.VA!!!‘
)I..I.‘!
9‘1: ;

x
”“5... u
.3. .. 9...»;
u... 43332:;
t .4... .

 

e

..

e$.n..s.flhub
1E??? .
I .31.}; A ,
3:)..51; ,
é a... V
. .. . . . . 4 t! l
. . , . . .
V . ‘ 6‘... «1..
. *3;an
, ., .W 9rd .9.
‘ yvxld
. I")! ‘
‘\,u. ‘Ill .
Vasquzt. s
. lltv.‘~,

 

I
.2.

i .. 3.5.3...
:119

4 , . .4 1.\
. $1.3. vi
:11. 1, ,

v

:

  

.snxmm$¥a

 

o
nu:-

 

 

(3.5
5.1;,

r a 21:.
:1

wwmvfi
3 .5...“ i
2

 

A». x“
V V
«33$ .

 

 

 

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

31293 01405 2017

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

Overcoming Apathy: Constructing a
Holocaust Consciousness in America,
1950-1967

presented by
Jordan William Paul

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. History

degree in

 

 

AQJIZMW/

Major professor 0

Date W 1'7; lqié

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

 

 

LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

PLACE ll RETURN BOX to remove thle checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or bdore dole due.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU le An Affirmative Action/Ewe! Opportunity trunnion
Wanna

OVERCOMING APATHY:
CONSTRUCTING A HOLOCAUST CONSCIOUSNESS
IN AMERICA, 1950-1967
By

Jordan William Paul

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1996

ABSTRACT
OVERCOMING APATHY:
CONSTRUCTING A HOLOCAUST CONSCIOUSNESS
IN AMERICA, 1950-1967
By

Jordan William Paul

This is an interdisciplinary examination exploring when and how Americans first
collectively began to publicly discuss the genocide of the European Jews. This study
recounts the manner in which fiction, print media, Hollywood film, and other popular
forms of representation functioned as the primary discursive arenas wherein the story of
the genocide was constructed, contested, and transformed in America between 1950 and
1967. I have found that the shifiing and gradually evolving nature of these images and
stories has had a profound and enduring influence on public conceptions of the genocide
in America and greatly impacted the subsequent flood of material related to the Holocaust

released in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Repressing and Discussing the Genocide in 1950’s
America

In Truth, We are Fighters
Why Did You Not Protest?
Those Who Did Not Perish
Epilogue

Bibliography

iii

33

63

89

113

116

Introduction

Between 1933 and 1945, the spread of Nazism in Europe spelled doom for
millions of innocent civilians. Over twelve million people were murdered as a direct
result of Nazi ethnic cleansing. While the Nazis targeted a variety of groups for
extermination, Jews were pursued with particular single-mindedness in Nazi occupied
countries. The Nazis ‘war against the Jews’ constituted a separate and distinctly different
aspect of the German war effort. Six million Jews, constituting two-thirds of Europe’s
prewar Jewish population, were murdered during the genocide. Victims were initially
isolated in their communities by harsh legislation and then isolated with the construction
of numerous walled ghettos. From these ghettos, many Jews were then deported in
boxcars to labor and death camps, where the majority perished from either malnutrition,
starvation, exhaustion, by shooting, or by asphyxiation in gas chambers disguised as
shower rooms. Today, all of these elements together fall under the general term
‘Holocaust’, used to refer to the systematic exclusion and extermination of European
Jewry during this period.

Following the liberation of Europe, the murder of Jews under the Nazi regime
went largely unacknowledged by the American public despite the publication of photos
detailing atrocities encountered by American troops upon arriving at Western European

concentration camps and the Nuremburg tribunal, which ran throughout the late 1940’s.

Americans publicly expressed a desire to get on with their lives and to leave the war
behind. Photographs appearing in UkMagazine in 1944 and 1945 depicting the charred
remains of bodies and mounds of human hair and combs largely shocked and repelled
American audiences. The images of these victims and accounts of American Gl’s failed
to generate sustained public interest or discussion in the genocide. The Nuremburg
tribunal, which followed, disappointed and quickly bored the American public. As one
journalist commented, “with their cheap suits and hungry faces, these undistinguished
men did not look like the archcriminals of the age.” He added, “its mass of evidence
created boredom, mixed occasionally with an abject . . .”' As the 1940’s drew to a close,
the genocide of European Jewry was subsumed within the larger figure of the 45 million
total lives lost as a result of the war in Europe, and Americans expressed little interest in
material related to this tragedy.

One of the perennial challenges facing historians face is to make their readers
‘feel’ the past. The Holocaust presents unique problems for historians in part due to the
enormity of the tragedy and also because of the utter other-worldliness of the
concentration camps. How could any reader be expected to relate their own personal
experiences with the inhumane conditions, suffering, and dehumanization which defined
the genocide? As one historian notes, “historians of the Holocaust, in short, know
nothing- in an experiential sense- about their subject. This experiential shortcoming is
quite different from their not having experienced, for example, the Constitutional

Convention in Philadelphia or Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. Indeed, a recurring theme

 

' Alex Ross, “Watching for a Judgement of Real Evil”, the WM, 12 November, 1995, Section
H, 37.

among witnesses is how ‘unbelievable’ the Holocaust was to them even as they lived
through it.”2 The repelling nature of the Life photographs, when combined with the
complexity of the Nuremburg Tribunal plus the general difficulties faced by historians,
observers, and witnesses in describing the enormity of the crimes fostered a general
silence among Americans during the late 1940’s.

However, as the 1950’s began, works began to appear in America dealing first
with certain elements of the genocide while limiting descriptions of suffering and
violence to that which mainstream audiences could still in some form abide. These
generated interest and increased public awareness of the genocide among the American
public by drawing comparisons between early phases of the extermination process, such
as the isolation and ghettoization of civilians, to events occurring in contemporary
America related to the Cold War and the culture of 1950’s America. As one historian has
argued, although the Holocaust remains in many senses an incomparable tragedy,
“comparison is essential for any attempt to understand.”3 Writers, film producers,
journalists, and playwrights narrowed the scope of their descriptions of the genocide to
create stories which simultaneously informed American audiences about portions of the
tragedy while also presenting relevant contemporary insights and critiques of modern
society.

In this manner, American writers and the American public collectively crafted a

language, form and style within which to discuss and describe the genocide during the

 

2Christopher Browning, “German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and Historical Reconstruction: Writing
Perpetrator History from Postwar Testimony”, in WWII ed. by Saul
Friedlander, Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1992, 25.

3Dominick LaCapra, “Representing the Holocaust: Reflections on the Historians’ Debate”, In mm
W, ed. by Saul Friedlander, Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1992,111

1950’s and early 1960’s. Works initially focused on limited elements of the Holocaust
and only gradually began to particularize the suffering of Jews and explore the role of
victims in their deaths. Throughout the 1950’s, the concentration camps remained a
mysterious and largely taboo topic within this gradually evolving public discussion.
Only during the early 1960’s did the American public begin to show interest in learning
about these camps through popular forms of representation. Once the subject of the
camps entered into the growing collective discussion, the suffering of victims and
survivors marked the final phase in this evolution of awareness by American mainstream
audiences.

Authors and producers utilized fiction as a means to convey the essence of
suffering to audiences and drew upon a variety of contemporary national and
international events to make their works relevant. The resurgence of Communism and
the growth of the Cold War dominated the collective American mind in the 1950’s, and
works dealing with the genocide at this time largely reflected the fears and uncertainty of
the American populace at this time. As the Civil Rights struggle mushroomed during the
mid and late 1950’s, material related to the genocide increasingly drew comparisons
between the plight of Jews in Nazi Europe to the suffering of Blacks in contemporary
America. Moreover, the growth of Israel and its increasing importance as an American
ally in the Middle East was reflected in several pieces to emerge for American audiences
in the late 1950’s and particularly in the early 1960’s. Throughout this entire period, the
increasing assimilation of Jews into American culture and life impacted how Jews were

portrayed and how Jews portrayed themselves in works that dealt with the genocide.

These events were the predominant but by no means exclusive agents affecting how the
story of the Holocaust was presented to Americans and how these stories were received.

Works which appear in this study were selected based upon their public and
critical reception at the time of their release and their subsequent impact on awareness
and interest in the genocide. Nearly all of these pieces were bestsellers or top grossers at
the box office. Moreover, works discussed in this study generated a litany of related
articles in major periodicals and newspapers around the country as a result of their
success. For example, the phenomenal interest engendered by Anne Frank’s story
provoked stories about famous diarists, Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, children and
the genocide, Dutch protectors of Jews, and many articles about Anne’s family and
friends. As a result, whether or not Americans actually read Anne Frank’s diary or saw
the theatrical and film versions of her story, the majority of mainstream readers were
aware of Anne’s tale and her suffering during the 1950’s. Thus, pieces which either
sparked attention and related articles in the media or led to subsequent books and films
related to specific elements of the genocide are the focus of this study.

The majority of the pieces which are discussed in this study were written by and
largely for urban Eastern audiences. Clearly, American Jews were the primary readers
and viewers of the material which appears in this study. Most of these works were
published or produced in New York and aimed at suburban and urban audiences. These
pieces tended to universalize elements of the genocide to widen their acceptance among
secular audiences and dealt with the Judaism of victims in very muted tones. While

American Jews were obviously the most directly affected and interested audience of these

pieces, the success of many of these works suggests a wide secular and mainstream
interest in this evolving public discussion as well.

Literally hundreds of new works and representations of the genocide appeared in
America following the 1967 Six-Day War in Israel. Historian Judith Miller noted, “The
impact of the war on the American public, and on American Jews in particular is difficult
to overestimate.”4 Journalist and historian Charles Maier added, “the Six Day War in
effect moved the Holocaust higher on the agenda of [American] memory”.5 As
periodicals, newspapers, television, and radio news shows explored why and how
American Jews raised so much money on such short notice and what role the Holocaust
had played in the Jewish community’s ability to organize so rapidly, a flood of new
works were released in America intended to address what was perceived as a ‘sudden’
mainstream interest in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. As one consequence, many
contemporary historians have looked back on 1967 as the year in which Americans first
began to publicly discuss and disseminate information and ideas related to the genocide
in the United States. According to many observers, 1967 marked the initial formulation
of a collective Holocaust consciousness among American audiences. While one cannot
deny the impact which the events of 1967 had upon shaping how Americans thought,
discussed, and understood the genocide of European Jews, this study will argue against
the notion that Americans first began to take notice of the genocide only in 1967.

This then is how a living experience moved through American culture and how, in

turn, cultural representations shaped how Americans came to know about the suffering

 

’ Judith Miller, W, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990, 222.
5 Charles Maier, 111mm, Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1988, 164.

and mass-killing of Jews during the Holocaust. Historian Richard Rubenstein writes,

”6 The stories that

“the Holocaust is defined largely by the stories that are told about it.
were told about the Holocaust explored in this study were popular, critically acclaimed,
and publicly discussed representations of the genocide to appear in the United States
between the years 1950-1965. Cumulatively, they helped shaped how mainstream
Americans understood the genocide. When viewed together, these works provide a

window into how contemporary American culture impacts our understanding of historical

events.

 

‘ Richard Rubenstein. WWW Atlanta: John Knox
Press, l987, 9.

CHAPTER 1
REPRESSING AND DISCUSSING THE GENOCIDE IN 1950’S AMERICA

The 1950’s in America were a time of collective anxiety, confusion and chaos. It
was within this troubled climate that the recent genocide of European Jewry became a
topic of significant interest among a segment of the American public. This chapter
examines what cultural and political factors contributed to this interest and how
contemporary international and domestic concerns shaped collective understanding of the
events we today refer to as the Holocaust. Images presented to the American public in
the 1950’s were formative in shaping contemporary American consciousness of the
genocide. In addition, understanding how works released in this period reflected the
general mood of Americans in the 1950’s also highlights the complexities involved in
remembering, representing and relating atrocities to a nation of bystanders who largely
had no first hand knowledge of these events. While this chapter refutes claims by
scholars that a collective silence existed within America during the 1950’s in regards to
the Nazi genocide, understanding what was produced and how this impacted the public
discourse on this topic goes a long way toward explaining why contemporary historians
have interpreted this era as absent of any sustained collective discussion.

The body of works that emerged in America during the 1950’s dealing with

elements of the Nazi genocide shared several important similarities with each other.

While the uniqueness of the genocide was brought to light through these works, the true
uniqueness of the events themselves was ignored. Concentration camps were depicted as
‘black holes’ where people were sent and presumably killed shortly afier their arrival.
Although the characters in these works were Jewish, the role of Judaism in their lives was
rarely explored. Moreover, victims in works that appeared in the 1950’s tended to be
depicted as middle class, fairly well educated, and from urban areas.

Numerous studies have shown that the overriding concern facing Americans in
the early 1950’s was the escalating threat posed by the Soviet Union. In fact, a January
11, 1950 Gallup poll found seven out of 10 Americans believed that Russia was seeking
to dominate the entire world.1 While relations between the US and USSR rapidly
deteriorated between 1945 and 1950, developments in weapons technology ushered in the
nuclear age. The February 1950 announcement by President Harry Truman that America
would embark upon construction of an hydrogen bomb capable of massive annihilation
was followed swifily with Soviet claims of nuclear capability. Suddenly, the stakes in a
possible war between the superpowers had been raised considerably. Another poll issued
in May of 1950 listed the threat of war as America’s most urgent national problem.2
Popular magazines such as Time, Life, and Newsweek speculated on the possibility of
global nuclear war. Americans were left feeling powerless and scared by events which
seemed to be escalating out of control. The spoils of victory from “the war to end all
wars” had somehow been missed. Although America had won the war, people seemed to

feel more uneasy about their existence than they had on the eve America’s entry into

 

' “ls Russia Seeking to Dominate the World?,” Qafluplgfls 11 January 1950.
2 “Issues Affecting America,” 9311111129115 5 May 1950.

