and Dutchmen totheir middle-aged sons and daughters that theywere really born Jews. Or maybe it takes fiftyyears to be able to face the truth of what Carrollcalls “a continent-wide complicity” in the mur-der of millions of innocent people.

Carroll in fact cites many possible explana-tions for the upsurge of press interest in theHolocaust, but he returns to one more oftenthan to any other—the approaching end of the20th century springing memory and conscienceto face the truth of a terrible crime. SwissPresident Arnold Koller, speaking in March,1997, said: “We cannot and must not leave thecentury in a state of uncertainty, confusion, andembarrassment.” The press helps this educa-tional process, not only reporting such grippingstories as Albright’s religious roots, deathbedrevelations, Swiss bank accounts and newarchival discoveries focusing on old and embar-rassing secrets but by reporting on all theseissues helping to wash clean the conscience of

civilization before the 20th century enters thehistory books. The press in this sense belatedlyperforms a role it should have addressed farmore seriously half a century ago. Carrollcould—perhaps, should—have been more criti-cal of the press’s performance on this story.

As Carroll concludes his essay, he reachesfor Kierkegaard. Life is lived forward, thephilosopher once said, but understood backward.Carroll carries the thought one step further.“Journalism has to keep its eyes pointed in bothdirections.”

Marvin KalbEdward R. Murrow ProfessorDirector, The Joan Shorenstein Center on

the Press, Politics and Public PolicyJohn F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard University

James Carroll 3

I. Jews Out

On Friday, November 11, 1938, automobiletraffic in New York City halted at exactly 11A.M. For two minutes no car, bus or truckmoved, and no horn sounded. Taps was blownin Times Square in commemoration of the exactmoment when the Great War had ended twentyyears before. New Yorkers standing at solemnattention while the bugler played might have lettheir eyes drift across to the Times Building andits headlines whipping by on the newfangled rib-bon of flashing lights. They would have readversions of the headlines that had blared fromthat morning’s New York Times—the literal firstphase of news coverage about what would cometo be known as the Holocaust.

“Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn JewishShops and Temples Until Goebbels Calls Halt,”ran the top right, page one, headline. Echoes ofthis story and its aftermath would resound inthe New York Times for 60 years, but almostalways faintly. Not until the mid-1990s wouldnews of the Nazi attack on Jews again receiveprominence like that given to reports of whatoccurred throughout Germany and Austria onthe night and day of November 9th and 10th,1938. The sub-headline of the lead story, filedfrom Austria, continued, “All Vienna’sSynagogues Attacked; Fires and Bombs Wreck18 of 21. Jews are Beaten, Furniture and GoodsFlung From Homes and Shops. 15,000 Are JailedDuring Day. 20 Are Suicides.”

A story adjacent on the page, filed fromBerlin, carried these headlines; “Bands RoveCities. Thousands Arrested for ‘Protection’ asGangs Avenge Paris Death. Expulsions Are inView. Plunderers Trail Wreckers in Berlin.Police Stand Idle. Two Deaths Reported.”

These headlines refer, of course, to theKrystalnacht assaults which took their collec-

tive name from smashed glass. The New YorkTimes would be typical of the American newsmedia in the scant attention it paid in the early1940s to the unfolding horror of the anti-Jewishgenocide: the Times was nearly silent about theFinal Solution as it occurred. What stories it didpublish often downplayed the expressly anti-Jewish character of the Nazi program. In thedecades-long aftermath of the Holocaust, rulesof so-called objective journalism inhibited edi-tors from fully following up on the genocide,with the result that the Times, like otherpapers, continued to look away from the realityof what had happened.

But not at first. The Krystalnacht storyreceived the sort of dramatic display reservedfor rare, major events. Both headlines and sto-ries emphasized that Jews were the target. Thelead dispatch of that November 11 edition,reported by Otto D. Tolischus, vividly andimmediately grasped the implications of theNazi assault; “Berlin. Nov. 10. A wave ofdestruction, looting and incendiarism unparal-leled in Germany since the Thirty Years Warand in Europe generally since the BolshevistRevolution swept over Russia occurred in GreatGermany today as Nationalist Socialist cohortstook vengeance on Jewish shops, offices andsynagogues for the murder by a young PolishJew of Ernst von Rath, third secretary of theGerman Embassy in Paris.”

This contemporaneous report of theassault on Jews contained the essential infor-mation about the horror of Krystalnacht.Americans were alerted to the massive pogromat its very outset.“Beginning systematically inthe early morning hours in almost every townand city in the country, the wrecking, lootingand burning continued all day. Huge but mostlysilent crowds looked on, and the police con-fined themselves to regulating traffic and mak-ing wholesale arrests of Jews ‘for their ownprotection.’. . . Propaganda Minister JosephGoebbels issued the following proclamation;‘The justified and understandable anger of theGerman people over the cowardly Jewish mur-der of a German diplomat in Paris found exten-sive expression last night.”

“It is assumed that the Jews who havenow lost most of their possessions and liveli-hood will either be thrown into the streets or

SHOAH IN THE NEWS: PATTERNS AND MEANINGS OF NEWS COVERAGE OF THE HOLOCAUST

by James Carroll

James Carroll was a Fellow at the Shorenstein Centerin the spring of 1997. His column for the Boston Globeis distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. He is theauthor of many books and articles, including theNational Book Award-winning, An AmericanRequiem: God, My Father and the War that CameBetween Us. Currently he is a Fellow at the Center forthe Study of Values in Public Life, Harvard DivinitySchool, where he can be reached (45 Francis Avenue,Cambridge, MA 02138).

4 Shoah in the News

put into ghettos and concentration camps, orimpressed into labor brigades, and put to workfor the Third Reich, as the children of Israelwere once before for the Pharaohs. . . Beforesynagogues, demonstrators stood with Jewishprayer books from which they tore leaves assouvenirs for the crowds.”

Other page one headlines that day read,“Pearl Buck Wins Nobel Literature Award,” and“Batista Sees Hull.” But this story was also fea-tured; “Italy Intensifies Curbs Upon Jews.Cabinet Decrees Exclude Them From OfficialEmployment, Limit Property Holdings.”

Thus, in one morning’s newspaper in 1938,American readers were shown a concrete, rela-tively complete picture of the situation facingJews under Nazi controls. Already evident werethe German government’s readiness to violatelaws and loose violence upon people solely forbeing Jews. The program of Judenrein, “Jewsout!,” was exposed, the existence of concentra-tion camps publicized (though who could thenimagine the uses to which they would ulti-mately be put?), and the initial Nazi strategy offorced Jewish emigration was apparent. All ofthis is clear from a day’s news reports in oneAmerican paper.

The Krystalnacht story, in the argot, hadlegs. Every day for a week, it appeared as theTimes page one lead; “Arrests (of Jews) Run toThousands,” New Yorkers read on November12; “No Regret Voiced; Goebbels Declares ThatNation Followed its Healthy Instincts.” OnNovember 13; “Reich Bars Jews In Trade, FinesThem Billion Marks. Jews Must Pay ForDamage by Rioters.”

On November 15, the top Times headlineread, “Washington Calls Envoy From Berlin,”and the lead story detailed Roosevelt’s furiousreaction to the Nazi assaults. But the accompa-nying story—a major development reportedfrom London—had an equally prominent head-line; “Chamberlain Plans to Ask Roosevelt toJoin in Movement to Rescue Jews.” The Naziswanted the Jews out of the territory they con-trolled, and Berlin was sending signals it wouldlet them go. But already the problem had sur-faced—go where? Knowing that the British gripon Palestine would slip if waves of EuropeanJews were allowed to go there, Chamberlain pro-posed Guyana, or desert camps in North Africa.“Nobody knows yet,” the Times “rescue” storyread, “where the emigrants can settle perma-nently, although the United States can take30,000 annually under the quota system.”

