<i>Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper</i> (review)

Abstract

Book Review Laurel Leff. Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 426, cloth. $29.00 US. Reviewed by Janine Minkler, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Northern Arizona University Why did the New York Times persistently bury news of the Holocaust? asks Laurel Leff in her dramatic historical account of ‘‘America’s most important newspaper.’’ Leff, associate professor at Northeastern University and former journalist for the Wall Street Journal and Miami Herald, examines the complex combination of forces that led the Times to relegate news of the Holocaust to secondary status. She also sustains an uncompromising critique of this period in New York Times history. ‘‘No American newspaper was better positioned to highlight the Holocaust than the Times, and no American newspaper so influenced public discourse by its failure to do so. The first reason makes the Times’ failure more puzzling, the second more devastating,’’ charges Leff (9). Buried by the Times opens with a cry for help couched between the normal news of the day. Leff sets the scene: ‘‘On page four, amid 13 other stories, appeared a five-paragraph item with a London dateline’’ (1). The first two paragraphs described a House of Commons refugee decision; then appeared an appeal issued by the Jewish National Committee in Poland: ‘‘May this, perhaps our last voice from the abyss, reach the ears of the world’’ (1). Leff emphasizes the ironic placement of this appeal and concludes, The Times never treated the news of the Holocaust as important—or at least as important as, say, informing motorists to visit the Office of Price Administration if they did not have their automobile registration number and state written on their gasoline ration coupons. A story about that possible bureaucratic snafu appeared on the front page on March 2, 1944, the same day that the ‘‘last voice from the abyss’’ was relegated to page four. (16) In her examination of Times coverage (1939–1945) of Jewish persecution and massacres, Leff systematically demonstrates how news stories about Jews were consigned to the end of other news stories and concealed within paragraphs. Moreover, news about Jews most often appeared inside the paper rather than on the front page. Times articles often avoided identifying Jews as Jews, instead identifying them as ‘‘refugees,’’ ‘‘prisoners,’’ ‘‘the living dead,’’ ‘‘political prisoners,’’ ‘‘civilians,’’ ‘‘skeletons,’’ and ‘‘slaves.’’ When they were identified as Jews, their stories were typically discussed along with those of other persecuted minorities. Leff writes that ‘‘the Times never acknowledged that the mass murder of Jews, because they were Jews, was something its readers needed to know’’ (16; original emphasis). Leff also examines the role that news editors played in making placement decisions, the relationship between the government and the mass media in ‘‘making the news,’’ and how journalists’ idiosyncrasies and relationships with one another affected coverage. A more thorough treatment of the Times during the Holocaust does not exist, Janine Minkler, review of Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper by Laurel Leff. Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, 3 (December 2006): 377–379. ß 2006 Genocide Studies and Prevention. although a number of scholars have documented how the American press failed to recognize and report on the Holocaust.1 Leff goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the news, published by a paper known for its objectivity, was nevertheless influenced by the viewpoint of its owner, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. She paints a portrait of a man obsessed by an anti-Zionist position, anxious not to appear to give Jews special treatment, and concerned that too much focus on Jews would fuel American anti-Semitism. Although he belonged to four synagogues and personally helped several family members escape Nazi persecution, Sulzberger viewed his personal life as entirely separate from his public paper and, according to Leff, continually diminished the plight of the European Jews. To Leff, Sulzberger and his paper are partly responsible for obscuring the truth of the Holocaust from the American public: ‘‘Although there is no direct evidence to prove it, it is likely that other newspapers did not highlight the Holocaust at least partly because the New York Times did not...