10

World War II in 1941. By August of 1950, over fifty percent of the American public
believed that World War 111 had already begun.3

The Cold War served as a catalyst for a series of sensational events occurring in
the early 1950’s. Senator Joseph McCarthy rose to fame and power as he accused
hundreds of State Department employees of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. As
many Americans constructed bomb shelters behind their homes, McCarthy accused an
ever widening pool of citizens, ranging from Hollywood screenwriters to military
personnel of having pro-communist sympathies. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s conviction
and execution for treason in 1953, marking the first and only time Americans were ever
put to death for spying during peacetime, only added further to the tensions in American
society.

Life in America for Jews was changing as well in the early 1950’s. The
formation of the Jewish state of Israel was met with mildly positive responses from the
American population. As Charles Stember notes in his study of American attitudes
towards Jews, “the actual establishment of the State of Israel still found the American
public in a mood of fairly widespread indifference, judging by polls taken in February,

June, October, and November 1948.”4

Moreover, Jews in America found themselves in
an unusual position at this time. By 1950, many American Jews had lefi the cities where

they had first settled and were now living comfortably in suburbs with non-Jewish

neighbors. As Arthur Hertzberg notes in his study, “American Jews needed to feel that

 

3 “Is the us m World War 111?, ” murmur. 19 August 1950.
Charles Herbert Stember et a1, lewmjheMmdgfiAmema (New York and London: Basic Books,
1966), 178.

11

they were part of America, and they were among the victors . . . the Jewish agenda was
dominated by one desire, to expand the place of Jews in America. They wanted to be

”5 Also around this time,

accepted by the Gentiles, not to confront them- at least not then.
a group of Jews known popularly as “the New York intellectuals”, began to gain fame for
their literary works. Authors such as Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, Alfred
Kazin, and Lionel Trilling wrote best-selling pieces, however they also largely avoided
discussing the topic of the recent Nazi genocide in their work, opting instead to dwell
upon more theoretical issues and debates.

Ironically, just as American Jews were becoming acculturated and accepted into
suburbia, the arrival of Displaced Persons from Europe was viewed by many American
Jews as a potentially troubling development. Malnourished and shell-shocked displaced
persons, European Jews whose homes and families had perished under Nazi attack,
quietly entered a society which had no real sense of their ordeal. Historian Robert Abzug
adds, “in the mind of most Americans, the survivors quickly became shadows of a distant
nightmare”6 Collectively, these DP’s remained silent about their experiences. While a
small handful of these survivors recounted their experiences in Yiddish publications,
most carefully avoided retelling their stories for a variety of reasons. The shock of their
losses still haunted many of these newly arriving Jews. Moreover, some Jews in America

had sensed that these “old-world” Jews might jeopardize their increasing acceptance

among non-Jewish neighbors. Finally, many DP’s chose not to speak of their losses

 

’ Arthur Hertzberg, W (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 303.
6 Robert Abzug, lnsrdflhflmmuiflm (New York and Oxford: Oxford Press, 1985), 141.

12

because of the disbelief and utter horror which their stories evoked when they did speak
of their experiences.

While these events were hardly the only elements shaping American culture in the
early 1950’s, they were certainly among the most prominent factors determining how the
story of the genocide was initially told to Americans. Texts and images to emerge from
this decade which introduced Americans to the “human element” of the six million dead
dwelt upon broad themes that were particularly relevant to the contemporary challenges
being faced by US citizens. Thus, the major works dealing with this topic such as John
Hersey’s Iheflall or Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s stage version of QM
Annejrank presented the genocide to American audiences in safe, limited, and accessible
ways. Rather than shock or repel audiences with the brutality and violence of life in the
concentration camps, these works stressed themes about the will to live in the face of
difficult hardships and offered larger messages about human nature and life on this planet
which served as a salve for audiences who were unhappy and unsure of the direction in
which their postwar world was heading.

John Hersey’s Iheflall represents not only the first fictional work dealing with
an element of the genocide to be widely embraced by the American public, but also the
first work of any kind to be widely discussed in popular magazines, newspapers, and
journals. Hersey’s work was met with praise by both Jewish and non-Jewish critics
following its release. In fact, Ihe_W_all remained on bestseller lists for over 23 weeks in
1950 and 1951. Hersey’s work greatly reflected the general mood of the United States in

the 1950’s through the themes he chose to emphasize, the events he described, and those

l3

aspects of the genocide which he has omitted from his work. While we can really only
speculate on why his novel caught the fancy of the American public, it certainly supports
the contention of a link between contemporary collective concerns and the evolving
awareness of certain aspects of the genocide of European Jews among the American
populace.

Ih§_\_N_all describes the plight of 500,000 Polish Jews trapped in Warsaw between
1940 and 1943. The book is based on actual events which occurred behind the ghetto’s
walls, and it sets fictional characters within these events throughout the novel. The story
is based on the discovery of an imaginary collection of notebooks belonging to the
fictional Noach Levinson following the war’s close. Through the pages of Noach’s
imaginary notebooks, Hersey introduces over thirty major characters and examines their
reactions to the steadily deteriorating physical conditions of the ghetto. One of the
novel’s greatest strengths undoubtedly resides in the author’s ability to show how the
men and women of the ghetto undergo spiritual transformations as their predicament
worsens. As the noose tightens around the ghetto’s dwindling population, Levinson’s
notebooks detail the lengths to which some would resort in order to stay alive for just one
more day. With their fate all but sealed, Iheflallls final chapters describes the decision
among the 50,000 remaining Jews to die fighting their oppressors in spite of being
hopelessly outrnanned and largely unarmed.

The choice of the ghetto as Hersey’s subject was hardly arbitrary. In fact, his
decision to write about the experience of Jews trapped in the Warsaw ghetto reflects the

author’s desire to create a work which would be accessible to American readers in 1950.

14

The ghetto was a very real and frightening component of the genocide of European Jews.
Ghettos were erected and subsequently destroyed in multitudes of Eastern European cities
between 1939 and 1945. Unlike the concentration or death camps where conditions were
wholly unique in terms of the cruelty, barbarism and machinelike destruction of human
life, Americans could at least compare (no matter how poor the analogy) tenements and
ghettos within their own cities to the Warsaw ghetto as it was described in Them.
Hersey emphasizes just this point through one of archivist Noach Levinson journal
entries: “our ghetto differs from a normal society only in that all the normal pressures are
increased a hundredfold; consequently the end products of pressure are also manifest a
hundredfold- . . . This hydraulic press of a ghetto squeezes things out of us that our thin
hides would normally contain, and that we would prefer not to see issue from us.”7 While
the ghettoization process was unique, the deprivation and suffering was still largely
within the realm of the average American reader’s comprehension.

Fiction allows the author the opportunity to transcend issues related to the
genocide in particular to investigate how men and women behave in a continually
deteriorating environment. As one of Hersey’s main characters states in the novel, “man
can be on the whole agreeable and indestructible creatures and . . . his staying quality was
to be found, in the last analysis, in his tendency, under stress, to band together with his
fellows.”8 Iheflall presents a group of ordinary people and follows their spiritual
development through ever-worsening circumstances. While the ghettoization of these

people serves as the catalyst for their various individual transformations, the novel

 

7 John Hersey, Mall. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), 162.
3 Ibid. , 384.

15

focuses upon the character’s reactions to events which are seemingly entirely out of their
control. Hersey rarely, if ever, offers reasons why events are occurring as they do in the
ghetto. The men and women of this novel appear to be caught in a whirlpool that is
spinning rapidly out of control, and rather than assess what has produced this whirlpool
and how it may be stopped or even slowed, Hersey devotes his attention to how people
react as their plight continuously worsens.

The central theme of John Hersey’s Iheflall was the resiliency of the human
spirit and man’s choice to live in the face of deplorable circumstances. He writes, “here
at last, man has shown that he holds within himself the capacity to withstand anything.”9
This theme clearly reflects the climate in which the works were produced and to a very
large extent, the writer’s personal experiences as a war correspondent during World War
II. As Americans grew increasingly apprehensive about the future of their world due to
the developing arms race and advancements in nuclear technology in 1950, numerous
articles and reports appeared in popular periodicals which examined the possible effects
of a nuclear attack on an American city. Within a five day span during February, 1950,
major metropolitan newspapers devoted considerable time and space towards assessing
the possible effects of a nuclear attack on urban areas.'0 The other dominant works of the
decade which dealt with elements of the Nazi genocide such as IthimflAnngEmnk
and stage and screen versions of her story were also set against this backdrop of urban

decay and isolation. While a historian cannot absolutely claim that the success of these

 

9 John Hersey, w. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), 522.

’0 “World Arms Talks Urged,” the W95 7 February 1950, p. 1. also “Probable Effects of a
Bomb Blast on Buildings in this Country,” the W 10 February 1950, p. 8. also
“Vulnerability of US cities,” the W 12 February 1950, p. 36. also “Einstein Sees Bid to
Annihilation in Hydrogen Bomb,” the Wes 13 February 1950, p. l.

16

works was predicated upon their being set in devastated urban environments, certainly
part of their appeal was related to their ability to address contemporary concerns in the
collective American mind.

During the war, John Hersey established a name as something of an expert on
disasters through his work covering events in the Atlantic and the Pacific as a war-
correspondent for Time, Life, and W. “He is”, one reviewer noted “a man
who attends catastrophes to observe how people act in an extreme situation, [and] no one
writing today can match Hersey’s appreciation of man under stress; he is a witness for

”’1 These experiences included landing with the US marines

humanity in a time of terror.
at Guadalcanal, touring the smoldering remains of Warsaw in 1944, walking amongst the
mangled dead in Estonian concentration camps, and delivering a series of award winning
articles from Hiroshima following the dropping of an atomic bomb on that city. Prior to
1950, the work he produced was widely praised and the novel A_B_ell_er_Adano won him
the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. Of course, one can imagine that the weight of having been
present for not one but several of the century’s worst massacres would leave the author
deeply scarred, and in some respects, they clearly did. However, as Hersey himself noted
in an interview, “these experiences gave rise to certain optimism, too, for in each case
there were survivors and, one had to conclude that mankind was indestructible.”12 Thus,
the theme of man’s choice of life over death and the ability of people to survive even

under the most wretched of conditions became the dominant theme in many of Hersey’s

war reports and early novels.

 

“ Robert Hatch, review of Mall, by John Hersey, in Wig 122 (April 1950): 18.
‘2 David Sanders, IohnHersey. (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967), 57.

17

As in Anne Frank’s diary and other adaptations of her work, Hersey spends little
time detailing how religion or culture impacted individual’s reactions to events. While
Nazi propaganda had portrayed the majority of European Jews as orthodox followers of
their faith, replete with long gray beards, curly sideburns, and black coats and hats, works
to appear in the 1950’s dealt largely with reformed Jews who were entirely assimilated
into the material and cultural world and urban life. “The offense of these people was
existing”, writes Hersey. “How could they be so humble, so patient, so oblivious, so full
of humor, so forgiving, so tenacious- in the face of their now obvious and implacable
fate, how could they be so tenacious?”l3 By stressing the initially ordinary qualities of
these characters, Hersey’s novel encourages the reader to place himself/herself in the
same situation and imagine how they would react.

Another similarity among works released and widely accepted by American
audiences in the 1950’s was the virtual absence of any type of discussion about Nazi run
concentration camps. Hersey’s novel omits nearly any mention of the camps except for a
brief and technical description of the crematoria facilities at Treblinka. Hersey visited
camps in Estonia during the last stages of the war, and he admits to being disgusted by
the levels to which the people there had stooped in order to survive. Following a
conversation with a Kapo in the camp, the author decided against writing a novel on the
camps. The stories of family and community he had heard in the ghetto were far more
uplifting than the cunning and bullying described by the camp survivors.” While

audiences could relate to the suffering and persecution of the ghetto’s inhabitants,

 

‘3 John Hersey, Ingram. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), 250.
1’ David Sanders, Johnflersey. (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967), 56.

 

 

18

atrocities occurring within the camps were all but unfathomable to the majority of
American readers. Therefore, in an effort to keep his work accessible, Hersey avoided
even speculating on what life was like for the 450,000 Jews who were sent to the camps
from Warsaw’s ghetto in 1941 and 1942. The implication in Iheflall is that once the
characters step into a boxcar their lives are essentially over and they will be cremated in a
matter of days. By treating the camps in this manner, Hersey purposively steers
discussion away from the camps and their horrors.

Americans could read IheJMall and sympathize with the tragedy of the Warsaw
ghetto while at the same time setting down the novel feeling reassured in the strength
which resides in ordinary men and women. Perhaps this was the strongest ingredient
behind the novel’s success. Readers gained a better understanding of contemporary
historical events related to the genocide without coming away from the novel overly
depressed or burdened with guilt. W certainly promoted thought and feelings, but
its most provocative elements were related to the larger issues of human nature and man’s
will to live rather than questions related to the genocide.

Public interest in the genocide substantially increased with the 1952 English
translation of Anne Frank’s W. Although the Diary remained on the
bestseller lists for about the same length of time as W had in 1950, Anne’s story
engendered much deeper and more passionate reactions among critics and the public. As
author/j oumalist Meyer Levin observed in a review of the Diary, “It is, in reality, the kind

of document that John Hersey invented for W?” Americans came away from

 

’5 Meyer Levin, review of W, by Anne Frank and translated by BM.
Mooyaart-Doubleday, in W 15 June 1952, l.

19

reading Anne’s tale with a sense of personal loss. This marked the first time many- if not
most -Arnericans grieved for a specific victim of the Nazi’s genocide against the Jews.
Although the Diary, much like Hersey’s novel, dealt with the genocide in a very safe and
distant manner, Anne’s chronicle finally placed a face and a name on the tragedy which
had befallen so many of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. In retrospect, the Diary’s
ability to transcend the staggering, abstract statistic of six million dead may have been its
most important contribution to the collective American awareness and understanding of
the genocide.

Set in occupied Amsterdam, the Diary traces events in the life of a thirteen year
old girl trapped in an annex above a spice factory with her family and four others over a
two year period. Anne’s account chronicles the slowly deteriorating conditions facing
these eight peOple and traces how they physically and emotionally responded to their
continuing adversity. The Diary also serves as a unique coming of age tale in which the
author is forced to mature rapidly as a result of her family’s situation. Anne initially
appears as a rambunctious and shallow child in the first entries of her diary, but by the
journal’s concluding pages, she has blossomed into an introspective and soulful woman
with an enormous amount of literary talent. Over the course of the story these dual
storylines are developed as Anne offers observations and personal sentiments on events
occurring within the Annex during her two year ordeal.

