The New York Times and the Holocaust
|
According to at least two authors, The New York Times coverage of the Holocaust during World War II was not as prominent as it should have been. In her 1985 book, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt alleged the paper was particularly responsible for the press not giving adequate coverage to the Holocaust. Overview In 2001 The New York Times published an article by former executive editor Max Frankel who said that while the paper covered the reports emerging from Europe of extermination camps, "they were mostly buried inside its gray and stolid pages, never featured, analyzed or rendered truly comprehensible." Frankel argued that "The Timess coverage generally took the view that the atrocities inflicted upon Europe's Jews, while horrific, were not significantly different from those visited upon tens of millions of other war victims, nor more noteworthy." According to Frankel, “No article about the Jews' plight ever qualified as The Times’ leading story of the day, or as a major event of a week or year.” Frankel said that a variety of factors contributed to the Times failure to emphasize the plight of the Jews, though he speculated that publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger's opinions played a role. "At The Times, the reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews was also undoubtedly influenced by the views of the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or nationality — that Jews should be separate only in the way they worshiped," he wrote. Leff concluded that New York Times editorial policies impeded the ability to impress Congress, church or government leaders on the importance of helping Europe’s Jews.
|