Thus, within days of reading the first

major news of the brutal Nazi assault againstJews, Americans were reading of the British-American arrival at the impasse—who will takethe Jews?—which would be used, first, to justifyinaction, and, second, to undercut public knowl-edge of the anti-Jewish program that mightmake that inaction unpopular. (This discussion,of course, took place before the six million weremurdered; before, that is, the human imagina-tion had reason to take such an unprecedentedand grotesque prospect into account. When, inthe 1990s, United Nations relief agencies coop-erated in the removal of threatened populationsin the former Yugoslavia, they were faulted forenabling “ethnic cleansing.” If Jews had been“rescued” in 1938, would history faultChamberlain and Roosevelt for enabling theNazi policy of Judenrein? In other words, howwould the Allies be judged now if they hadcooperated in Hitler’s eradication of Jewish lifein the heart of Europe by supporting the emigra-tion, even helping with it?)

During the days after Krystalnacht, theTimes reported on a storm of pro-Jewish reac-tion in America; “Catholics of U.S. Score‘Atrocities,’” was a page one headline onNovember 17. “Nazi Cancer Denounced byPrelates.” This story included the line, “TheCatholic prelates emphasized the persecution ofJews rather than of Catholics in Germany.” Butother headlines that same day hinted thatalready a strategy of downplaying the plight ofJews was being adopted by the U.S. govern-ment; “Roosevelt Rebuke Declared General”This is from page one, November 17. “Reproofof Nazis Applied to Attacks on Catholics AsWell As Jews.”

By Friday, November 18, the situation ofJews in Germany was no longer the lead story.By November 20, a subtle shift had taken placein how the victims were referred to; “PresidentAsks Prayers for ‘Unfortunates.’” Soon no onewas calling even for prayers. The drumbeat ofthe coming war continued to make the news inAmerica, but stories about Jews, having fallenquickly from page one, soon disappeared alto-gether. The Times coverage of events ofKrystalnacht leaves the distinct impression that,after an initial burst of official sympathy forJews, both the British and American govern-ments realized the only possible “rescue” wouldinvolve the accommodation of many thousandsof refugees—something neither was remotelywilling to do. Though Nazi policy through late1941—for three years after Krystalnacht—encour-aged Jewish emigration from German-held terri-

James Carroll 5

tory, there remained no place for them to go.David S. Wyman, in his book The Abandonmentof the Jews, points out that a total of about21,000 Jews were admitted to America asrefugees during the war, far short even of thelegal quota, referred to above, of 30,000 per year.

Public pressure never built to admit Jewishrefugees, in part because the U.S. governmentdiscouraged the dissemination of news of thecatastrophe, and in part because ingrained anti-Semitism clouded American perceptionsthroughout the war. In his book The Holocaustas History, Michael Marcus (p. 162) cites onestudy that showed, in 1944, 44 percent ofAmericans regarded Jews as a threat to nationalwelfare, while 9 percent harbored this attitudetoward the Japanese as a group, and 6 percenttoward the Germans. Even if such feelingsweren’t an issue, what news was publishedabout the anti-Jewish atrocities was given so lit-tle emphasis by news editors that Americanseither did not notice or did not take it seriously.

Consider one example from Wyman’sresearch; In June of 1942, the Jewish Labor Bundin Poland issued a report detailing the murdersof 700,000 Jews. The first American newspaperto publish this was the Boston Globe. Its June26, 1942 edition included the headline, “MassMurders of Jews in Poland Pass 700,000 Mark.”But this story appeared at the bottom of page 12.The next day, the New York Times gave theBund Report two column inches. When theTimes ran a full story on July 2, it was carriedon page 6.

Wyman makes the point that Americanshad learned to be skeptical of reports of Germanatrocities during World War I, and thereforemany were prepared to discount these atrocityreports too. But their skepticism was power-fully, if implicitly, reinforced by the manner inwhich major newspapers published such news.Wyman says that while the Times published 25items on the removal of Jews from France todeath camps in Poland in the summer of 1942,only two appeared on the front page—and eventhen briefly, near the bottom. On July 2, 1944,the Times published “authoritative informa-tion” concerning the organized murders of750,000 Hungarian Jews—on page 12, in fourcolumn inches. “The mass media,” Wymancomments, “treated the systematic murder ofmillions of Jews as though it were minor news.”

One direct result of these decisions by edi-tors was that Churchill and Roosevelt could, attheir Bermuda Conference in April of 1943, takea conscious and well-informed decision to do

nothing to rescue Jews without fear of any pub-lic protest. News editors had neither the infor-mation nor the power to influence war policy,but the manner in which they published whatnews there was of the unfolding genocide playeda part in its continuing unchallenged for so long.

Public indifference and editorial detach-ment went out the window when the concentra-tion camps were liberated in the Spring of 1945.“The American press,” Wyman writes, “whichfor so long had barely whispered of mass murderand extermination, exploded with news of theGerman camps.” Gruesome photographs anddetailed coverage were featured day after day formore than a month—perhaps the first timesince Krystalnacht that Americans were giveninformation in a manner matching its grave sig-nificance. Yet by now, apparently, the Americanpress had formed a habit of deflection, for thenews that Jews as such were the main victimsof the Nazi camp system, as Wyman says, “didnot come across very clearly.” The victims, touse Roosevelt’s generic word of 1938, were“unfortunates.”

Take two examples from my review ofTimes coverage. On May 1, 1945 a front pageheadline declared, “Dachau Captured byAmericans Who Kill Guards, Liberate 32,000.”This story of the liberation of the Bavarian con-centration camp and its prisoners was long andrichly detailed, but made no mention of Jews.The word never appears. But then Dachau hadmany victims besides Jews—Communists,resisters, POW’s. Many Jewish prisoners had, infact, been moved to the death camps farthereast. One week after publishing news of the lib-eration of Dachau, however, the Times carriednews of a camp where those murdered wereoverwhelmingly Jewish. “Oswiecim KillingsPlaced at 4,000,000,” a headline declared. Thelong story, filed from Moscow, depended on aSoviet report of what the Red Army had foundwhen it liberated the camp the previous January.Though years later it would become clear thatthe number of victims at Auschwitz, which isthe German word for the Polish ‘Oswiecim,’was overstated, perhaps by a factor of more thantwo, other details of the Soviet report wereaccurate. The gas chambers, piles of ashes andmounds of corpses were carefully described, andeven the manufacturer of the crematoria—Topfand Son—was named. But the victims wereidentified only as “more than 4,000,000 citi-zens” of various nations—France, Netherlands,Italy, Hungary, Poland. The Times reporter wenton, “Such a report would seem incredible to

6 Shoah in the News

American readers, except that now they havebeen ‘conditioned’ by the horrors of Buchenwaldwhich have already been fully investigated.”And ‘conditioned,’ apparently, to somethingelse. This story was printed on page 12. Like thereport on Dachau, this report on Auschwitznever once mentioned Jews. Neither the Sovietswho were the source of the information, northe Times reporter who passed it on, seemed tothink this odd. His name was C. L. Sulzberger.

That day’s page one would not have hadroom for the Auschwitz story in any case sinceit carried the banner headline, “War In EuropeIs Ended. Surrender is Unconditional. V-E WillBe Proclaimed Today.” The date was May 8,1945. On Armistice Day, eight years earlier, theJews were at the center of the news, and theword “Jewish” was in the headlines. But by theend of the war in Europe, Jews had nearly disap-peared not only from the continent, but fromthe news stories about the places where theywere murdered.