The Diary is an intensely personal chronicle that is filled with the young author’s
raw emotions and feelings. Recently, a friend related the following story to me about a

sixth grader’s reaction to Anne’s diary. As the story goes, a group of sixth graders were

20

told to write letters to Anne as a follow-up exercise to reading her story. One of the
letters began, ‘Dear Anne- sorry I read your diary but . . .’ Because this was a work meant
only for herself and not for publication, the passages dealing with Anne’s hobbies, quirks,
and brief romance with Peter Van Daan further created a personal bond between Anne
Frank and the book’s readers. In fact, its honesty is sometimes embarrassing, as in
Anne’s assessment of her continuing conflicts with her mother when entries appear as
follows, “I don’t pronounce judgment on Mummy’s character, for that is something I
can’t judge. I only look at her as a mother, and she just doesn’t Succeed in being that to

16
me.”

It was this sort of honesty which brought Anne to life in the minds and hearts of
American readers. As Eleanor Roosevelt noted in the introduction to the English version
of Anne’s account, “I felt how close we all are to Anne’s experience, how very much
involved we are in her short life and in the entire world.”'7

Part of Anne’s ability to successfully appeal to American readers in the 1950’s
were her Westemized traits and tastes. As in Ihgflall, the characters who populate
Anne’s account are largely middle class people who work in generally white collar jobs
and live comfortably. Moreover, the Diary’s characters have been raised in largely urban
environments such as Amsterdam, whereas the Hersey novel centers its attention on
Warsaw. Those who were most apt to read either of these works often were from urban

areas or suburbs themselves, thus providing another accessible element for American

audiences to identify with Anne’s plight. In many respects, Anne Frank also appears very

 

l“Anne Frank, mm, trans. BM. Mooyaart-Doubleday, with an

introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt (New York and Toronto: Bantam Books, 1952), 45.

’7 Eleanor Roosevelt, introduction to AnngEranLMmgLalQungfim by Anne Frank, trans. by
B.M. Mooyaart—Doubleday (New York and Toronto: Bantam Books, 1952), xiv.

21

much like American girls of her age. She reads the classics of Western literature, collects
pictures of Hollywood movie stars, and is infatuated with the royal families of Europe.
These qualities all contributed to the feeling among critics that Anne seemed like a friend
from down the street to those who read her diary.

The Diary’s treatment of Judaism in many ways mirrored the ambiguous role of
Jews in 1952 America life. The Frank’s and their friends are clearly very reformed Jews
who have fully acculturated to life in an urban environment. Only in the last several
months of her ordeal did Anne begin to show an interest in Judaism and its role in her
life. In April, 1944 Anne wrote, “Who has made us Jews different from all other people?
Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we
are, but it will be God, too who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if
there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held

”’8 While Anne mentions Judaism at various junctures, she spends

up as an example.
relatively little time exploring her faith within the Diary.

Jews in American subscribed to the Americans- All philosophy which was
prevalent throughout the culture during the early 1950’s. Charles Stember’s legginjhe
Mindngmeriga found that although there was a steep drop in anti-Semitism in America
in the years following the war’s close, American Jews found themselves in a very tenuous
position during the early 1950’s. Incidences such as the creation of Israel, subsequent

Israeli aggression toward Arab neighbors, the Jewish sounding names of several

defendants in the McCarthy trials, and American’s past tendencies of associating Jews

 

'8 Anne Frank, W, trans. B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, with an

introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt (New York and Toronto: Bantam Books, 1952), 207.

22

with political radicalism, espionage, and Communism all presented a very real threat to
an increase in domestic anti-Semitism.19 As a result of these and other factors, Jews in
America presented themselves as another element in the universal fabric advocated by
conservative political leaders of American culture in the early 1950’s. Noted social
theorist Will Herberg proclaimed America a tri-faith society in his 1955 study Catholic,
Protestant, and Jew and introduced the concept of a civil religion within America which
was predicated upon any one of these religious faiths.20 Therefore, the muted Judaism
exhibited in the Frank’s lifestyle and values fit well into the universalistic culture of
1950’s America and may well have widened the book’s appeal among segments of the
American public.

In this vein, the principle themes to emanate from the Diary were an extension of
those presented by John Hersey in Iheflallz the universal will to live in the face of
adversity and the resilient nature of human beings. As Meyer Levin noted in his review
of the Diary, “these people might be living next door; within the family emotions, their
tensions and satisfactions are those of human character and growth, anywhere.”
Conditions within the annex where her family was hidden gradually worsened over
Anne’s two year internment. The combination of a lack of privacy, dwindling food
rations, the need for silence during the daytime, and a constant fear of a knock at their

door created an extremely tense environment among the secret annexe’s inhabitants.

 

’9 Charles Herbert Stember, et a1 JewsjnjheMindanmerica (New York: Basic Books, 1966) 12, 210,
and 302.
2° Arthur Hertzberg, W (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 324.

23

Again, American readers could identify with this type of suffering even if they had never
been in similar situations themselves.

The Diary ends abruptly and the fate of its author is to be implicitly assumed
following the journal’s last page. Ironically, some historians have noted that as the Diary
ends, Anne’s real experience with the genocide had actually just begun. Due to her
confinement, Anne has no firsthand knowledge of the concentration camps or what
occurred there. In fact, her family learns more about the camps in much the same way as
Americans did: by listening to the radio and war reports broadcast over the BBC. The
horrors and cruelty which were part of the everyday routine in the camps are not dealt
with in any form within the Diary. By omitting these elements of the genocide, the Diary
leaves readers feeling bittersweet in its final pages. Readers are left to mourn Anne’s
death without being given enough information of how she died to provoke more
disturbing questions and reactions to the Diary. Rather, hers is a life which seems short
but well-lived, and this may in fact have been Anne’s legacy, even though she spent two
years essentially in captivity.

Two months prior to the discovery of the Franks and their friends, Anne wrote, “I
want to go on living even after my deathl’m Central to Otto Frank’s decision to have his
daughter’s diary turned into a theatrical production were these sentiments. As the lone
surviving member of the eight, the legacy of Anne’s story fell into Otto’s hands. Several
authors expressed an interest in adapting the Diary for the stage, and though there was no

guarantee of financial success, Anne’s story had elicited enough attention in the early

 

2‘ Anne Frank, mm, trans. BM. Mooyaart-Doubleday, with an

introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt (New York and Toronto: Bantam Books, 1952), 197.

24

1950’s to interest Broadway producers. The plastic nature of the Diary lent itself very
well to the theater, allowing writers to remain faithful to Anne’s work while emphasizing
certain portions of the piece and omitting others. Moreover, the cloistered setting of the
Diary could be easily reproduced on the stage with a single set. Ultimately, the play
extended the personification of Anne as an American-like victim of the genocide and
underscored the overall tragedy of war and genocide.

Even prior to the Diary’s translation and publication in America, noted Jewish
author Meyer Levin had alerted Otto Frank of his interest in adapting this work for the
theater. However, Otto Frank was not satisfied with Levin’s script and subsequently
found the author’s aims different from his own. Frank’s rejection of the Levin script
centered on the role which the family’s Judaism would occupy in the stage version of
Anne’s story. Following a reading of Levin’s script, Otto sent the author a letter in which
he wrote, “As to the Jewish side you are right that I do not feel the same way you do. I
always said, that Anne’s book is not a warbook. War is the background. It is not a
Jewish book, either, though Jewish sphere, sentiment and surrounding is the background.
. . It is read and understood more by gentiles than in Jewish circles. So do not make a

”22 Frank instead chose Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett to write

Jewish play of it.
the script, a non-Jewish husband and wife writing team recommended to him by friend
Lillian Hellman. Otto became a central element in the adaptation of his daughter’s diary

to the stage. As a result, some of the harsher sentiments expressed by Anne towards her

family and friends were omitted or smoothed over and their Dutch protectors were more

 

2‘ Letter from Otto Frank to Meyer Levin, June 28, 1952, reprinted in Judith Doneson, W11
Americanfilm (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 66.

25

greatly emphasized in the final script. In effect, the play served as a means for Otto to
give his thanks to those who had helped him in his ordeal and allowed Otto the
opportunity to reshape certain elements of Anne’s story according to his own memory
and experiences.

Bringing the Diary to the stage was certainly not without its difficulties. After no
less than 14 rewrites, the final production premiered at the Cort Theater in New York
City on October 5, 1955. The final version of the play reflected some of the changes
occuning within American society at this time. While the major theme remained
centered upon the human will to live and the resiliency of the human spirit, there was a
new emphasis placed upon the destructiveness of discrimination towards minorities. As
noted above, Otto Frank sought to de-emphasize the Jewish nature of the story and
instead focus upon the fact that these eight people were ostracized for being minorities in
general rather than Jews in particular. One effect of this decision was to sharply veil the
uniqueness of the genocide itself. By casting the story in a more general light, the Nazi’s
specific aim of eliminating Jews from the entire continent of Europe goes completely
unmentioned during this production. Passages from the Diary which specifically
mentioned Jews were altered in the stage version of Anne’s story. Anne’s diary entry on
April 11, 1944 reads, “Right through the ages there have been Jews, through all the ages
they have had to suffer, but it has made them strong too; the weak fall, but the strong will

'9923

remain and never go under However, in the Hackett and Goodrich script the same

 

2’ Anne Frank, WWII. trans. BM. Mooyaart-Doubleday, with an

introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt (New York and Toronto: Bantam Books, 1952), 207.

26

line reads, “We’re not the only people that’ve had to suffer. There’ve always been people
that’ve had to . . sometimes one race . . . sometimes another?“
Jews in the theatrical version of the Diary are not specific targets of the Nazis but
rather representative of all minorities living in Western cultures. Therefore, many
American critics and social observers viewed the play as a parable for America’s
burgeoning civil rights movement being spearheaded by Martin Luther King, Jr. and
other Southern Black leaders who sought equality for their people within this nation.
Several significant developments involving desegregation occurred in the months
preceding and following the play’s premiere including the Brown v. Board of Education
decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When viewed in this light, the play’s central
line, in which Anne concludes, “in spite of everything, I still believe people are really

good at heart.”25

offered hope that domestic discrimination of minorities would not rip
America apart but could be solved in a peaceful manner through appeals to basic human
goodness and dignity.

Following its opening night performance the play was met with wide critical and
public acclaim. Reviewer Walter Kerr wrote, “[the play is] for all its pathos- as bright

”26 In another review William Hawkins added, “In the end, they

and shining as a banner.
must go to concentration camps. And Anne goes, smiling. She never stopped believing

that, in spite of everything, people were good.”27 The Hackett and Goodrich production

 

2’ Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, Wk with a foreword by Brooks Atkinson
(New York: Random House, 1956), 168.

2’ Ibid., 168, 174.

2" Walter Kerr, review of Wk, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, New York
Heraldlrihllne, 6 October 1955.

27 William Hawkins review of W, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, New

Willi-harm, 6 October 1955.

27

won several major awards, including several Tony Awards, the Antoinette Perry Award,
the Critics’ Circle Award, and finally the Pulitzer Prize for theater in 1956. Sixteen year
old Susan Strasberg was catapulted to fame through her portrayal of Anne, which also
won her a Tony award for best actress. Strasberg appeared on the covers of Life and
Newswk magazines in the months following the play’s release, and a multitude of other
popular weekly magazines ran articles with photo spreads of the young actress.28 To a
certain extent, media coverage of the play may be one of the strongest refutations one can
offer to the claims offered by contemporary historians that public discussion and
awareness of the genocide was largely absent from the American landscape in the 1950’s.
Between the Diary’s release and the premiere of the play, very few articles appeared in
either mainstream or Jewish publications regarding Anne Frank. However, with the
play’s opening came an avalanche of articles and stories detailing not only Anne’s life but
also memorials and tributes offered in honor of the diarist all over the world, and
information about the other characters who are mentioned in the play such as the Frank’s
Dutch protectors and Anne’s childhood friends.

Some of the few voices of dissent in regards to the play came from Jewish critics
who astutely recognized the dangers posed by minimizing the true horror, scope, and
aims of the Nazi genocide. In a review of the Hackett and Goodrich production which
appeared in the Jewish periodical Midstream William Schack wrote, “the most crucial

defect of the play- that it insufficiently projects the tragedy behind the comedy- is the

 

2" “Sparkling Season”, Newsweek 19 December 1955, 53-67. and “Shining Young Stars”, Life 21
November 1955, 104.

28

result of omission.”29 Schack’s review criticized the play for its emphasis on events
happening within the Annexe at the expense of deeper analysis and commentary on
events occurring in occupied Amsterdam and throughout Europe. Once again, as in John
Hersey’s novel, the coarser elements of the genocide were ignored in order to avoid
repelling audiences from the story matter. American audiences, who had no first hand
experiences of the genocide, were offered works during the 1950’s which were set within
the recent tragedy but avoided nearly any mention of what actually occurred to people
like Anne once they were deported from their hiding places. Anne’s wishes to be
remembered beyond her death led, at least in part, to the production of this play.
Moreover, Otto’s desire to spread Anne’s message to as wide an audience as possible
clearly also lay behind the upbeat spirit of the show. The stage production intended to
avoid depressing its audience, in spite of the show’s tragic subject matter. While this
certainly broadened the play’s appeal, it also repressed and omitted many of the elements
of the genocide which made it so unique and so tragic.

W closed its successful New York run after 717
performances on June 22, 1957.30 From New York the play went on to be performed all
over Europe, including in Germany, and in many smaller theaters throughout the United
States. The financial and critical success enjoyed by the stage version of Anne’s diary
made the prospect of filming a motion picture version of her story very appealing to a

number of Hollywood directors. Even before the play finished its original run, Otto

 

29William Schack review of W, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett,

Midmam, Winter 1956 3.
”W. 129and 132

29

Frank had agreed to let George Stevens direct the Hackett and Goodrich version of the
Diary for the cinema as a means of insuring Anne’s immortality by conveying her story
to an even larger segment of the American public.

