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Reviewed by:
  • Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper
  • Brian B. Kahn
Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, by Laurel Leff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 417 pp. $29.00.

In this wonderfully detailed, dramatic account of how TheNew York Times deliberately underreported the Nazi rise to power, the deportation and ghettoization of millions of Jews, and the implementation of the Final Solution, Laurel Leff provokes as many new questions as she provides answers. Why did the most powerful newspaper in the world downplay the events that have come to be known as the Holocaust, relegating the vast majority of the stories to the inside pages? How could this Jewish-owned institution choose, in all good conscience, to overlook the "Jewish aspect" of these horrific events? And what, exactly, is the responsibility of the press when faced with world events that clearly point to the attempted annihilation of an entire people? Leff's compelling narrative takes on these questions as she unfolds one of those little-known stories of America's past. Buried by The Times is an engrossing and well documented history which reminds us, once again, of what occurs when evil is left unchecked by those with the power to intervene.

The text begins by examining the years 1933–41. We are introduced to the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and his thinking on how to treat Jewish issues within the pages of his newspaper. Sulzberger long maintained that "being a Jew and a journalist had little to do with one another," and it was, in part, his fear of rampant antisemitism that informed his decision not to use TheTimes to report to the world what he knew was going on in Germany as well as the newly conquered territories. Sulzberger wanted to downplay the notion that TheTimes was a "Jewish newspaper," so he and his editors went to great lengths to avoid using the term "Jew" in ways that would suggest that Jews were a separate race. They frequently ran stories denouncing Germany's actions in Poland (usually not on the front page) without referring to the victims as Jews.

Leff also examines the role of foreign correspondents in Berlin as government measures continued to make life more difficult for Jews. The Times reporters chronicled the actions of the German government against the Jews, but they often put positive twists on these stories or simply failed to present the whole truth. For example, in a report filed in 1941, The Times Berlin bureau reporter, George Axelsson, suggested that Jewish deportations to Poland could be beneficial. Axelsson reported that deported Jews in various locations, including the ghetto of Lodz, received free room and board as well as expert medical care from Jewish doctors and nurses.

Stories emerging from German-controlled France were similarly false. TheTimes denied that Jews were the target of mass arrests and claimed that [End Page 166] the Vichy government was doing its best to make life better in the "detention camps." In general The Times reported what came to them via the official German channels and overlooked information from various Jewish groups. Even in the midst of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in which an estimated 1.5 million Jews were slaughtered by the Einsatzgruppen during 1941–42, only five stories appeared in The Times that mentioned Jews as victims. As Leff reminds us, the crimes of these mobile killing squads was the least reported event of the Holocaust for TheTimes as well as other major newspapers.

Shortly after Goebbels' 1941 announcement outlining the Nazi plan for the Jews, nearly all American reporters were thrown out of the country. During the years 1942–45, reporters had little corroborated information about the concentration camps. Some detailed stories did appear in TheTimes during this period, but Leff describes them as little more than "stacked similarly themed, short stories one on top of another" hidden inside the pages of the paper.

Leff offers her readers insight into the minds of The Times editorial staff and why they decided not to make the annihilation of the Jews a top story. She also traces Sulzberger's...

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