II. Day After Day

“You cannot have the Holocaust day afterday,” Elie Wiesel told the New York Times inMarch of 1997, but by then that was exactly

what “you” seem to have had. Even the mostcasual reader of the news may have noticed byearly 1997 the regularity with which Holocauststories were appearing, often on the front pagesof newspapers and the covers of news maga-zines—this more than fifty years after the event.

Indeed, this examination of press reportsbegan with the question—Why are so manyHolocaust stories showing up in the newsnow? The controversy surroundingDaniel J. Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s WillingExecutioners, the Swiss banking scandal,Madeleine Albright’s Jewish roots, the last warcriminals—these were the subjects of majornews stories in 1996, into 1997, one followingthe other in a steady and unprecedented pro-gression. Especially given the way this storywas buried when it mattered, the questionforced itself on us—why now?

A brief look at several news indexesshowed that the impression left by those high-profile stories was accurate. An extraordinarychange in the quantity of news coverage aboutthe Nazi genocide of the Jews had occurred.Here, for example, is a snapshot of the numbersof Holocaust-related stories and articles that ranin the major English language magazines andjournals, as tracked by the Reader’s Guide to

READER’S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE

50 Years of Holocaust Coverage

Years Number of Articles Some Typical Subjects

1945-47✝ 180 (Camps, Nuremberg Trials)1949-51✝ 15 (Israel)1955-57✝ 4 (Anne Frank)1959-61✝ 29 (Eichmann)1965-67✝ 61 (Statute expires, Six-Day War)1969-71✝ 5 (“Judgement at Nuremberg”)1975-77✝* 12 (Elizabeth Holtzman, War

Criminals)1980-81* 21 (Wallenberg)1985-86 *(c.1 year) 104 (40th anniv., TV Mini-Series,

Demjanjuk, Barbie, Bitburg)1990-91* 37 (USSR Archives, Museums)1995-96 *(c. 1 year) 121 (50th anniversary, Goldhagen,

Swiss Banks)

✝Index categories are “WWII - atrocities,” “-Jews,” “war criminals”*Index category is “Holocaust,” which appears for first time,

Nov. 1973 (“Survival of Jews” by E. L. Feckenheim, Center Magazine)

James Carroll 7

Periodical Literature over the long span sincethe end of World War II. (Note that this compila-tion involved a search of the bound index vol-umes under the headings “World WarII—atrocities;—Jews;—war criminals.” The word“Holocaust” appears as a Reader’s Guide indexcategory for the first time in 1973.)

These numbers indicate that:✝ After the first shock of the discovery of

the death camps and the war crimes trials thatfollowed, the story about what happened to Jewsduring World War II essentially dropped out ofthe periodical literature for more than thirtyyears, with the exception of a spate of articlesaround 1965 devoted not just to the anniversary,

but to the crisis of an expiring statute of limita-tions for war crimes.

✝ With the exceptions of 1955 and 1975,the ten year anniversaries have coincided withpronounced increases in Holocaust articles.

✝ There has indeed been an upsurge inwriting on the subject since 1995. Owing tochanges in the Readers’ Guide indexing system,the figure of 121 for 1995-96 represents a periodshorter by almost a year than the figure of 180for 1945-47. By this scale, the later number ofHolocaust articles is roughly equal to the num-ber published as the event was first uncovered.

In this graph, the trend is dramatic:

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Reader ’s Guide 1945-96: “Holocaust”

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-47

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-51

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8 Shoah in the News

A look at the index of the New York Timesis equally telling. These figures were compiledthrough a combination of paper-index and Nexissearches. Again, the subject headings shift overtime. Thus, “World War II—atrocities;—crimes;—criminals;—prisoners; and—interned

civilians” were the relevant categories in thecounting of stories related to the anti-Jewishgenocide in 1945. Consistent with the Timesstories of the liberations of Dachau andAuschwitz, there were almost no war-relatedindex entries under the subject “Jews.”

By 1950, stories are showing up under thetopics “Jews—Anti-Semitism in Germany,”“Jews—Displaced Persons,” and “Minorities—Nazi Policies.”

In 1975, a new index category appears:“Nazi Policies Toward Jews.”

In 1980, “Holocaust” appears in the Timesindex for the first time, modified by “See alsoNazi Policy.” (The word “Holocaust” becamecommonly used for the anti-Jewish genocide afterElie Wiesel’s work popularized the term in the1960’s. The word comes from the Greek, mean-ing “burnt offering,” and evokes the biblicalimage of altar-sacrifice. The liturgical echo, andthe implication of a redemptive, even holy ritualaction has led some to abandon “Holocaust” infavor of “Shoah,” a Hebrew word which means

simply “catastrophe.” The recently establishedannual Jewish commemoration of the Holocaustwhich takes place in the first week of May, theanniversary of the liberations of camps, is called“Yom Hashoah.” The word “Shoah” has yet toappear in the indexes as a category for the anti-

Jewish genocide. The word “genocide” itself wascoined in 1943 by the jurist Raphael Lemkin.)

This set of figures suggests:✝ The 1950s and 1970s are remarkable for

the relative paucity of coverage.✝ The dramatic upswing in 1985 involved

the 40th anniversary observances, and, espe-cially, the many news stories generated byPresident Reagan’s controversial visit to theGerman military cemetery at Bitburg, Germany,a site at which remains of some members of thenotorious S.S. were buried.

✝ The 50th anniversary of the end of WorldWar II generated an upsurge in Holocaust relatedstories that has yet to abate. If the rate of storiesthat ran in the first three months of 1997 wereto continue, there would be double the numberthat ran in 1945. There is no precedent for thispattern—and no comparable phenomenon asso-ciated with other aspects of the World War IIcommemoration. For example, editors who com-missioned anniversary reports, articles andessays about Hiroshima turned away from that

Dates Numbers of Stories

1945* *c2501950† 891955 591960 1401965 1941970 541975# 82

Dates Number of Stories

1980‡ 531985 2671990 1811995 2521996 2801997 (J,F,M) 134

* “W.W.II—atrocities,crimes & criminals, prisoners & interned civilians (few Jews)”

† “W.W.II—crimes & criminals, prisoners and interned civilians, Jews - anti-Semitism in Germany, DisplacedPersons”

# ”W.W.II—crimes, Nazi Policies Toward Jews”

‡ Nexis Search; “Holocaust and Jews” (1980, first entry “Holocaust”) A reader might wonder if a Nexissearch produces more entries than a paper search, but the paper search yielded 86 in 1980 (compared with53 ‡Nexis), and 347 in 1985 (compared 267).

New York Times, 1945–97

Bound Index/Nexis Search “Holocaust & Jews”

James Carroll 9

story as soon as the anniversary passed. (Whyhas the American use of the atomic bomb,together with its strategy of mass bombing ofcities, not been comparably revisited as anunfinished moral problem? Because theAmericans won? Because the bombing even ofnon-combatants furthered Allied war aims,while the death camps came at the expense ofHitler’s war aims?)

The deaths of six million Jews has becomethe main lens through which are viewed theevents of World War II, in which perhaps a hun-dred million people died, most of them civilians.Patterns of news coverage suggest that, at thetime, the deliberate mass-murder of Jews wasonly one of a multitude of horrors. In the yearssince, the Nazi death camps have become thepre-eminent symbol of the world gone mad, adistillation of the evil that swamped the century.Perhaps that is the meaning of the return, at century’s end, of the Holocaust as a dominantnews story. In any case, there is no precedent forthis pattern of news coverage. What historicalevent has generated as much or more news cov-erage fifty years later as it did when the eventfirst occurred?

What is the news here?Over 600 Holocaust stories have run in the

exceptional period 1995-97, but a sample of 33titles gleaned from Nexis and by clipping is

instructive both because it suggests the range ofquestions being asked, and indicates somethingof the dynamic that may be driving this cover-age. Here is a chronicle of some of the storiesthat have run, mainly in the New York Times,since the year of the 50th anniversary.