The film version of the Diary opened in American theaters on March 18, 1958 and
was similar to the stage production in both content and format. Once again, diary entries
which referred specifically to Jews were altered or omitted in an effort to appeal to a
wider audience, and the emphasis was placed upon events occurring within the Annexe as
opposed to incidences involving occupied Amsterdam or other elements of the Nazi
genocide. The movie particularly stressed the difficulties posed by the lack of privacy
and claustrophobic dimensions of the Frank’s hiding place through tightly filled camera
angles, dim lighting, and accentuated sound. The film takes even perhaps greater pains
than the stage version of the Diary to universalize Anne’s story and present her plight as a
parable for the suffering inflicted upon minorities in general rather than Jews in
particular. In fact, while the film does depict a Hanukkah celebration, the filmmakers
omit any mention of Hebrew words and focus instead on the giving of gifts, making this
Jewish holiday seem very much like a Christmas celebration for American audiences.
Essentially, the movie DiaQLQfAnneJZrank was a bigger, louder, and elongated version
of the stage play which had appeared the previous year.

W ran on movie screens for seventeen weeks in 195 8, a
good run but by no means extraordinary, grossing upwards of two million dollars.31

Nominated for seven Academy Awards in nearly every major category, the Stevens film

 

3' Men; “1959 Year End Roundup” January 1960, 34, A60

30

made it onto most critic’s best film lists for 1959.32 Anne Frank’s transformation into an
American cultural icon culminated with the Hollywood version of her story. Director
George Stevens makes confusing and ambiguous references to the concentration camps
through a rapid series of images in which Anne is having a nightmare, but with the
exception of this scene, the film version of Anne’s story continued to repress the
uniqueness of the genocide and the cruelty which was inflicted upon people like Anne
following their deportation to the camps. Under Steven’s direction, the film version of
Anne’s diary virtually shunned any and all events occurring outside of the annex while
focusing upon the difficulties of life in confinement and isolation from society.

As the decade drew to a close, Anne Frank had become the primary conduit
through which Americans discussed the genocide publicly. While Otto Frank succeeded
in his mission to make people remember his daughter and her story, he may have
inadvertently also contributed to the repression of many other elements of the genocide in
public discourse during the 1950’s. Anne Frank’s story unquestionably began to create
interest and awareness among Americans in the Nazi genocide of European Jews.
However, it is not clear whether the window through which Americans viewed the
genocide got larger or smaller as a result of the subsequent adaptations of Anne’s story to
the stage and screen.

By decade’s end, Americans were discussing the genocide but in limited,

sanitized ways. Works which dealt with elements of the genocide often set their stories

 

’2 WWW ed. Mike Kaplan (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1985) 275-276.

31

against the backdrop of an occupied area and then proceeded to dwell upon events
occurring among characters in isolation. Moreover, these characters were by and large
depicted as general victims of the Nazi slaughter who were merely caught up in events
occurring all around them. Works released during the 1950’s to American audiences
greatly de-emphasized Judaism in their stories. Similarly, as we have seen, there was
nearly no mention of the crueler, most unique elements of the genocide in the major
works of the decade. This was a Holocaust without deprivation, without torture and
concentration camps, without Nazis or sadism, and without commentary on the
destruction of the human spirit.

Rather than focus upon the most disturbing elements of the genocide, works
released in the 1950’s presented their material in a safe manner in a dual effort to broaden
their audiences and avoid repelling their readers. The suffering that was described within
these works was familiar in one form or another to most Americans. Moreover, and
perhaps most importantly, these works did not force Americans audiences to assess some
of the more difficult questions to arise from the genocide which bewilder historians even
today. By repressing the most tragic elements of the genocide, issues related to the
darker side of human nature and the reduction in value of human life were avoided in
public discourse during the 1950’s. Instead, works emphasized the positive aspects of
human nature and offered various instances of the will to live among those condemned to
die by their Nazi oppressors.

Works released in the 1950’s also reflected contemporary concerns and crises

occurring within American culture. The tension and fear produced by the Cold War and

32

ensuing arms race largely shaped how and what was said regarding the genocide in the
early 1950’s, while the more conservative mood of America was largely reflected in the
de—emphasizing of religion in the lives of many of these characters. Similarly, the birth
of the modern day civil rights movement was also reflected in works appearing in the mid
and late 1950’s as the genocide became a parable for the dangers of discrimination
towards any minority. Moreover, the silence of survivors and the reticence of the
American Jewish community to draw attention to themselves left scant else available for
American audiences who had very little first hand knowledge of the genocide to

comprehend the uniqueness of the Jewish tragedy.

CHAPTER 2
IN TRUTH, WE ARE FIGHTERS

During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Leon Uris’ Exodus (1958) became the
primary shaper of collective American discourse, interest, and awareness in the Nazi
genocide. Exodus traced the struggles and hardships of Jews from the late nineteenth
century through the founding of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Uris highlighted not
only Jewish suffering through these years, but also Jewish responses and resistance to
tyranny and oppression. Following its release, the novel went on to enjoy enormous
success in America, remaining on bestseller lists for over eighty weeks through the winter
of 1960. As a direct result of this success, a series of works were soon written and
produced which were designed to capitalize on the novel’s popularity. Authors and
artists searched for events occurring during the genocide which would allow them to
paste Uris’ new imagery of tough Jews against the backdrop of the Nazi genocide. This
search invariably led writers and directors to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which marked
the largest and longest Jewish resistance effort of the Nazi era. An entire body of works
emerged in America between 1958 and 1963 which dealt with the genocide through the
Ghetto Uprising and greatly impacted the evolving collective discourse begun by John

Hersey and sustained through the figure of Anne Frank during the early and mid-1950’s.

33

34

Exodus’ eventual impact on American awareness and interest in the Nazi
genocide remains somewhat ironic due to the relatively minor role which the Holocaust
plays in this work. The novel follows a set of fictional characters through real events
which Uris believes were pivotal in leading to the establishment of the state of Israel.
Liberally mixing fact with fiction, the author presents a romantic and oftentimes fanciful
portrait of the struggle to create the Jewish state. According to Uris’ novel, Israel was
needed by Jews as a safe haven in a world which was continually hostile and unkind to
Jewish people. From this perspective, the genocide was but another example, albeit of
epic proportions, of the persecution and suffering endured by Jews throughout the
modern era. Thus, the bulk of the novel’s focus was on the general suffering of Jews
throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the struggle to create a state
where Jews could seek refuge from oppression and tyranny.

Underlying the entire novel is the author’s relentless emphasis on Jewish heroism
and bravery in the face of seemingly constant suffering and injustices. Every instance of
cruelty towards Jews in the novel is met with determined, tenacious, and often violent
resistance from Jewish characters. As the author noted in an interview shortly after the
book’s release, “we Jews are not what he have been portrayed to be. In truth we are

991

fighters. Uris appears to have taken it upon himself to eradicate the traditional
stereotype of Jews as passive and meek individuals through this novel. As an American

Jew who was also an ex-Marine and World War II veteran, certainly some of the author’s

motivation in emphasizing this theme was to let readers know that there were Jews like

 

‘Phillip Roth, Readniamyselrandghers (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975), 137.

35

himself who did defy traditional stereotypes. However, it remains as gigantic a leap to
say that all or even most Jews were courageous, violent, and brave as it was to say that all
or most Jews were passive, weak, and insecure.

In a sense, Uris takes the traditional Jewish stereotype and stands it on its head
through his Jewish protagonists. Prior to the publication of Exodus, Uris was probably
best known for having authored the screenplay to Gunfight at the OK Corral. The central
Jewish character in Exodus, Ari Ben Canaan, is described in glowingly heroic terms by
Uris and more closely resembles a traditional American cowboy'hero than an Israeli
soldier. Ben Canaan is described as large and husky, with a handsome face and a
hardness in his eyes.2 Uris takes great pains to depict Ari as a traditional American style
male hero through his imagery and characterizations. He even goes so far as to have Ari
fall in love with an American nurse in the novel who possesses what the author describes
as “Marilyn Monroesque beauty” in an effort to create a character with whom American
readers would be able to relate.3 At one point, this American nurse notes, “this Ben
Canaan doesn’t act like any Jew I’ve ever met before. You know what I mean. You
don’t particularly think of them in a capacity like his . . . or fighters . . . things of that
sort.”4 In fact, Ari Ben Canaan acted like few Jews anyone, particularly Americans, had
ever met before. Ari and other characters in this novel represented Uris’ fictional
conception of Jews which was often arrived at through great exaggeration or even total

fabrication on the part of the author.

 

2 Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), 13.
3 Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), 4.
’ Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), 55.

36

Following the release of Exodus, several Jewish critics took Uris to task for his
historical inaccuracies and hyperbole. Certainly part of the concern was related to the
novel’s enormous success. Many feared that the American public was buying into
imagery and depictions which was feel-good history with little grounding in historical
fact. One of the novel’s most vociferous critics was Jewish novelist Philip Roth who
noted, “there does not seem to be any doubt that the image of the Jew as patriot, warrior,
and battle-scarred belligerent is rather satisfying to a large segment of the American

”5

public. Moreover, as a reviewer in the Jewish periodical Commentary noted, “the

overwhelming success of Exodus is due to its exceptional ability to tell its readers what

6 . . .
” While these crltlcs went on to

they want to believe in simple, easily graspable terms.
score Uris for his romanticized depiction of Sabras in Israel and his penchant for greatly
embellishing upon the historical record, American readers, and particularly American
Jews, were swept up in the fervor of Uris’ imagery and story.

As is the case for the majority of works discussed in this study, Exodus owed a
good deal of its success to its ability to reflect contemporary concerns in American
culture. One of the primary reasons why Exodus was so successful rested in its ability to
recast the story of the founding of Israel in a very Americanized form. In a 1959
Commonm article the reviewer noted, “the overwhelming success of Exodus is due to

its exceptional ability to tell its readers what they want to believe in simple, easily

graspable terms.”7 The tough Jews of this novel are modeled after traditional American

 

5 Phillip Roth, RoadingMysolfimthhors (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975), 137.
6Joel Blocker, “Fantasy in Israel”, Commontary27 (June, 1959): 539.
7Joel Blocker, “Fantasyin Israel,” Commentary 27, (June, 1959): 539.

 

 

37

heroes. Moreover, the story’s texture and language are very American in that the
characters’ Judaism remains muted while they utilize slang and other colloquialisms
emblematic of late 1950’s America. While Uris does deal with several grisly events in
the novel, he avoids repelling readers by maintaining limits to the suffering he describes
and the violence he portrays. Moreover, ethnic pride fit neatly into the zeitgeist of the
late 1950’s and early 1960’s as the Civil Rights movement continued to make substantial
gains in highlighting the injustices and contributions of African Americans.

American Jews were also undergoing changes in their lives as the 1950’s drew to
a close, and these changes were also reflected within the text. As one American Jew in
the novel states, “We’re Americans, but we’re different Americans. Maybe we make
ourselves different. . . All my life I’ve heard I’m supposed to be a coward because I’m a
Jew. . . Everytime Palmach blows up a British depot or knocks the hell out of some Arab
he’s winning respect for me. He’s making a liar out of everyone who tells me Jews are
yellow. These guys over here are fighting my battle for respect. . . understand that?”8
Conditions in America for Jews were steadily improving by 1958. Many Jews had
moved into the suburbs and become acculturated, even assimilated, into the majority
gentile culture. In spite of their successful transition into American life, Jews were still
considered mystical or different, according to Gallup polling data taken throughout the
decade.’ Ari embodies this fusion in the Uris novel. He is at once comfortable, normal,

and very American, thus appealing to secular American and Jewish audiences. Yet he

 

‘ Ibid., 99-100.
9 Charles Herbert Stember et al, W, (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 151.

38

and the other soldiers we meet in the novel also are a little bit different, a little more
spiritual than the average citizen.

Exodus became an international phenomenon when Otto Preminger began filming
the motion picture version of the novel on location in various sites around Israel during
the spring of 1960. Articles appearing in Hollywood trade magazines described how the
production provoked bitter recent memories for Arabs and Jews by recreating battles and
border skirmishes less than a decade after they actually occurred in the same locations.
As one writer noted, “the artificially stimulated agitation among the Israeli Arabs has
created an uneasy atmosphere, particularly Since Exodus has been shooting extensively in

”I

areas where the Arabs predominate. O Preminger and star Paul Newman, who was
playing the role of Ari Ben Canaan, received anonymous letters urging them to ‘quit and
get out before it’s too late.’ Moreover, “Exodus cars passing through Nazareth have been
stoned. Rocks have been hurled from rooftops at the cast and crew, and the Communist
party has published leaflets attacking the production.”ll The article goes on to describe
the beatings of several British civilians who were mistakenly believed to have been
associated with the production.

Israeli crowds flocked to the film set for scenes requiring tens of thousands of
extras. A general lottery was held to attract people to the Russian compound square for
the filming of a scene depicting the November 27, 1947 announcement declaring Israel a

state by the United Nations. While 20,000 lottery tickets were sold, another 40,000

persons showed up for the filming. The shoot actually turned into a celebration for those

I

 

'0 Fred Hift, “Exodus Harassed by Reds, Arabs,” Varioty, 25 May 1960, 15.
ll .
Ibld., 15.

39

in the square and many stayed through the night as they had done a decade before when
news of the partition vote was first delivered from the Jewish Agency Building in the
square.