Press Coverage of the Holocaust: A Chronicleof 1995–97

1. NYT, Jan 27, 1995 (pA3) “German bishopscite Catholic ‘denial and guilt’ at Holocaust”by Stephen Kinzer

2. NYT, May 2, 1995 (pA14) “HolocaustSurvivors” (editorial) (50th anniversary ofliberation of Nazi concentration camps)

3. NYT, May 17, 1995 (pA7) “Pope Talks of Horrors of World War II” (in Rome,anniversary)

4. NYT, July 17, 1995 (pA1) “Chirac AdmitsFrance’s Guilt in Fate of Jews” by MarliseSimon

5. NYT, Apr 1, 1996 (pC11) “Challenging aview of the Holocaust” by Dinitia Smith(Daniel J. Goldhagen, beginning of the con-troversy; fueled by A.M. Rosenthal)

6. NYT, May 30,1996 (pA6) “Priest Said toLeave France After Criticism” (Abbé Pierre,& Roger Garaudy’s Holocaust denial)

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New York T imes 1945-96: “Holocaust”

Years

10 Shoah in the News

7. NYT, May 25, 1996 (pA8) “War CrimesSuspect Loses His Citizenship”

8. NYT, Sept 24, 1996 “5.5 Billion Missing” byA. M. Rosenthal (The NYT's centenaryexhibit at the New York Public Libraryacknowledges that newspaper’s failure toreport adequately on the Holocaust inEurope as it was happening.)

9. NYT, Sept 27, 1996 (pB1) “Bank’s GoldInspires Tales of Plunder” by ClydeHaberman (Federal Reserve Bank in NYC,gold reserves from World War II)

10. NYT, Oct 23, 1996 (pA1) “Swiss Used NaziVictims’ Money for War Payments, FilesReveal” by Alan Cowell

11. NYT, Nov 3, 1996 “The New Old News ofNazi Loot” by Barry Meier

12. International Herald Tribune, Nov 11, 1996(pA1) “A New, Disturbing Chapter Emergesin Holocaust History” (Ultra interceptsdeclassified, showing genocide began earlier[1941] and may have caused 7 million deadJews, not 6)

13. NYT, Nov 24, 1996 (pE2) “Decoding theHolocaust” by Alan Cowell (Ultra)

14. NYT, Dec 5, 1996 (pB1) “Holocaust ChildrenWho Did Not Grow Up” by RalphBlumenthal

15. NYT, Dec 19, 1996 (pA17) “Red CrossAdmits Knowing of Holocaust During War”by Irvin Molotsky (Red Cross archivistadmits failure of “silence”)

16. NYT, Jan 1, 1997 (pA4) “Swiss PresidentCalls Pleas for a Holocaust Fund Blackmail”

17. USA Today, Jan 29, 1997 (pA1) “Hunting theLast Nazis; Soviet Documents Revive Trailsto WWII Criminals” by Peter Eisler

18. NYT, Jan 28, 1997 (pA1) “Swiss Envoy to USResigns; He Urged ‘War’ Over HolocaustFund Dispute” by David K Langer (pA1)“France to Look for Property Stolen fromJews in World War II” by Roger Cohen

19. Wash. Post, Feb 2, 1997 (Mag) “Out of thePast” by Michael Dobbs (MadeleineAlbright)

20. NYT, Feb 5, 1997 (pA1) “Albright Gratefulfor Her Parents’ Painful Choices” by StevenErlanger

21. NYT, Feb 6, 1997 (pA1) “3 Swiss Banks Planto Establish Fund for Nazis’ Victims” byAlan Cowell (World Jewish Congress, EdgarBronfman, Sen. Alfonse D’Amato) Editorial;“Madeleine Albright’s Family”

22. Time, Feb 24, 1997 (cover) “Echoes of theHolocaust” (In April “US Undersecretary forInternational Trade Stuart Eizenstat willunveil a potentially explosive examination ofAmerican wartime records, including thecontroversial US role in tracing Nazi assets.”)

23. NYT, Feb 25, 1997 “‘Schindler’ Sets a TVRecord” (65 million viewers)

24. NYT, Feb 26, 1997 “Albright Comes Home”by Frank Rich

25. NYT, March 3, 1997 (pA2) “The Past Eruptsin Munich as War Guilt is Put on Display”

26. Boston Globe, March 4, 1997 (editorial)“Censorship & Schindler’s List”

27. Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1997 (oped)“Moscow’s Trove of Bank Records” byKonstantin Akinsha & Grigorii Kozlov

28. NYT, March 5, 1997 (pC1) “An Unofficialbut Very Public Bearer of Pain, Peace &Human Dignity: Elie Wiesel” (“There is nofinal chapter to the Holocaust . . .(Yet) Thereis a statute of limitations on morbidity. Oneis not supposed to mourn too long. So youcannot have the H. day after day . . .The H.has become a fad. Books and films on it aredoing so well. It became commercialized,cheap.”)

29. Boston Globe, March 10, 1997 (pA1) “NoDirect Evidence is Found of Swiss Bank Tieto Nazi Loot” by Laura Myers (AP)

30. Boston Globe, March 16, 1997 (pA1) “InFrance, An Uneasy Look Inward: The ‘Lost’Masterpieces” by Walter V. Robinson

31. Boston Globe, March 23, 1997 (editorial)“The Swiss Account” (Swiss PresidentArnold Koller apologizes.)

32. Boston Globe, March 24 1997 (pA4) “BookSays Swiss Hid WWII Bank Schemes” (Dep-osits in 1941 = 332 million S.Fr.; in 1946 = 846million. Gold reserves from $503m to $1.04b)

33. Boston Globe, March 29, 1997 (pA2) “ReportTo Rip Swiss Role as Nazi Bankers” ByDavid Lee Preston (US State Dept. FindingsComing in April)

Each of these stories—the Swiss banks,Goldhagen, the plundered artworks, Albright,“Schindler’s List” on television—has itself gen-erated spates of other stories, adding up in thecase of the New York Times, according to aNexis search under “Holocaust and Jews” tomore than 600 stories in just over two years—anaverage of nearly one story every day.

James Carroll 11

There are at least four kinds of newsevents reported, which, while overlapping, canbe distinguished:

• confessions• challenges• new information• old information more broadly published.

Of the 33 stories listed here, five tell ofconfessions of failure during the Holocaust:

•1 - Bishops confess for GermanCatholics

•4 - Chirac confesses for France

• 8 - The New York Times, in anexhibit, confesses its failure toreport

•15 - The archivist confesses for theInternational Red Cross

•31 - Koller confesses for SwitzerlandThese acknowledgments of failure, of

course, come after the powerful confessions forGermany by Richard von Weizacker in 1985; byHelmut Kohl in 1989; by Lech Walesa for Polandin 1991; and by President Thomas Klestil forAustria in 1994. Each of these events generatedimportant news in those years. Clearly, as leadersof nations most involved confront the unfinishedmoral legacy of the Holocaust, leaders of otherinstitutions, even including the New York Times,through its exhibit and through A. M. Rosenthal,are prompted to do so as well.