In spite of (or as a result of) these difficulties, anticipation for the film ran very
high among American audiences as filming drew to a close. In fact, according to a
United Artists publicist, “advance tickets for the engagement at the Warner Theater in
New York have reached what is said to be an all time high of $324,896, representing 108

”’2 In keeping with the emphasis on Eastern audiences for

fully sold-out performances.
material related to Judaism and the genocide, advertisements were placed in 16 major
newspapers in New York, Baltimore, and Chicago to announce the acceptance of mail
order ticket reservations in the three cities where the movie was first scheduled to open.
When the movie finally opened, many theaters staged special promotions and
events in conjunction with its premiere. In Kansas City, theater goers packed the 1288
seat Empire Theater for two nights while submitting music and art work related to the
theme of Man’s Struggle for Freedom and Dignity in a contest sponsored by several

’3 At the Saxon Theater in Boston, American Nazi George Lincoln

secular organizations.
Rockwell protested the film’s opening in front of 1500 spectators who were waiting in
lines up to an hour long to see the show. The imagery of the tough Jew from the book

and the film seems to have infused these persons with a sense of passion, as the crowd

hurled stones and eggs at the protester until police whisked Rockwell to safety.14 In

 

12 -
Ibld., 1 5 I
'3 “Whoopla, Contests Mark Exodus Start in Kansas Cit)”, Variety.
" “American Nazi Stoned in Boston,” NW. 15 January 1960, 3(L)°

40

Chicago on the same day, four pickets were driven away by an angry crowd of 250
patrons waiting to see the film. It is not only interesting that these crowds reacted to
these protesters with violence, but also that prominent papers such as the W
limos were running articles describing these ‘uprisings’ among theater goers on their
front pages because in a sense this also seems to legitimate some of the tough Jewish
imagery which Uris created in his novel’s characters and Preminger depicted in the film.
Whether or not this movie actually matched the expectations of these theater-
goers is difficult to ascertain. Even at a time when American audiences were used to
seeing long epics such as BerLHur and Wm, Preminger’s Exodus ran
on and on, for 3 )4 hours. The movie was filmed in color and featured a pounding
orchestral score. Music from Preminger film became so popular that the Exodus theme
song actually made it onto the music charts in the summer of 1960. Yet, in spite of its
great size and publicity, Exodus leaves viewers with an ambiguous feeling as it
concludes. As one reviewer noted, “it has so much churning around in it that no deep or
solid stream of interest evolves- save a vague rooting interest in the survival of all the
nice people involved.”15 The cast included some of Hollywood’s top actors and
actresses- Paul Newman, Eve Marie Saint, Sal Mineo, John Derek, and Ralph
Richardson. However, Preminger chose to present a multitude of characters at the
expense of thoroughly developing any of them. What we get, rather, is a lot of surface
characterizations and shallow dialogue between people whom we know are good but are

not quite sure why.

 

'5 Bosley Crowther, review of Exodus by Otto Preminger, in Now York jljimos 16 December 1960, 44: 1.

41

As a result of the film, as one historian has noted, “suddenly, Jews were

”'6 Paul Newman first appears on screen emerging from the sea at night as

glamorous.
Ari Ben Canaan. As Newman enters the picture so did an image which would become
the symbol of the new Jew created by the Uris works. His blond hair and blue eyes
shimmer in the night as his bare chest reveals a well toned physical specimen. Moreover,
Newman emerges from the Sea wearing a Jewish Star proudly dangling from his neck.
Jews in the film are strong, stubborn, and committed to creating and defending Israel.
The Nazi genocide is discussed only very briefly in the film, yet it does provide what may
be the most intense scene between a young Sal Mineo and his Irgun interrogators.
Essentially, enough is said about the annihilation of Jews in Europe only to justify the
violence these Jews are perpetrating on the screen. In this vein, violence becomes
vengeance, as the Nazis are seen collaborating with the Arabs and the British Union Jack
is flown with a swastika painted in its middle by refugees aboard their stolen freighter.
Exodm wrapped up its 1960-1961 run as the second highest grossing movie of the
year, narrowly out earned by Columbia Pictures’ Ihoggmmflmauarono. Grossing over
ten million dollars in ticket sales, the Preminger film wound up ranked as the 16th highest
grossing film of all time following its release. Although its storyline was seriously
skewed, one cannot easily claim that the movie did not impact how Americans imagined
and understood events in the Middle East or the role of Jews in the establishment of

Israel. This paradox between the quality of this film and the lasting images it produced

might best be encapsulated by a Wings film reviewer’s decision to place

 

a (USA: Basic

 

’6 Paul Breines, -
Books, 1990), 55.

42

Exodus on his top ten list for 1960. In defending his decision, he wrote, “Despite its
great length, some interior confusion and general inconclusiveness, this massive drama of
the fight to liberate Israel is full of fine personality sketches and heroic incidents. . . it is

the best ‘blockbuster’ of the year.”17

The legacy of the images embedded in American
viewers’ minds of the new Jew emerging from the sea as strong, smart, and handsome,
would soon be reflected in a host of other forms- on the stage, on television, in other
books, and in political rhetoric and commemorative ceremonies.

Indeed, the imagery which Uris created in Exodus, for whatever reason - - be it to
improve Jew and Gentile relations in the US, to simply eradicate an old and frustrating
stereotype, to provide a ‘usable’ laymen’s history of the founding of Israel, or to covertly
strive to generate greater political and financial support for Israel in America - - replaced
the existing universalistic paradigm as the dominant mode of storytelling for artists
interested in representing the genocide for American audiences between 1958 and the mid
1960’s. As we shall see, Uris himself had little choice but to write Mila_l_8 even as
Exodus was at # 1 on the Bestseller list because his work begged a question: If the Jews

are so tough and strong, as Uris portrays them to be, then why did they go to their deaths

in World War 11 so passively? Why didn’t they fight?

 

’7 Bosley Crowther, review of Exodus by Otto Preminger, in W 25 December 1960, 3:7
(11).

43

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was
the subject of many popular novels, films, plays, and television productions. Moreover,
the uprising became the most discussed element of the Nazi genocide in American
newspapers and magazines. The aim here is to examine why and how the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising captured the American imagination beginning in 1958. What was it about the
cultural environment in America which fostered the growth of this genre? Moreover,
who were the authors, directors, and artists creating these images? Who were they
targeting their works towards, and whom do we suspect were reading or watching them?
Finally, what brought this genre’s growth to an end?

In the spring of 1943, Nazi General Jurgen Stroop initiated an operation to raze to
the ground the ‘Jewish Quarter of Warsaw’. Stroop assured Nazi bureaucrats the action
would be completed in three days at most. What the Nazis found when they came to burn
the remnants of the ghetto were thousands of Jews hidden in bunkers, sewers, and
basements, some with arms, prepared to fight to their deaths. More than 400,000 Jews
had passed through the ghetto and either perished from disease in Warsaw or been sent to
their deaths at Treblinka and other Nazi death camps. Of the remaining 50,000 Jews, 600
formed a Jewish fighting force in early 1943 and armed themselves with four machine
guns, 200 pistols and 50 rifles. The fight between the Jews and Nazis was grossly
unequal but the Jews managed to hold off the Nazis for nearly a month. Finally, on May

16, Stroop wired Berlin “the former Jewish district of Warsaw has ceased to exist.”'8 By

 

’8 Jurgen Stroop, WWW , trans. Sybil Milton (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1979), 1.

Nazi accounts, 5565 of 60,000 Jews died in the fighting, and the rest were sent to
concentration camps after the insurrection was ended.

These are the fundamental events comprising the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of
1943. The Ghetto Uprising was significant for a number of reasons. First, it marked the
largest single effort by Jews during the Nazi genocide to engage their attackers in battle
using modern weaponry. Second, the Ghetto uprising became the most successful action
planned and carried out by Jews against the Nazis dating back to Hitler’s rise to power in
the early 1930’s. The uprising frustrated the Nazis for a time due to the tenacity of the
ghetto fighters and it forced them to use many more weapons and troops than they had
intended to expend. Finally, the Ghetto Uprising provoked a tremendous amount of
written material from the victims and perpetrators detailing the extraordinary events of
April and May. While many memoirs and diaries were kept by ghetto fighters and were
later found, General Stroop ordered his troops to take hundreds of pictures of the ghetto’s
destruction and kept meticulous records of the liquidation process. The photos Stroop’s
produced were collected in a photo album by the General and distributed to other Nazi
officers. When the Axis powers were defeated, the photos were published in a variety of
international magazines, journals, and newspapers.

Prior to 1950, there were basically two sources available in English which
described the Jewish experience in the Warsaw Ghetto. The first of these was 111131an
Bookoflfiolishkm, which detailed the tragic stories of many Jewish survivors and
victims of the genocide during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The second were the

meticulous mountain of written records which were seized by Allied troops from hastily

45

vacated Nazi offices during late 1944 and early 1945. These documents provided chilling
descriptions of the conditions faced by Jews living within the Warsaw Ghetto. However,
due to the nature of these documents, few if any ordinary middle class Americans every
came into contact with these texts.

Almost immediately following the war, a flood of diaries, journals, notes, and
stories recording the daily trials and tribulations of life in the ghetto were released to
European audiences in Polish and Yiddish. These documents were largely read by
intellectuals in America and abroad. The first account of the ghetto as recorded by one of
its Jewish inhabitants to be published in America was Bernard Goldstein’s IhonorsBoar
flimss, which was translated into English in 1950. By this time, according to one
historian’s count, some eight hundred similar primary accounts had been published
abroad in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew.19 Goldstein’s work drew very little critical or
public discussion upon its release in America. Similarly, Philip Friedman’s Martyfisand
fighters, published in 1954, contains excerpts from a variety of diaries and journals never
before published in English for American audiences. Still, this work received little praise
or attention outside of either Jewish or intellectual circles in America. The most widely
read primary account of the Warsaw ghetto experience was Emmanuel Ringelblum’s
W W, unearthed in 1946 and later translated and published in
the United States in 1958. These stories of survival and tragedy provided much of the

framework for Hersey’s fictional Mall, and Uris’ Exodus and M11113- Through the

 

” Reuben Ainsztein, “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Poles.” Midstnoam (Autumn, 1963): 37.

46

fictional approach, authors and artists were able to adapt their message to more
specifically suit the tastes of middle class American readers.

While the movie Exodus played to sold out audiences in the spring of 1961, CBS
Playhouse 90 presented Rod Serling’s InjhoErosonooofiMinoEnomm, a tale of life and
death in the Warsaw Ghetto. One reviewer noted, “The timing for [the play] could hardly
have been more fortuitous.” However, the reasons he cites are political, rather than
related to the Exodus phenomenon. “Coming smack in the middle of the great Summit
upheaval and the world shattering Kruschevian nipups with their threats to world peace, it
was indeed a fitting reminder of the inhumanities and indignities to which mankind can

20
” Rose’s

be subjected to under dictatorship, whether of the Communist or Fascist stripe.
review on a whole rates the play as very mediocre. With the preceding observation, he
brings to light how the story of the Ghetto can be retold as a warning against tyranny and
a reminder of the strength of the human spirit. Yet, this tale is being told by Serling, a
non-Jew, and as we shall see, his flawed production was severely panned by several
prominent Jewish critics, chiefly by Leon Uris himself.

As this reviewer also notes, “time and again since the days of Hitler, the bestial
excesses of the Nazis and the heroic faith of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto have been
related in many forms, poignantly, emotionally and with telling power.”2 ’ Thus, this

review of the play brings to light an interesting dilemma. Many memoirs had been

printed following the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, and the works of historians such

 

2° Review of W by Rod Serling (CBS Playhouse 90), Karim, 24 May
1960, 35:4.
2‘ Ibid., 35:4.

47

as Philip Friedman and the YIVO Institute were available to the American public during
the 1950’s. However, they were read and discussed by very few. The heroic faith of the
Warsaw ghetto Jews was a relatively new phenomenon among the American public— or
interest in this faith and its roots was a new phenomenon as a result of the emergence of
the new Jew through Uris’ work.

Most striking among the criticism of the Serling work was an article appearing in
an entertainment magazine describing Leon Uris’ reaction to InjhoflosenoooflMine
Emmios. The article quoted Uris as being “incensed” with the telecast because “it could
not have been a more perfect piece of Nazi apologetics than if it had been produced by
Joseph Goebbels.” The letter he sent to CBS executive Dr. Frank Stanton was reprinted
in full within the article. It goes on to state, “the historic inaccuracies, caricature
characterizations and totally false plot constitute a pitiful sham on the public.” Uris
closes with the following, “As recipient of the International Association of Jewish
Survivors of Concentration Camps and Ghettos Award, I demand that the Columbia
Broadcasting System burn the negative of this film and publicly apologize for this
outrage.”22 Uris had become an important voice and his criticism displays in part his own
recognition of his importance as a representative of the American Jewish community.
Moreover, the particularly harsh language he resorts to and his demands for nothing short

of burning the negatives of the film sound like something Ari Ben Canaan would say,

rather than a real person. At the time of this letter, Uris was busily working on Milodfi, a

 

22 “Leon Uris’ Blast at CBS for Serling’s Nazi Apologetics,” um, 25 May 1960, 26.

48

book on the same subject as the Serling play, and it is in this book that Uris provides a
response to the flaws he saw in the CBS production.

Jewish critics responded to Serling’s production swiftly and in angry tones. Lucy
Dawidowicz, later a famous Holocaust historian, wrote, “There was no single moment in
the entire play, as I watched it and later read the script, that did not offend or outrage with
its falseness and fraudulence. This ghetto was no ghetto, this rabbi no rabbi, these Jews
no Jews, these Germans no Germans, and this Pole no Pole.”23 In the mind of
Dawidowicz, the Serling work, which featured a love affair between Robert Redford as a
confused Nazi and the Jewish daughter of a rabbi trapped within the ghetto’s walls, did
violence to the memory of the half a million Jews who lost their lives in Warsaw during
the madness of 1942 and 1943. When all was said and done, Serling’s work received
mediocre ratings and marked the last CBS Playhouse 90 ever to be produced.

Following in the wake of Leon Uris’ best-selling novel and hit film, producer
Kermit Blomgarden’s decision to fund playwright Millard Lampell’s adaptation of John
Hersey’s W seemed like a smart investment. Lampell would adapt the Hersey
novel to fit with the public’s new demand for more Jews in the image of Ari Ben Canaan.
Thus, Lampell stated, “the thread that bound all my characters and provided the chief
dramatic suspense of the play was a question. How long will it take them [the Jews] to
believe that the Nazis mean to exterminate them? And a twin question. When they
believe, will they resist?”24 In Lampell’s adaptation, it took the Jews too long to believe

in the Nazi’s barbarous intentions but once they did, they resisted on a heroic scale

 

2’ Lucy Dawidowicz, “Boy Meets Girl in Warsaw Ghetto,” Midstroam (Summer, 1960), 110.
2‘ Millard Lampell, “Bringing W to the Stage,” Midsnaam (Autumn, 1960), 18.