Such moral reckoning often comes aboutbecause challenges are directly put, and the pastforces itself upon the present. Many of thesestories recount how that has been happeningsince 1995:

• 5 - Daniel J. Goldhagen challengingGermany, and senior historians

•7 etc. - Investigators challenging war criminals

•14 etc. - Jewish leaders challenging Swissbanks

•18 - Jewish leaders challengingFrench property owners

•24 - The Washington Post’s MichaelDobbs challenging MadeleineAlbright

•30 - Press challenging French art museums

New information is the subject of otherstories:

•10 - Declassified U.S. files enablebank records to be tracked

•12 - Ultra intercepts declassified,expand Jewish casualty esti-mates to 7 million

•17 - Archives of former Soviet Unionopen up, lead to money andcriminals

• 32 - U.S. Treasury files reveal Swissschemes

The fourth category of Holocaust story—old information more broadly published—is, in away, the most provocative. Take the Swissbanking story. As readers have been presentedwith more and more “news” of the connectionbetween looted bank accounts of long-murderedJews and present holdings of respectable banks,they have been entitled to a more than slightsense of déja vu. Indeed, this reverberation isitself the subject of story # 11, “The New OldNews of Nazi Loot.” That much of the Naziplunder had been salted away in secret Swissaccounts was well known at the end of the war.It was equally known that many affluent Jews,as they saw the Nazi cloud approach, hadopened accounts in Switzerland. “ProjectSafehaven” was a secret, post war U.S. TreasuryDepartment attempt to track these monies.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s much of this his-tory was made public, especially by the formerhead of the U.S. State Department’s Office ofSpecial Investigations, John Loftus. His booksUnholy Trinity and The Secret War Against theJews elaborated the details of such transactions.But until recently, this story attracted littleattention from the general news media. In 1980,for example, a Nexis search of the New YorkTimes under “Swiss bank and Jews” turns upzero stories. In 1992, likewise, there were nosuch stories on the subject. In 1995, there werefour. In 1996, there were 23, and in the firstthree months of 1997, there were 33.

Why is the Swiss banking story surfacingnow? The February 24, 1997 issue of Time (thecover headline reads, “Echoes of the Holocaust”)attributes the breaking of the story to EdgarBronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress. Inthe summer of 1996, he followed up on TheSwiss Account, a novel by Paul Erdman thatincluded allegations of the collusion, by bringingpressure to bear against the Swiss Bankers’Association. Bronfman’s position as a high pro-file business figure and, especially, as the head ofthe powerful, worldwide Jewish organization,brought the spotlight to the case. Mothlike,news editors were drawn to it. In October of


1996, 12,000 Holocaust survivors filed a $20 bil-lion class-action suit against four Swiss banks,and the media reported on the alleged Swissmalfeasance as if it were “news.” But in 1942, aswe saw, the Jewish Labor Bund in Poland hadprovided editors with information as accurate asit was urgent about the contemporaneous mur-ders of 700,000 Jews, and the editors reactedwith disinterest. What is different now?

These stories themselves suggest part ofthe answer with their reports of newly openedarchives and declassification. The Swiss bankstory is driven by the recent unsealing of“Project Safehaven” documents, but many othersecrets of the Holocaust remain unknown. Sincemost of the actual murders of Jews took place interritory that fell behind the Iron Curtain, muchremains even now to be learned of the basic fac-tual data.

In the news business as it exists today, oneset of high profile questions can easily lead toanother. For example, now that the Swiss bank-ing industry has been called to account, Germanbanks themselves will surely be scrutinizedagain. The disappearance of its money by war’send has long secured the Reichsbank a place inthe Guinness Book of World Records as site ofhistory’s most successful bank robbery. Will theNew York Times not soon be inquiring into that?Similarly, Jewish claims against banks haveprompted claims against insurance companies,as reported on page two of the Times on April11, 1997. That story was headlined, “GermanGroup to Investigate Claims of Nazi Victims.”

Disclosures about the U.S. Government’srole in all of this promise to fuel another wave ofHolocaust stories. A Boston Globe page twoheadline on April 10, 1997 read, “U.S. Said toHave Let Nazis Shift Gold.” The U.S.Government’s official study of the matter wasconducted by Undersecretary of CommerceStuart E. Eizenstat, involved investigations intothe work of 11 separate agencies, and covered15 million documents, thousands of whichwere only now declassified. The Eizenstatreport was released, May 7, 1997; on that day,in anticipation, a Reuters story in the Globewas headlined “Study Reportedly CriticizesU.S., Swiss Handling of Nazi Gold,” and sureenough, the next day’s New York Times ran thestory under the sub-head “Truman CabinetAlso Failed Holocaust Victims.” The Globeheadline proclaimed, “U.S. Blasts Swiss Role inFinancing of Nazis,” with that day’s story fol-lowing Eizenstat’s lead in downplaying the U.S.role, despite these sentences; “The United

States is also criticized in the report for failingto press the Swiss government after the war tomake a complete accounting of its dealingswith the Third Reich. After difficult negotia-tions, Washington settled all gold claims for$58 million, a fraction of the sum actuallydeposited in Swiss banks.” And where had thegold come from? The report established thatGerman gold reserves stored in Switzerlandincluded resmelted dental filings from themouths of Jews.

Years before these disclosures made it topage one, Loftus with his books and officialreports, and other writers like Burton Hersh,author of the CIA history The Old Boys, hadexposed the various ways in which Americanofficials aided Nazis, especially at war’s end.Soon, no doubt, news editors will “discover”these stories too. Allen Dulles’ role, for example,in moving assets for various German clients intoSwiss banks surely deserves to be revisited, andprobably will be. But neither new revelations,nor long neglected information alone explain theupsurge in press interest in the Holocaust.

Other factors suggest themselves. It maybe that aging and dying people of the World WarII generation are coming to terms with theunfinished business of those years. There arereports, for example, of deathbed revelations byPoles or French or Dutch people to their middle-aged sons and daughters that, in fact, they wereborn as Jews, “rescued” when their real parentswere hauled off to the camps. Conversely, manymembers of the postwar generation ofEuropeans are at last able to face directly thetruth of a continent-wide complicity in theHolocaust without having to personally judgetheir now deceased parents. Some socialupheavals are so traumatic that it takes a gener-ation or more to face them fully. Is that whyyounger men like Spielberg and Goldhagen areplaying such a pivotal role in this?

One of the Krystalnacht stories cited earlierevoked the image of the “children of Israel”oppressed by Pharaoh. As Rachelle Linner, theauthor of City of Silence: Listening to Hiroshima,points out, it was not for nothing that the liber-ated Hebrews had to wander in the desert for 40years before coming into the Promised Land;those still bound by the mentality of slavery hadto die before the new community could estab-lish itself as a society of free men and women.Such massive social mutation takes place notover years, or even decades, but over genera-tions. What inhibiting mentality have these fiftyyears purged both in editors and readers to make

James Carroll 13

us ready at last to hear the full story not only ofAuschwitz but of the Jews who received nomention by the Times that day in 1945?

III. The Moral Reckoning

“There is a statute of limitations on mor-bidity,” Elie Wiesel told the Times in the March,1997 story cited above. Wiesel was worryingabout the recent upsurge in interest in theHolocaust—not only journalistic, but commer-cial. Yet one wonders, Does “morbidity” definethe hidden character of what drives this interest?Perhaps the question should be, What is thestatute of limitations on mourning? To grieveis to confront loss, guilt, and the absolute noth-ingness of death. What do the patterns of humanmourning indicate about what is happeninghere?

Psychologists tell us that grief denied canbecome a curse, condemning a person to long-term, low-grade but chronic depression.Analogously, social scientists describe thepotentially drastic consequences if a greatwound to the body politic is allowed to gountreated. In the United States, one need thinkonly of slavery and the war fought to end it torecognize an example of this problem. Thelegacy of slavery is still palpable in the discrimi-nation faced by African-Americans, and theCivil War remains a point of sharp conflict—andnot only in the south. At Harvard University, tocite only one example, the agony continues assome members of the university communityseek to have the names of Harvard alumni whodied as Confederates added to the honor roll atMemorial Hall. As a moral phenomenon, slav-ery has not yet been fully reckoned with, leav-ing a twin legacy of anti-black racism andmutual North-South miscomprehension thatcontinues to infect American democracy. Whenit comes to perpetrators, the requirements ofjustice are clear, and so is the shape of closure,but how do an indirectly implicated society orits institutions accomplish a moral reckoning,whether the issue is slavery or the millions ofmurdered Jews?

That this question has broad, worldwideimportance is implied by the fact that the sameMay 8, 1997 issue of the Boston Globe whichcarried news of the Eizenstat report also con-tained two other relevant stories. “SouthAfrican Ex-Defense Aide Pleads Against DiggingUp the Past,” read the headline of one. A leaderof the former apartheid regime had warned thatcountry’s Truth and ReconciliationCommission, “By your incessant probing into

the past you may create a reaction which will bedifficult to control . . . Let not our past destroyour future.” But, as if speaking for all thoseengaged in such tasks around the world, thecommission chairman, Archbishop DesmondTutu replied, “We want the truth for the sake ofhealing.”

In the same paper a page one story washeadlined, “Bosnian Serb Convicted of WarCrimes.” The story was datelined The Hague,and began, “In the first war-crimes verdict sincethe Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World WarII, an international court yesterday convicted aBosnian Serb police reservist of war crimes andcrimes against humanity during ethnic cleans-ing in the Bosnian war . . .” The New YorkTimes covered the same story on the front page,with the headline “U.N. Panel Convicts BosnianSerb of War Crimes.” It seems oddly fitting thatsuch a story should be on the Times front pageon the same date, 52 years later, that it had pub-lished news of Auschwitz, the ultimate crimeagainst humanity— without mentioning Jews.

In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross suggestedthat an individual grieves as a way of accom-plishing a personal moral reckoning. In her bookOn Death and Dying, she wrote of the “stagesof grief,” suggesting that each must be com-pleted if normal life is to resume after the deathof a loved one. She identified those stages asshock, denial, anger-depression (depressiondefined as anger turned against the self), bar-gaining, and acceptance. It was in reviewing thepattern of news coverage of the Holocaust asreflected in the Reader’s Guide 50-year chronol-ogy that the question first occurred to me: AreKubler-Ross’s stages of grief a progression thatby analogy illuminates society’s half-century oldconfrontation with the moral chaos of theHolocaust? There are, of course, essential differ-ences between the processes of change for indi-viduals and societies; any comparison betweenpersonal grief and a society-wide moral reckon-ing can be no more than a heuristic device. Yetperhaps, even as such, Kubler-Ross’s scheme canilluminate something here.

We can at least partially account for a 50-year pattern of Holocaust news coverage bydemographics (The World War II generationdies); politics (Iron Curtain archives open); thedetermination of some Jews to remember(Spielberg, Goldhagen, Bronfman), or evenchanges in journalism itself (the post-Watergateinvestigative impulse). But might it not alsoreflect a kind of quiet movement of human consciousness?


The first note of Kubler-Ross’s scheme isthe most striking: shock. What better word todescribe the 180 articles and stories that ran inmajor English periodicals in 1945-47? The NewYork Times’ record of about 250 Holocaust newsstories in 1945 reflects the promulgation of rawinformation concerning what the Allies foundin the ruins of the Third Reich. Among individ-uals, the more traumatic the shock, the moreefficiently do physical and psychological sys-tems of perception shut down. Given the moralhorrors that the liberators uncovered in thespring of 1945, and given the fact that Alliedgovernments and institutions—from journalismto rescue operations like the Red Cross—werenow faced directly with what they had con-sciously avoided, an extreme reaction of shockmight alone have generated the second turningaway from the reality of the anti-Jewish geno-cide that followed. Clearly, shock opens intodenial. If the institutions of the West hadopenly and fully confronted what the deathcamps revealed, they would have had to con-front the meaning of their own action—orinaction.

Robert Jay Lifton, in studies both of ThirdReich doctors and of soldiers in combat, hasdescribed what he calls “psychic numbing,” butKubler-Ross’s word “denial” is as good as anyfor characterizing the quick, postwar collapse ofnews interest in the Holocaust. But it is alsotrue that, by 1947 any normal coming-to-termswith the huge trauma of the Nazi genocide wasinterrupted by the onset of the Cold War, withits reversal in the roles of the Soviet Union andGermany.

The Reader’s Guide to PeriodicalLiterature table suggests that, counted in thefive-year intervals, there were 30 articles in 30years, almost half of them in 1965. The Timesschema shows something similar. From 1947 to1985, with few exceptions, editors felt littleimpulse to provide readers with news or analy-sis about what had happened in the heart ofEurope between 1933 and 1945. Additionally,much of what sparse attention was paid rein-forced denial by offering false consolation—fromthe saccharine Broadway version of AnneFrank’s story in 1955 (Bruno Bettleheim pointedout that the play ends with the girl’s disembod-ied voice floating across the darkened theater; “Istill believe that human beings are good atheart.”) to the sentimentalism of the 1980 tele-vision mini-series “Holocaust.” (“The failure of‘Holocaust,’ Lawrence L. Langer wrote, “is afailure of imagination. The vision which

plunges us into the lower abyss of atrocity isnot there.”)

And even if a kind of society-wide psycho-logical shutdown had not been prompted by thesheer horror of the Holocaust, the politics of theCold War would have done something similar.When the Iron Curtain fell from the Baltic Seato the Aegean, Americans felt a need to quicklyleave behind any impulse to look too closely atwhat Germans had done to Jews. Even dis-armed, Germany was to be the bastion nation ofEurope’s resistance to Communism, and Stalinwas a living devil, while Hitler had the virtue—his only one—of being dead. The Soviets hadtheir own reasons for cloaking the real historyof the Holocaust—not the least of which werevibrant Soviet anti-Semitism, and Soviet enmityof Israel. It wasn’t until the Cold War thaw hadbegun to warm the climate of the 1980s, forexample, that historians were able to calculatewith any accuracy the real numbers and identi-ties of death-camp victims in Eastern Europe.Even now, the numbers of murdered Jews arestill being added up (see the Nov. 24, 1996 NYTstory about Ultra revelations).

Kubler-Ross suggests that eventually agrieving person lets go of the need for denial.Typically, manifestations of anger follow, and itis possible to see this reflected in the kinds ofHolocaust stories that began to show up inincreasing numbers around 1985—the 40thanniversary of the end of the war. Think, espe-cially, of the furies generated by RonaldReagan’s decision that year to honor theGerman dead, including an S.S. regiment, at thecemetery in Bitburg. In the same period, PopeJohn Paul II roused the anger of many bybestowing a papal knighthood on KurtWaldheim, the former U.N. Secretary Generalwho had been revealed to have a Nazi past.These controversies demonstrate what happenswhen issues become politicized, when pastevents, that is, are yoked to subsequent, andperhaps unrelated, currents. Critics of Reagan’sconservatism could see his insensitivity to thememory of the murdered Jews as yet more evi-dence of what they regarded as a broad insensi-tivity. And so with critics of Pope John Paul II.

But in that same period, heated debatesbroke out over other questions of war crimescharges. The Cleveland auto worker JohnDemjanjuk, for example, made headlines whenhe was extradited to Israel, where he was con-victed of having served as a guard atTreblinka — but then his conviction wasreversed by a higher court. The debates sparked

James Carroll 15

by the Demjanjuk case were furious, andincluded assertions that the crimes of which hewas accused hadn’t occured at all.