49

considering their predicament. And it was this resistance which Lampell saw as “a
moment in history when the Jews of Warsaw spoke for all mankind.” Moreover, the
playwright added, “A handful of Jews exposed the fullest potential of the human race. To
resist death. To trust one another. To commit themselves. To endure.”25 Thus,
Lampell’s story is specifically about Jews. While their will to live represents a
universalistic theme which was so prevalent in Hersey’s novel and in the Anne Frank
material to emerge in America during the 1950’s, his heroic depiction of the uprising and
the character’s strength speaks volumes for the new conception of the Jews which
Americans were prepared to accept following the success of Exodus. The Jews who
fought in Israel as Lampell wrote his article, and the Jews described in the Uris novel and
film, represent not an aberration in history, but rather a continuation of the Jewish
willingness to fight and utilize their intelligence and strength as a people through the Nazi
era.

The theatrical version of Ihoflall opened in New York on October 11, 1960 at
the Billy Rose Theater. The drama, as was the case in previous movies and plays dealing
with the genocide of European Jews, boasted an excellent cast. George C. Scott, Vincent
Gardenia, and Yvonne Mitchell were among the headliners of the production. However,
the play received largely ambiguous reviews and was deemed a financial failure by one
leading industry magazine.26 It closed its run on Broadway on March 4, 1961.

What is most significant about Lampell’s drama may be its perpetuation of the

images first produced by Uris in 1958 and sustained by the Preminger film and the

 

’5 Ibid., 19.
2“ Daniel Blum, ed. 111W (New York: Chilton Company, 1961), 6,26.

50

Serling television show. As the characters decide to finally bear arms and revolt against
the Nazis in the ghetto, Rachel ‘the little mother’, mournfully laments “Why are we all so
quiet? The most gentle bird does not go to death without a scream! This will be an
eternal mystery: why didn’t we resist when they began to resettle us . . . if we are too

”27

weak to defend our lives, let us at least defend human honor. As the play concludes,

the character of Rachel reiterates Lampell’s central message: “what have we proved?
We have proved it is possible to resist, even in hell.”28

Once again, this story of the Ghetto Uprising borrowed heavily from the imagery
created in the Uris novel. George C. Scott starred as Dolek Berson and his physical
appearance- tall, blond hair, well built, handsome, were similar to those exhibited by
Newman in the Exodus movie. Moreover, Lampell takes a good deal of liberties with the
character of Dolek from the original Hersey novel, as the theatrical version of the story
stresses Dolek’s individuality and unwillingness to commit to anyone, which were
qualities not even touched upon in the book.

Several reviewers faulted the Lampell play for its inability to produce the types of
strong emotions which previous works in the field such as the Hersey novel or the
Goodrich and Hackett theatrical version of Anne Frank’s story provoked among viewers
and readers. As one critic from the Moor wrote, “it never makes us as angry

as it should.”29 In fact, while the majority of reviews of the opening night production of

M were either wholly negative or mediocre, one critic praised the play’s efforts

 

27 Millard Lampell, Ihoflall (New York: Knopf Books, 1961), 132.
28 -
Ibld., 160.
29 Robert Coleman, review of W by Millard Lampell, in the Mirror 12 October 1960.

51

and recommend it to audiences. That critic was Howard Taubman of the Now York
limos, and one cannot help but wonder if he was reacting to the play itself or to the story
of the Warsaw Ghetto in his critique. He wrote, “They are Jews and they are men,
women and children who could inhabit any city of the world. They are the innocents
whose suffering will take a long time- and a purified race of mortals- to atone.”
Moreover, Taubman wrote, “this is life as it was lived in those barbaric years in Warsaw.

”30 What is so interesting about the

It takes place on a stage, but it is not make believe.
Taubman review is that he actually defended his praise in another article written two
weeks later. He wrote, “Is Ihoflall a masterpiece? No. Is it a play you should see? By
all means.” Thus, Taubmann defends his review of Lampell’s play by stressing the
importance of the Ghetto Uprising as a historical event and painting Ihoflall as a means
of raising consciousness in America regarding the plight of those Jews who fought
against their Nazi oppressors.31

As the final curtains closed over Lampell’s production, Leon Uris’ M11a_1_8 hit
bookstores in the spring of 1961. The novel represents an amalgamation of sorts between
Hersey’s Ihoflall and Uris’ own novel Exodus. It rose rapidly on the NouLYorkj’jmos
Bestseller list beginning on June 18 and essentially remained third on the list through the
duration of the summer. Unlike Uris’ earlier novel, M11113 never hit number one - - it
peaked at number two for several weeks in August. The novel remained on the Best-

Seller list through January 28, 1962. Its total run lasted 33 weeks- long by many

standards, but hardly comparable to the 80 week stint posted by Exodus several years

 

’0 Howard Taubman, review of Ihoflall by Millard Lampell, in the Noflorklimos 12 October 1960.
3’ Howard Taubman, “M11” in the Now_[ork_'[’unos 23 October 1960, 1:1 (11).

52

before. Once again, this novel provoked a good deal of critical response from secular and
religious publications. Moreover, it firmly linked the tough Jews presented in the Exodus
novel and movie with the heroic uprising staged by the final remaining survivors of the
Warsaw Ghetto, for as Uris writes, “This rabble army without a decent weapon held at
bay the mightiest military power the world has ever known for forty-two days and forty-
two nights!”32

The parallels between Hersey’s Ihoflall and Uris’ M11118 are quite obvious, and
appear to be the result of a conscious choice on the part of the author. Nearly every major
review of the Uris novel compared it to Thom, usually extensively. As one critic
wrote, “that this work by Uris, over 500 pages in length, should be compared to Hersey’s
is unavoidable. . . Why he should have wished to recast a tale so brilliantly told in the
first instance is difficult to understand unless he felt that it was one that should be told by
a Jew.”33 Another reviewer added, “the chief obstacle to reading M11a_1_8 is the reader’s
own memory. The novel all but duplicates John Hersey’s Ihoflall. Uris even retains
Hersey’s slow device of telling whole sections of the story in the form of journal entries

34 -
” Several questions need to be

from the diary of a garrulous intellectual archivist.
answered regarding M11118. Why did Uris choose to write a novel so similar to

Hersey’s? Why did he choose to write on this topic at all? How successful was it and

why was there no motion picture developed following its release?

 

’2 Leon Uris, Milaui (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 538.
’3 Rose Field, review of Miladfi by Leon Uris, in the Who): 4 June 1961, 28.
3‘ Review ofMilaJs in Time #77 2 June 1961,94.

53

Hersey’s decision to cast Noach Levinson as an archivist whose journals would
frequently be referred to in order to provide historical perspective in the story were an
original and critically acclaimed method of linking history with fiction in Ihoflall.

Uris’ decision to have Alexander Brandel’s journals appear periodically in his text
represent a very conscious decision by the author to recreate the same feelings and tone of
the Hersey text. Moreover, M11a_1_8 presents a wide variety of characters representing
many different walks of life, as did Mall. Both authors, however, have largely
limited their characters to the middle and upper classes. This of course begs the question:
why would Uris seek to imitate these aspects of Hersey’s book? The answer, I believe, is
that Uris sought to employ the scaffolding set up in M which would be familiar to
many of his readers while presenting a different spin on the events described in the
Hersey book. Rather than focusing on the will to live or the ability of humans to adapt to
deplorable conditions, Uris’ book centers on the uprising itself. Whereas the uprising
marks a tragic last act of desperation in W, it marks the heroic climax of Milw-
Characters in both of these novels largely meet the same fate, but the Uris book leaves
readers feeling those who died did so only after successfully fighting their attackers,
while the Hersey book ends on a note of sorrow and pity for these poor victims of tyranny
and injustice.

Another interesting approach to why Uris chose to write this book was sparked by
a review in which the critic wrote, “the hero of the book is Andrei Androfski, a captain in

the Polish cavalry. He represents the new Jew who is an ardent nationalist of the land of

54

his birth.”35 Uris, as an American Jew knew that a good deal of his readers would be
American Jewish middle class citizens. For other readers, however, this subtheme which
he develops in both of his books may have been an effort on his part to paint Jews in a
more favorable light to their non-Jewish neighbors. Contrary to the image of the
“wandering Jew”, Uris presents Jews who believe in their nations and will fight to the
death in the name of the ideals which these countries were created upon. In one scene,
Andrei bitterly proclaims, “I am a Polish officer, and this is my country”?5
Clearly part of Uris’ motivation to rewrite Ihoflall were similar to those of
Millard Lampell in adapting the novel for his play. There was money to be made in the
story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Americans who belonged to book clubs or
enjoyed reading historical fiction had expressed recent interest in the Nazi genocide and
in the new image of tough Jews purveyed by the Exodus book and film. Moreover, the
nagging question left dangling following the Exodus phenomenon demanded an answer if
Uris was to retain some sense of credibility from the American Jewish and non-Jewish
community. If, in truth, Jews were fighters, as Uris asserted in a late 1950’s interview,
then why did so many Jews die without a fight during the extermination of European
Jewry? M11a_1_8 is Uris’ response to this potential contradiction. The novel transplants
many of the Exodus characters from Israel back several years to the crumbling Warsaw
Ghetto. These Jews did fight, and in the Uris novel, they fought well above and beyond

their capabilities, especially in light of their meager rations and even smaller cache of

weaponry. Thus, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Uris’ novel allows readers to see the

 

3’ Rose Field, review of M11a_1_8 by Leon Uris, in the Noflorkfloraldlrjbuoo 4 June 1961, 28.
3" Leon Uris, M11118 (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 324.

55

establishment of the State of Israel as part of a continuous thread of Jewish strength and
courage.

While a parallel certainly and purposively exists between Iho_“_7a11 and M11318,
an even greater correspondence can be seen between the characters in Exodus and those
in M11118. Most striking is the similarity between the hero ofM11a_18, Andrei
Androfski, and the central character of Exodus, Ari Ben Canaan. Readers are introduced
to Androfski in much the same way as they met Ben Canaan. Andrei is described as “a
classic Ulany officer in the Polish Army” who has rippling muscles, is very intelligent
and was once a soccer player on the Polish Olympic team. Like Ari, Andrei is a Jew but
we never really see him engaging in any of the rituals of his religion. Moreover, while
Ari loved the American gentile Kitty Fremont, Andrei is in love with blond haired, blue
eyed Polish Catholic Gabriela Rak. Like Kitty, Gabriela is also connected to America.
She works for the American embassy in Warsaw until she absolutely must leave for her
own safety. Androfski strikes an even less emotional posture than Ari throughout the
novel. In M11a_18, the hero cries only once over the death of his horse during the Nazi
invasion of Poland. However, the most obvious similarity between Ben Canaan and
Andrei is their desire and willingness to fight. These are men who believe in force as a
means to an end when employed righteously, and they both are firmly committed to
fighting for their land and their people. For Ari, the land was Israel, and his people were
the Displaced Persons who were suffering in British camps. In the case of Androfski, his

home is Poland, and “in his heart, he had no desire to go to Palestine- Warsaw is his city,

56

not Tel Aviv.”37

Thus, these two heroes are both fighting to stay in land where foreign
oppressors are demanding they leave- through threat of death, and they meet this
challenge through resorting to violence in defense of their rights.

Similarities exist between a host of other characters in M11a_18 and Exodus as
well. Hard drinking gentile American journalist Mark Johnson proves instrumental in
helping Ben Canaan and his crew run the Exodus out to sea: Chris De Monti is a hard
drinking gentile American journalist who proves invaluable in letting the world know of
the Ghetto’s last stand in M11348. The love between teenagers Dov and Karen in Exodus
is mirrored in the relationship between Wolf Brandel and Rachel Bronski. These
reoccurrences of characters can be seen in the descriptions and actions of many of the
minor characters in M11a_18 as well.

Uris’ second novel provides much more descriptions of the Nazi perpetrators than
any of the texts examined dealing with the Ghetto other than the skewed characterization
of a young Nazi officer played by Robert Redford within the Serling playhouse work.
The Nazis readers met in M11118 were uniformly sadistic and evil. While torture and
sadistic brutality are hinted at in regards to the punishments inflicted upon Jews, the most
violent scenes of the novel describe the killing and beating of Nazi officers by the ZOB.
(the Jewish resistance) For example, one passage read, “blood and sinew and muscle and
shrieks speared Skyward. Nuts and bolts erupted like an angry volcano. Disintegrated

bits of hundreds of Germans floated back to earth. The near living, the half-living

whimpered with shock. . . other Germans tried to leap the ghetto walls. Their hands were

 

3’ Ibid., 324.

57

sliced to ribbons on the cemented broken glass, their bodies tangled in the barbed wire.”38

In the most graphic violence of the novel, Jewish ZOB fighters torture the Pawiak Nazi
Prison commandant and then kill him in the morning. Uris relates the disgust with which
the Jews perpetrated the torture, but notes, “he knew he could not puke in the presence of

”39 Thus, the Jews were capable of using

an enemy who regarded it as a weakness.
violence not only to kill their attackers but also to force information from them. This is
justified in the Uris novel because through his portrait of the Nazis, this is the only type
of behavior they would understand and respond to- the sadists are the Nazis, the Jews are
merely gaining revenge and fighting to survive.

Ultimately, Mila_18 not only retold Hersey’s Mall with an emphasis upon the
Uprising itself, it told the story of the Uprising in such a fashion as to create a tale of
nearly mythic proportions. Uris writes, “If the Warsaw ghetto marked the lowest point in
the history of the Jewish people, it also marked the point where they rose to their greatest
heights.”4O As the book concluded, Uris left readers with these thoughts as well, “I look
through the books of history and I try to find a parallel. Not at the Alamo, not at
Therrnopylae, did two more unequal forces square off for combat. I believe that decades
and centuries may pass, but nothing can stop the legends which will grow from the ashes

of the ghetto to show that this is the epic in man’s struggle for freedom and human

dignity.”41 Thus, Uris’ M11a_18 reads like a final tribute to the strength and character of

 

3‘ Ibid., 483.
3"Ibid., 414.
”Ibid., 539.
" Ibid., 538.

58

those Jews who were left to fight or die as the Nazis began liquidating the ghetto in the
spring of 1943.