Given the media’s record of the previous40 years, it should not have been surprising thatthe crackpot phenomenon of “Holocaust denial”should have been one reaction to the mid-1980supsurge in the quantity of stories. Such denialgenerated its own heat, but so, even, did theimpulse to memorialize those lost to theHolocaust. In the 1980s several major Holocaustmuseums and memorials were planned, funded,and construction begun. This generated surpris-ingly angry denunciations from Jews who feltthe Shoah was being trivialized and commodi-fied by these establishments; from Jews whoworried that the Holocaust could replace theTorah as the central fact of Jewish identity,enshrining the people’s victimhood; and frommembers of other groups like NativeAmericans, African-Americans and Armenianswhose historic agonies had been and were stillbeing ignored.

Nevertheless, once the Iron Curtain fell,the readiness of a broad public to finally confrontthe Holocaust proved unstoppable. Nothingshows this more dramatically than the public’sreaction to the Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington, D.C., which opened in the spring of1993. “Against almost everyone’s expectations,”Langer writes, “it quickly became the most vis-ited museum in the nation’s capital, which is atribute not only to the designer, but also to alatent need in the population for a chance toadmit the disaster into their consciousness in agradual but relentless and unsentimental pro-gression toward the truth.”

Kubler-Ross describes the fourth stage ofgrief as a kind of bargaining, and indeed there issomething of that in the relatively recent phe-nomenon reflected in news stories about theSwiss banks, the looted art or the purloined realestate. These disputes represent attempts at aquite literal accounting not only for the lossesJewish victims suffered, but for the failures ofinstitutions to help them. “An ignominiouslegacy,” ran the headline of a front page story inthe Boston Globe on April 25, 1997. Thereporter, Walter V. Robinson, described a processexactly of bargaining as Sotheby’s “helpedarrange a confidential six-figure settlement”between the heirs of a murdered Jewish collectorfrom whom a Botticelli had been stolen, and theItalian collector who had acquired it since thewar. In Kubler-Ross’s terms “bargaining”amounts to a survivor’s insisting upon what is

necessary to put the loss of death behind and geton with life. The large public process now under-way, as one nation and institution after anotheris called to account for its behavior in relation tothe murdered Jews, approximates a society-wideversion of this. As Elie Wiesel seemed to be say-ing in the December Times interview, it is timeto settle up and get on with life.

Whether we think of this process in Kubler-Ross’s terms or according to some otherconstruct, the question remains: How do peoplesremember and, where necessary, repent? Howare perpetrators, once identified and punished,admitted back into the circle of society? “I andmost of my generals,” said the South Africanapartheid regime’s defense minister MagnusMalan, “are in the autumn of our lives. It isunderstanding and forgiveness we really seek,not legal pardons.” How do banks, art museums,governments, churches, universities and newspa-pers accomplish a reckoning of their involve-ment in the Holocaust? The question isespecially pointed for Jews because, in theabsence of such reckoning, the Holocaust contin-ually threatens to pre-empt the central place inJewish consciousness, giving Hitler himself akind of ignominious permanence. In this state ofunfinished moral reckoning, Jews are in a wayheld hostage to the clinging denial of others.Unlike those who have so long lived in a state ofwillful avoidance, Jews have found ways to facethe Holocaust. Nothing demonstrates this moredramatically than the number of Holocaust-related stories published in the Jerusalem Post.We have already seen what a search of New YorkTimes indexes shows, but here is a comparisonof the publishing patterns of three other keypapers. As with the NYT, the Nexis search waskeyed to “Holocaust and Jews.”

Human beings accomplish such a difficult,culture-wide moral reckoning in fits and starts.Once they would have done so mainly within thecontext of religion, which at its best is an ulti-mate source of moral healing. But in the modernera, the literary imagination took on importanceas the source, in Coleridge’s phrase, of the “rec-onciliation of opposites.” Indeed, over the post-war decades, an extraordinary body ofHolocaust-inspired work has been produced bywriters like Primo Levi, Bernard Malamud,Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Aharon Appelfeld, SaulBellow, Anne Frank, Rolf Hochhuth, GeorgeSteiner, Leslie Epstein, Elie Wiesel, Ilona Karmel,Jerzy Kozinski, Marcie Hershman, CynthiaOzick, Tadeusz Borowski, Thomas Kenneally, D.H. Thomas and Piotr Rawicz. The list goes on.


Yet because of the extremity of the horror at thecenter of this impulse, the literary imagination,reflected even in the work of these artists, hasproved to be of limited use in laying bare thememory of the Holocaust. As long-set patterns ofnews coverage demonstrated from Krystalnachton, we successfully averted our eyes, and havemainly kept them turned away. Recent news cov-erage, however, raises the question of whether, atlast, this has begun to change.

More than the work of artists, the work ofjournalists gives us our record of progress, orlack of it. As this review of news stories indi-cates, markers on the calendar, like anniver-saries, can be enormously useful as occasions onwhich to launch our “raids on the unspeakable,”as Thomas Merton dubbed the effort to addresssuch questions. In the surveys of Reader‘sGuide and NYT indexes, the years of 1965, 1985and 1995 show the most dramatic surges in theamount of Holocaust coverage, and the patternis surely a function in large part of the humanimpulse to mark anniversaries. Psychologistshave shown how individuals make use ofanniversaries in drawing personal grief to clo-sure. Obviously, so does society. By summoningup an orderly act of remembering, according tothe arbitrary structure of the calendar, weimpose meaning on a chaotic universe. We con-tinually review past experience, but from theconstantly shifting depths of inner awareness.

The recalling we do on anniversaries frees usfrom the prison of the present moment, andenables us to grasp the soul of what happened inthe first place. When this process works as itshould, memory becomes distilled, and we areleft with the incorruptible truth of experience,for good or ill. That is why, across a range of stories, newspapers depend on anniversaries asaids —“news pegs”—in allowing editors torevisit stories that might seem out of place inthe news of the day; in concentrating the mindsof news-gatherers; and in focusing the interest ofreaders. As Kierkegaard said, life is lived for-ward, and understood backward. Journalism hasto keep its eyes pointed in both directions.

But it is impossible not to wonder, as onetracks the recent increase in news coverage ofthe Holocaust, if another phenomenon of thecalendar is not at work here as well. The law oftime drives this preoccupation if only becausethose most traumatized by the Holocaust as vic-tims or perpetrators are dying. Their children,and those of the vast throng of bystanders, arecoming fully of age. But an even broader popula-tion is affected by another quirk of time—thecoming turn in the number of the calendar.Obviously, the approach of the year 2000 workspowerfully on the imaginations of the gullible.The comet Hale-Bopp, appearing in 1996 and1997, was taken to be a “marker” of the millen-nium by many people. Thirty-nine Heaven’sGate cultists committed suicide in reaction toit, but they were far from the only ones to seethe astronomical phenomenon as a sign.“Halley’s Comet provoked no such mania whenit came by 11 years ago,” the astronomer AlanD. Macrobert observed. “We are clearly in abuildup of enthusiasm for paranormal catastro-phe as the year 2000 approaches.”

But even the most rational people would befoolish to think that society as a whole isimmune to the unconscious pull of the idea ofthe millennium. In the Apocalypse, the last bookof the Christian Bible, also known as the Book ofRevelation, the millennium is defined as thethousand year span of time, a reign of peace,which precedes the end of history. Obviously,there has been no thousand-year reign of peace,but that did not stop Christians from fearing theworst as the calendar turned to the year 1000,nor has it prevented lost souls like the Heaven’sGate cultists from treating the upcoming turnlike the end. Adolf Hitler felt the pull of theapocalypse, which is why he defined the ThirdReich as the thousand-year reign that wouldusher in the golden epoch of the master race.

Nexis Search - “Holocaust & Jews”Year Number of Stories

Washington Post1980 311985 1131990 971995 1271996 119 1997(J,F,M) 75

Los Angeles Times1980 (na)1985 1621990 1611995 1781996 1901997(J,F,M) 88

Jerusalem Post1980 (na)1985 (na)1989 4701990 4311995 4331996 4561997(J,F,M) 226

(This table does not correct for variations in the“news hole,” the amount of space given in each paperto news coverage, but it is reasonable to assume thatthe news hole of the Jerusalem Post is the smallest ofthe three, which emphasizes the point.)

James Carroll 17

One needn’t be in the grip of such madnessto sense that this turning of the calendar hasmythic power. It may seem to stretch credulityto associate patterns of news coverage with aphenomenon so bathed in the aura of New Ageenthusiasm, and yet. Why can’t the millenniumwork on the human unconscious—and theimpulses of editors—in the way that anniver-saries do? Could this be a factor in the steadyrise of Holocaust news stories? If the pattern ofthe previous 50 years had been followed, thenumber of stories would have dropped after1995, but in none of the indicators has that hap-pened. On the contrary, the rate of increase con-tinues to grow, right through the first months of1997. Thus, the millennium begins to takeshape as a kind of magnified version of NewYear’s Day, which individuals use as occasionsfor conscientious self-scrutiny, and which newsmedia use as markers for a political, cultural,yet always somehow moral summing up.

Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that theCatholic Church “cannot cross the threshold ofthe new millennium without encouraging herchildren to purify themselves through repen-tance of past errors and instances of infidelity.”The pope extended this call to an examinationeven of “acquiescence” before “the violation offundamental rights by totalitarian regimes.”Whether the Catholic Church as such hasaccomplished such a moral reckoning, particu-larly in relation to the Holocaust, is anothersubject. (The Vatican’s unfinished business withits own role during the Holocaust was central toan article I wrote for The New Yorker on April7, 1997.) The point is that there was a version ofthis sentiment about the millennium in whatSwiss President Arnold Koller finally said inMarch of 1997 as a result of the pressuresbrought to bear by the hundreds of news storiesabout Swiss banks and the Nazis; “We cannotand must not leave the century in a state ofuncertainty, confusion, and embarrassment, forthat would be a mortgage that would totallyburden the decisions to be made in the next cen-tury.” A mortgage? Have the limits of the coldlanguage of banking ever been more apparent?Yet the point is that Switzerland too—thewatchmaker’s country—feels the pressure ofthis relentlessly ticking clock.

Thomas Sancton, Time’s Paris bureau chiefand main author of the February 24, 1997 coverstory “Echoes of the Holocaust,” said of theSwiss banking story, “It’s all part of a great reck-oning that is taking place as the world preparesto turn the page on the 20th century.” Could it

be that, at bottom, that is what the varied newscoverage about the Holocaust is telling us?Could it be that, in this secular age, in the broadabsence of shared religious rituals by means ofwhich human beings once achieved such moralresolution, and in the absence of authentic, cul-ture-wide artistic expression available to morethan an elite, the popular news media provideour main public method for accomplishing afinal moral reckoning?

There will be no meaningful future for thechildren of World War II until we confrontdirectly and fully the moral chaos that we haveso long tried to bury. This consideration beganwith the Times report of the stilled traffic ofNew York City on November 11, 1938, whenAmericans fell silent for two minutes on theanniversary of the end of The Great War. Thatday marked the true beginning of the Holocaust.Fifty-nine years later, on May 6, 1997, theBoston Globe reported on something eerily sim-ilar in a story headlined “Israel is Brought to aHalt to Honor Holocaust Victims.” The storywas datelined Jerusalem; “For two minutes yes-terday, air-raid sirens wailed, pedestriansstopped and motorists halted their cars andstood silently beside them in the middle ofstreets and intersections across Israel . . . theday the nation that rose from the ashes of theHolocaust pays tribute to the estimated 6 mil-lion Jews murdered in Adolf Hitler’s ‘FinalSolution.’”

The harshest truths about that crime mustbe faced no matter where they lead—isn’t thatthe theme of Goldhagen, the Swiss banks, theAustrian insurance companies, MadeleineAlbright, and the looted art? Could it be that,instead of just telling us something, these sto-ries are doing something? “Half a century old,”Lawrence Langer wrote, “the Holocaust stillmocks the idea of civilization and threatens oursense of ourselves as spiritual creatures. Itsundiminished impact on modern memory leaveswide open the unsettled and unsettling questionof why this should be so.” In news storiesdecades later, we are finally asking this unset-tling question. The 20th century will be unfin-ished, no matter what the date, until it isanswered—and so will we. That is why thestory of the Holocaust is unfinished. “Our senseof ourselves as spiritual creatures” is at stake.Perhaps the Shoah will be in the news—andshould be—until this work is done. Perhaps thenews is how, at the end of this fractured cen-tury, human beings do it.


RECENT PUBLICATIONS FROM THE SHORENSTEIN CENTER

DISCUSSION PAPERS

“From Bhopal to Superfund: The News Media and the Environment,” Sanjoy Hazarika. September, 1994.Discussion Paper D-17. $2.00

“Hispanic Voices: Is the Press Listening?,” Jorge Quiroga. January, 1995. Discussion Paper D-18. $3.00

“Paint-By-Numbers Journalism: How Reader Surveys and Focus Groups Subvert a Democratic Press,” AlisonCarper. April, 1995. Discussion Paper D-19. $2.75

“The Nigerian Press Under the Military: Persecution, Resilience and Political Crisis (1983-1993),” AdeyinkaAdeyemi. May, 1995. Discussion Paper D-20. $3.75

“Post-Communist Eastern Europe: The Difficult Birth of a Free Press,” Bernard Margueritte. August, 1995.Discussion Paper D-21. $3.25

“The Next War: Live?” Barrie Dunsmore. March, 1996. Discussion Paper D-22. $3.50

“The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age,” Claude Moisy. November, 1996.Discussion Paper D-23. $2.50

“Spreading the Word: The KGB’s Image-Building Under Gorbachev,” Jeff Trimble. Feburary, 1997. Research PaperD-24. $3.00

“Journalism and Economics: The Tangled Webs of Profession, Narrative, and Responsibility in a ModernDemocracy” Richard Parker. May, 1997. Discussion Paper D-25. $2.00

“Junk News: Can Public Broadcasters Buck the Tabloid Tendencies of Market-Driven Journalism? A CanadianExperience,” William John Fox. August 1997. Discussion Paper D-26. $2.00

RESEARCH PAPERS

“Transmitting Race: The Los Angeles Riot in Television News,” Erna Smith. May, 1994. Research Paper R-11. $2.75

“Ownership of Newspapers: The View from Positivist Social Science,” C. Edwin Baker. September, 1994. Re-search Paper R-12. $2.75

“The Future of Global Television News,” Richard Parker. September, 1994. Research Paper R-13. $2.75

“The Media, the Public and the Development of Candidates’ Images in the 1992 Presidential Election,” DeanAlger. October, 1994. Research Paper R-14. $2.50

“Busted By the Ad Police: Journalists’ Coverage of Political Campaign Ads in the 1992 Presidential Campaign,”Michael Milburn and Justin Brown. July, 1995. Research Paper R-15. $3.00

“Framing Identity: The Press in Crown Heights,” Carol B. Conaway. November 1996. Research Paper R-16. $3.00

”The Wisdom of the War Room: U.S. Campaigning and Americanization,” Margaret Scammel. April, 1997.Research Paper R-17. $3.50

WORKING PAPERS

“Real-Time Television Coverage of Armed Conflicts and Diplomatic Crises: Does it Pressure or Distort ForeignPolicy Decisions?” Nik Gowing. June 1994. Working Paper 94-1 $12.50

“Discourse and its Discontents,” Frederick Schauer. September, 1994. Working Paper 94-2. $10.00

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