While the critical response to the novel was decidedly mixed in secular circles,
M11118 still managed to attract a large amount of readers. Moreover, the novel is
significant today when we realize that it marked the last of this genre to develop in the
late 1950’s following the publication of Exodus. Why, readers may wonder, was no
movie version of the Uris novel released for American audiences in 1962? The answer
may well lie rest in the apprehension of Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents and his much
publicized trial and hanging in Israel during the early 1960’s. Many reviewers alluded to
contemporary events related to the trial in their critiques of Uris’ novel. In a Noquork
Horaldjr'rhuno review, Rose Field wrote, “There is no exaggeration in the Uris story.
The facts he tells in fictional form are the same which are currently appearing in
newspaper reports of the Eichmann trial.”42

The fifteenth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising received little attention
from the media and little recognition outside of New York City in 1958. Newspaper
coverage of events occurring to honor the fighters was generally abbreviated, and articles
were largely limited in length and content. Articles that detailed the plight of Jews in the
ghetto were often descriptions or summaries of the events leading up to the uprising and
the Nazi’s eventual victory in Warsaw. Events held in New York to honor the uprising’s

15th anniversary were given scant if any coverage in local papers. Articles and letters

appearing in the NouLYorinmos dwelled upon universal lessons to be learned from the

 

’2 Rose Field, review of M11118 by Leon Uris, in the leorkfioraldlriouno 4 June 1961, 28.

59

tragedy and spent relatively little time discussing the uprising or its importance. As a
result of the success of Exodus and subsequent works to follow, the Ghetto Uprising took
on a much larger importance within the American press.

The 1963 commemoration of Yom Hashoah in the United States and its coverage
by the media highlighted the impact which imagery created by fictional writers and artists
ultimately had on the public’s remembrance, awareness, and understanding of the
genocide. Newspapers noted how extensive ceremonies for the Uprising’s 20th
anniversary were in New York City. Times Square was renamed Warsaw Ghetto Square
for one week in tribute to the Jews who fought in the uprising.” Events held largely by
Jewish organizations drew overflow crowds throughout the week of April 19. The
Sunday magazine section of the Neuvjorklimos ran a three page photo montage
honoring the ghetto fighters.44 It contained now-familiar images of the fighters as
recorded by Nazi cameras and punctuated these photos with excerpts from memoirs and
poems of victims and participants in the ghetto fight. The special pages further
highlighted the growth in awareness in mainstream American culture of the events
involving the uprising.

One such gathering drew 3000 persons to Carnegie Hall and was described in
detail by national newspapers. The Carnegie presentation featured a dramatic production
written by Howard Fast entitled “Never to Die” which recounted the story of the uprising.
The drama was presented against a backdrop of 500 memorial candles and featured songs

from the ghetto and poetry reading. The article reported that audible sobbing could be

 

’3 “Times Square Renamed For Warsaw Ghetto” Neflotklimss 20 April 1963-
“ “The Heroes of Warsaw’s Ghetto,” Wilt/13min: 21 April 1963. 22-24-

60

heard and at its conclusion, “there was no applause in keeping with the solemnin of this
occasion?"5 Finally, in what was apparently a very emotional moment, several survivors
of the ghetto uprising rose from their seats in the audience as a tribute to their courage,
and one survivor, Vladka Meed, a courier in the Jewish underground, read a selection in
Yiddish recalling her experience.

The Carnegie presentation also featured messages sent from President Kennedy
and delivered in person by New York Senator Jacob Javits. The President’s message
read, “Just as many before them did, the people of the Warsaw Ghetto affirmed that a few
men who honor their freedom can speak for all men: that the only genuine choice in the
history of man is not between living and dying but between seeking or not seeking the
right. It is a measure of their own courage that the brutality they opposed will be
remembered only in the light of their sacrifice.”46 Moreover, a proclamation passed by
Congress as a Joint Resolution and signed by Kennedy was also read which stated,
“though they lacked both military resources and a military tradition, they were able to
conduct their struggle against the overwhelming forces of the Nazi occupiers for more
than three weeks, thereby providing a chapter in the annals of human heroism, an
inspiration to the peace-loving people of the world and a warning to would-be-oppressors
which will long be remembered.”47 Several other tributes were also read on that evening

by various local politicians and dignitaries to the capacity crowd.

 

’5 Irving Spiegel, “Jews of World Moum Victims of ‘43 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” the Nouglorklimos
22 April 1963.

’6 Irving Spiegel, “Jews of World Moum Victims of ‘43 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” the Nouriorklimos
22 April 1963.

‘7 W407 (28 August 1962): 72.

61

The Ghetto Uprising became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1950’s and early
1960’s in America. Americans were interested in works and stories about the ghetto
revolt at least in part because heroic rebellion was consistent with beliefs and ideas
Americans held about the human response to tyranny. As we shall see in the next
chapter, however, the Eichmann trial produced contradictory and troubling images of
passive Jews dying without a fight, even collaborating with the Nazi tyrants and over the
course of the next several years, authors such as Hannah Arendt and others presented
evidence which flew in the face of the imagery created by Uris’ works and others related
to the uprising.

Most of the material related to the uprising which appeared for American
audiences was written by moderately established men who were not known for producing
either pulp fiction or intellectual works. Rather, they had experienced some success at
creating mass produced works in the past and their names were recognizable to ordinary
American consumers. The works they produced were often Book of the Month Club
selections. They were to be bought, read, and prominently displayed in a person’s home.
The same held true for memorabilia from films, plays, and other such representations.
The audience for these works appears to be American Jews, but also middle class
Gentiles. The values and ethics purveyed in nearly every work were aimed at appealing
to the American middle class consciousness. .

As we will see below, 1962 and 1963 marked another turning point in the way the
story of the genocide was told to ordinary Americans through the arts and other forms of

representation. While Israel had hoped to use the trial as a means of reminding the world

62

of the tragedy and scope of the Nazi annihilation, it also reminded Americans that while
the Ghetto uprising was real, it was a relatively unique and limited event. The reality of
the Holocaust, as the Eichmann trial reminded listeners and readers, highlighted the
bureaucratization of death which the Nazis nearly perfected and the numbing pace at
which thousands of Jews per day went to their deaths in gas chambers. Moreover, it
reemphasized the image of passivity in the Jewish response.

Works released as a result of the success of Exodus pushed themes and imagery of
earlier works dealing with Anne Frank in new directions while straining to provide an
answer to this troubling question. Uris stood the traditional stereotype of Jews as passive
and meek individuals on its head by emphasizing strength, violence, courage, and
heroism in his Jewish characters throughout the novel. While pieces dealing with the
genocide during the late 1950’s continued to emphasize universal themes, set their stories
against urban backdrops, and omit any detailed discussion of the concentration camps,
they also stressed new themes and events, chiefly the Ghetto Uprising, while subtly
underscoring the particular nature of the suffering and cruelty inflicted upon Jews during
the tragedy. Works released during the late 1950’s led to increased interest among
Americans in the role of Jews during the genocide. Moreover, these pieces lent a sense of
logic to the genocide in that the heroism and bravery of Jews described in these texts,
films, and plays seemed like rational responses to the Nazi threat while remaining

consistent with traditional American ideas about responses to tyranny and oppression.

CHAPTER 3
WHY DID YOU NOT PROTEST?

The capture, trial and execution by Israel of former Nazi lieutenant colonel Adolf
Eichmann greatly impacted collective American understanding, awareness, and
discussion of the Holocaust in the early 1960’s. In fact, the Eichmann trial marked a
tuming point not only in how Americans came to understand the aims and extent of the
Nazi’s campaign against the Jews, but also in that the trial forced American audiences to
confront a host of troubling questions that had been repressed or ignored after the
liberation of Europe in 1945. Moreover, extensive newspaper, magazine, and television
coverage of the trial generated new interest in the details of the genocide and
consequently led to the release of a new body of works dealing with some of the
controversial themes raised during the trial. The trial of Adolf Eichmann thus sent public
discussion of the genocide in America in a number of new and different directions, while
awakening audiences to the scope, totality, and particularity of the Holocaust.

As we have seen, the most works in the 1950’s which dealt with elements of the
genocide sought to universalize their characters and stories. Moreover, these pieces
carefully avoided dealing with the brutality of the concentration camps and the
specifically Jewish character of the Nazi’s racial and extermination policies. Works in the

1950’s presented the genocide as a series of loosely connected events that failed to

63

1950’s presented the genocide as a series of loosely connected events that failed to
provide any sense of cohesiveness or unity to the Nazi’s persecution of civilians
throughout Europe particularly between 1939 and 1945. The Eichmann trial provided a
first glimpse for many Americans of the totality of the Nazi’s genocide and of the various
steps that eventually led to the murder of millions in gas chambers and concentration
camps. As a result of the trial, terms such as concentration camps, Auschwitz,
deportation, and ‘final solution ’, took on a new significance. In this manner, the trial not
only highlighted the particular fate of European Jewry during the Holocaust but also
established a sense of coherence to the Nazi’s overall plan which had not been earlier
discussed in America.

Just as Anne Frank and the Ghetto Uprising were the primary means by which
Americans discussed the genocide in the 1950’s, much that was publicly stated or written
in regards to the genocide during the early 1960’s was related to the Eichmann trial. The
trial was critical in shaping the future direction of discussion and awareness among the
American public. The Eichmann trial raised a number of provocative questions involving
the role of Jews in their own destruction, the culpability of non-Nazi nations and
individuals in the destruction of European Jewry, and the mindset of men like Adolf
Eichmann. It depicted the destruction of the Jews as a plan of the Nazi government

carried out with bureaucratic efficiency in places of mass death.

65

A Gallup Poll taken during the summer of 1961 found that over 87 percent of
Americans had heard something about the trial of Adolf Eichmann.1 This figure
becomes significant when one reflects upon the limited way in which the genocide was
discussed during the 1950’s and the fact that the trial dealt with many issues previously
repressed or ignored in the evolving mainstream American dialogue. One of the chief
factors behind the trial’s high recognition factor was the extensive coverage devoted to
Eichmann’s capture, trial, and execution within the news media. Hardly a week went by
between the years 1960-1963 when at least one major periodical, newspaper, or television
production did not extensively cover some aspect of the trial.

The attention which Eichmann attracted among Americans reflects, at least to
some extent, the culture and climate of the United States in the early 1960’s. Differences
between 1950’s America and the early 1960’s were most probably manifest in the
evolving and increasingly volatile civil rights crusade. While gains were made by Blacks
seeking equality during the latter half of the 1950’s, expectations rose among minorities
as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued to gain the attention of white and black
audiences alike in his calls for racial harmony through peaceful resistance. As the
Freedom Riders rode through the South in 1961 to raise awareness and attention to their
cause, minority leaders increasingly sought to end discrimination through appeals to
justice and morality. These calls for social justice came at a time when the election of

John Kennedy as President signaled to many Americans a new beginning for this country

 

’ George Gallup, WWW, Random House: New York, 1972, p. 1719.

66

based upon increased individual responsibility and accountability for one’s actions
towards their nation and towards each other. This was, as Kennedy would claim, the time
to “ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.”
The election of John Kennedy marked the end of the conservative climate which had
dominated American culture throughout the 1950’s.

Briefly let us recount the story behind the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann.
Eichmann was abducted by Israeli agents from a busstop in Argentina on May 13, 1960.
He had been hiding in Argentina since 1952 and had worked at a Volkswagen factory
while living under the assumed name of Ricardo Clement. Israeli agents had been
shadowing Eichmann for quite some time, and finally opted to seize the former Nazi
officer as he returned home from work in the early evening. Several days later, Eichmann
was smuggled out of Argentina on an El Al flight bound for Jerusalem, and on May 23rd
Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion officially announced to the media that Israel had seized
Eichmann and intended to try him for crimes against humanity.

Although Eichmann was absent from the Nuremberg Trials during the late 1940’s,
his name arose frequently in the testimony of Nazi officials as the officer in charge of the
Gestapo’s Bureau of Jewish Affairs. The defendant was an active member of the Nazi
party beginning in 1930 and served in nearly every branch of the Nazi bureaucracy
throughout the decade with stints in the SS, SD and Gestapo. During this time, Eichmann
gained a rudimentary grasp of the Yiddish language and made several trips to Palestine.

Hence, he became regarded as the Reich’s ‘expert on Jewish Affairs’ and increasingly

67

was consulted in matters relating to Jews in newly occupied Nazi territory as the decade
drew to a close.

The actual trial of Adolf Eichmann largely focused upon the crimes he committed
after 1941 in his role as head of Jewish Affairs. It was during this time that the Nazis
formulated their ‘Final Solution’ as a means of exterrninating Jewry from Nazi occupied
territory for once and for all. Eichmann was a critical figure both in the decision to use
the deadly gas Zyklon B to poison Jews and in overseeing that this extermination
campaign would be carried out to its fullest capacity over the next four years. He insured
that transports were run on schedule to the camps and that camp commandants were
provided with adequate quantities of Zyklon B to kill their prisoners. As the war dragged
on, Eichmann pursued his task with ever more zeal, and it was at his insistence that
deportations began and continued from Hungary through the war’s final days. Thus, the
chief concern of Eichmann’s work and life from the mid 1930’s through the war’s close
was formulating and executing Nazi policies aimed specifically at Jews.

The trial officially began in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961. Over the next four
months more than 1500 documents were submitted and 120 witnesses offered testimony
to the court. Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner opened the trial with a lengthy
recounting of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime and emphasized the particularly
anti-Jewish nature of these crimes. He then went on to officially charge the defendant
with fifteen counts of genocidal acts and crimes against the Jewish people. Over the

course of the next several months, one survivor after another was called upon to recount

68

the horror, brutality and violence inflicted upon themself and their families during the
Nazi genocide.

Following this moving but somewhat prolonged spectacle, Eichmann himself took
the stand on June 20 and remained there until July 24. His testimony revolved around his
claims of having been a little cog in a big machine and of only being guilty of obeying
orders issued by his superiors. The testimony of the former Nazi officer was often
confusing and did little to bolster his chances for an acquittal. By August 14, 1961, the
defense rested its case and four months later, on December 11, the Israeli Judges
announced their decision in which they found the defendant guilty on all fifteen counts
and sentenced Eichmann to death. After the rejection of a final appeal Adolf Eichmann
was hanged in Jerusalem on May 31, 1962, thereby ending the odyssey which had begun
in Argentina some three years earlier.

From its inception, the Eichmann trial was intended to be different than the
international tribunal at Nuremberg had been during the late 1940’s. Unlike the
Nuremberg trials, which focused little on the Nazis’ ‘final solution’, the Israelis spoke
openly about their desire to focus upon the crimes and atrocities Eichmann committed
rather than dwell upon issues of legality and nuances related to the law. The trial was
meant to serve as a reminder to the entire world of the particularity of the Nazi’s
extermination program and against the Jews of Europe. However, many observers
heavily criticized both the manner in which Eichmann was kidnapped and Israel’s

decision to hold the trial in Jerusalem rather than handing the defendant over to an

69

international tribunal. As a 1961 editorial which appeared in W19 stated,
“For the Israelis, the Nuremberg trials were not quite enough. The fate of the Jews was

only an item- though an essential one- in the indictment and condemnation.”2 Thus, the
Eichmann trial was intended to accomplish much more than simply judging whether or

not the defendant was guilty of war crimes against humanity.

In an interview which ran in the NeflorklimosMagozjno on the eve of the trial
in December, 1960, Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion outlined several of the goals he
hoped the Eichmann trial would achieve. As the interview began, the Premier
emphasized the specifically Jewish nature of the genocide and noted, “He [Hitler] never

”3 Shortly thereafter he emphasized

intended to murder an entire people, except the Jews.
that Israel wants to establish before the nations of the world how millions of Jews were
murdered by the Nazis simply because they were Jews. By 1960, as we have seen, the
majority of information which Americans had received concerning the genocide largely
universalized the victims and made no distinctions between the fates of Jews and non-
Jews in occupied Europe. The Eichmann trial thus became the first means by which most
Americans learned that Jews were the specific targets of the Nazis and as such suffered
horrible losses as a group during the Holocaust. As Commonrau writer Harold

Rosenberg concluded, “the trial was held in order to tell the story of the Jews of

Europe”.4

 

:Patrick 0’ Donovan, “Reflections on the Eichmann Trial,” W1; 15 May 1961, 8.
3David Ben-Gurion, “The Eichmann Case as Seen by Ben-Gurion,”NL_York_Iimos_Magoz1no
18 December 1960, 7.
’ Harold Rosenberg, “The Trial and Eichmann,”_C_ommomory #32 November 1961, 377.

70

However, the trial was held to achieve several other aims in addition to
particularizing the suffering of Jews during this tragedy. Israel saw the trial as an
educational tool in which to show the world that, as Premier Ben-Gurion stated, “in our
day the gas chamber and the soap factory are what anti-Semitism may lead to.”5 Beyond
utilizing the trial as a means to alert nations of the dangers of anti-Semitism, Ben-Gurion
also hoped the trial would “help to ferret out other Nazis” who were believed to be hiding
abroad. Moreover, the Israeli Premier acknowledged that he sought to educate the youth
in Israel of the tragedy which befell Jews in Europe before they were born. The Now
lorklimos interview generated a tremendous response from readers as evidenced by
several weeks worth of letters to the editor in which the pros and cons of the impending
trial were discussed and argued. More cynical observers claimed Israel was trying to set
herself up as the spokesperson for world Jewry by having the trial in Jerusalem, and
others added that Ben-Gurion was trying to appease more politically conservative anti-
German factions within the Knesset by abducting and indicting Eichmann. On the other
hand, many passionately argued that at a time when civil rights were of paramount
concern in America, the trial would serve as an excellent reminder of the dangers
presented by discrimination against a minority in the 20th century. As the trial
approached, two things seemed clear: this would be an event of historic importance with

the potential to shed light on the darker side of human nature; and the trial promised to

 

5 David Ben-Gurion, “The Eichmann Case as Seen by Ben-Gurion,” leorklimosMagazino
18 December 1960, 62.

7l

provoke further controversy as it continued due to the involvement of the more grisly and
unique elements.

In their quest to inform the world of the specifically Jewish nature of the
Holocaust, Israel could not have found a better defendant than Adolf Eichmann. In his
article on the Eichmann trial, Harold Rosenberg labeled Eichmann “a living protagonist
for this crime, a man bound to the misery of the Jews as his specialty, his sole reason for
being . . . he had not other role, no status, nor stature apart from this single function, that
of fer-lying Jews to their deaths.”6 Clearly, the specific capacity in which Eichmann
served the Nazis generated new awareness and interest in the specific suffering inflicted
upon Jews as a result of the genocide.

The manner in which Eichmann was captured and subsequently brought to Israel
to stand trial drew intense media coverage and scrutiny to the defendant and to Israel
following the Ben-Gurion announcement. When reporters questioned the Israeli Premier
as to where and how Israeli agents found Eichmann, Ben-Gurion adamantly refused to
divulge any of details behind the abduction of Eichmann and vowed never to publicly
reveal this information. In the ensuing days and weeks, a flood of sensational stories
claiming to have the details behind what Nowswook called “the greatest cloak and dagger

drama in years” appeared in a variety of American publications.7 Only several weeks

after his capture was made public, IheCaseAgainstAdoleichmann and Eichmann:

 

6 Harold Rosenberg, “The Trial and Eichmann,”_(;ommonram #32 November 1961, 375.
7 Newsweek, “Nazi Killer of Millions,” #55 June 6, 1960 51.

72

W became the first of many sensationalized paperback books
aiming to capitalize on the sudden notoriety of the former Nazi officer.

While the publicity and speculation behind Eichmann’s capture generated a
tremendous amount of renewed interest in the genocide among the American public, this
sudden media attention also carried with it a heavy cost. Left to their own devices to
figure out not only how Eichmann had managed to live in hiding as a fugitive for fifteen
years but also how he was eventually captured, journalists often embellished upon the
facts they had and endowed the former Nazi with non-human qualities. An article
appearing in Iimo Magazine on Eichmann’s capture ran under the headline ‘Last of the
Beasts’ while other periodicals likened the defendant to the devil and often referred to
him as a monster. In a letter to the NoxLYorinmos, one reader wrote, “it is unrealistic
to think of Eichmann in any respect as a member of the human race and our tradition and
law does not hesitate to remove a monster wherever found.”8 Sensational coverage
created tremendous interest among the American public in Eichmann following his arrest,
but as we will see, the defendant’s total failure to live up to these descriptions contributed
to a rapid loss of interest in the trial among American audiences as it proceeded.

Upon his capture, the American press released a multitude of stories detailing
Eichmann’s role within the Nazi apparatus. Of particular interest to American readers
was a Life magazine two part exclusive interview with Eichmann that had been obtained

from Wilhelm Sassen, a former SS officer, during the 1950’s. The article presents an odd

 

" Samuel Hofstadter, “Not a Human,” meorkl’unos 8 January 1961, 17.

73

mixture of family snapshots taken during Eichmann’s youth and horrific images of
concentration camp victims reprinted from GI photos which had first appeared in 1944
and 1945. Eichmann stresses within this interview that “neither I nor my men would
have anything to do with the physical liquidation. We would act only as policemen; that
is we would round up Jews for the others.”9 Throughout the Life expose Eichmann
asserts he was no more than a cog in the massive machinery of the Nazi bureaucracy and
as such was not responsible in any way for the tragedy which had befallen Europe’s Jews.
He notes, “Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who were
loaded on these trains meant nothing to me. It was really none of my business.”10

The lack of regard for human life which characterized so many of Eichmann’s
opinions and views fiightened and enthralled many Americans. Attempting to
understand the motivation behind a man like Eichmann became a passion for some
Americans who viewed the trial as a chance to probe the depths of human callousness and
cruelty. In 1960, William Shirer’s WWI) was first
published in America and dealt largely with the composition and motivations of the Nazi
leadership. The book enjoyed incredible success, sitting atop the bestseller list for well
over two years. In spite of the book’s occasional historical inaccuracies and

exaggerations, Americans who read this work viewed it as the definitive text towards

understanding the Nazis’ bureaucratic apparatus. This fascination with the structure of

 

9Wilhelm Sassen, “Eichmann’s Own Damping Story,” Life 28 November 1960, 24.
’0 Wilhelm Sassen, “Eichmann’s Own Damning Story,” Life 28 November 1960, 101.

74

Nazi power further contributed to interest in the story of Adolf Eichmarm during the early
1960’s.

The portrait of Eichmann to emerge from his own account was confusing and
more than a bit troubling for American readers as evidenced by their reactions to the
interview. One reader wrote, “your story, replete with practically social family pictures
of Eichmann and his family, is getting sympathetic reaction from some of our weaker
minded citizens.”ll Americans who had been anticipating a trial of other-worldly
implications between justice and absolute evil were slowly realizing that Eichmann was
human, indeed very mortal at that. As an editorial in the Nation admitted, “like it or not,
it may be well to keep in mind that Eichmann was once a two-year-old who played in the

”’2 Following the trial’s conclusion, Hannah Arendt

sand as my child is doing now.
pressed these same claims much further in her work Ejohmaunjndomsalom, which will
be discussed in greater detail below. However, by December of 1960, Life had already
conceded, “the depressing fact is that Eichmann is basically a rather unextraordinary
man”.l3 Nowhere would this become more evident than in the defendant’s own
testimony offered during his trial.

As the trial’s opening date approached, Israel announced only one television

network in America would be allowed to film the proceedings and set off a very heated

battle between media representatives for the three major networks. Due to the unusually

 

” Bernard S. Min, “Letters to the Editor,” Life 19 December 1960, 4.
’2 Stuart Palmer, “Eichmann and Ourselves,” W 20 August 1960, 92.
'3 “Eichmann and the Duty of Man,” Life 5 December 1960, 46.

75

high level of anticipation accompanying the trial’s start, news and print media outlets in
the US. were scrambling to set themselves up in Jerusalem to offer exclusive coverage of
the proceedings. Shortly after the trial began, survivors of the Holocaust were called
upon to share their stories in front of the courtroom. The American media began to pull
back from its coverage in an effort to avoid repelling audiences with the brutal images
and scenes recalled by many of the witnesses called upon to testify. However, the media
contingent dramatically increased on the days proceeding the testimony of Eichmann
himself. As a result of the terrifying descriptions of the defendant which had been
circulated in American periodicals upon his capture, the American public was very
curious and interested in the testimony of Eichmann. However, the testimony of the
defendant proved far less dramatic and engaging than had been expected and the media
soon lost interest in the bickering exchanges between Attorney General Gideon Hauser
and Adolf Eichmann during his month on the stand. Thus, as the trial concluded it was
being broadcast to far fewer Americans than in its opening days.

The Eichmann Trial brought to light many issues and themes related to the
genocide which previously had been repressed or ignored by the American public. Even
today scholars are struggling to define and assess culpability among nations and
individuals in the wake of the Holocaust. One of the first times a periodical publicly
declared a possible link between US. indifference and the deaths of six million Jews was
in a Lifo magazine editorial in December of 1960. The article read, “just as millions of

Germans, by closing their eyes and ears to the crimes around them, shared some of

76

Eichmann’s guilt, does anyone '3 willful blindness to injustice anywhere make them a
conspirator with evil.” It goes on to add, “says he [Eichmann]: ‘the plain fact was that
there was no place on earth that would have been ready to accept the Jews’ and God help
us all, it was a true statement. It was true of the United States of America?” Justice and
responsibility in the aftermath of the Holocaust are the two major themes dealt with in
Stanley Kramer’s 1961 major motion picture Whom. The movie
reflects the cultural climate of America at this time while dealing with issues and themes
familiar with the populace in light of the extensive news coverage granted to the
Eichmann Trial.

The picture’s opening date of December 14, 1961, intentionally coincided with
the sentencing of Adolf Eichmann. Opting to open the film on this date only underscored
what was already a very obvious relationship between the release of the film and the
actual trial. As in the case of several films which preceded it and dealt with other
elements of the genocide, LudgmomuLNuremoorg featured an all-star cast in an effort to
appeal to broader audiences. Actors and actresses appearing within the film included
Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, and
Marlene Dietrich. Once again, as in the case of other pictures dealing with aspects of the
Holocaust, Stanley Kramer’s film opened to international publicity featuring a world
premiere in Berlin attended by dignitaries and political figures from around the globe

along with hundreds of journalists and several of the movie’s stars.

 

'4 “Eichmann and the Duty of Man,” Life 5 December 1960, 46.

77

Filmed entirely in black and white and running over three hours in length, this
film provided audiences with an intense and often very troubling viewing experience.
One of the film’s most memorable scenes followed Spencer Tracy on a stroll through the
dilapidated remains of the Nuremberg Stadium which once held hundreds of thousands of
Hitler’s audiences rapt during the 1930’s as echoes of music, roaring crowds, and Hitler’s
screaming are heard in the backgfound. This film was also unique in that it presented
several minutes of actual Army film footage of the liberation of camps which had not
been seen by most Americans since their initial release on news reels fifteen years earlier.
As dramatic music plays, Richard Widmark narrates these films and in a sense provides a
‘group history lesson’ for American audiences in which it is stressed that two thirds of the
victims were Jews and that six million Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust.
However, while Jews are mentioned as victims of the genocide at several points in the
film, these victims play a very minor role in the overall story.

While ludgomomdLNuromburg achieved outstanding financial success and
publicity following its premiere, the film’s tendency to universalize its message and
failure to give Jews any agency in the tragedy raised the ire of some Jewish critics. In
many respects, as historian Judith Doneson has pointed out, many of the film’s defects
and inaccuracies reflected the failures of the Nuremburg Trials itself.15 Director Stanley

Kramer makes a somewhat contradictory case for the culpability of Germans in the

Holocaust while also arguing that they were no more guilty than any other person who

 

'5 Judith Doneson, WM. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society,
1987, 100.

78

stood by while the genocide was taking place. While this point certainly is compelling, it
produced conflicting images and themes in the film which drew parallels between the
American bombing of Hiroshima to the Holocaust.

Judgmomflfluromoerg rotates around one major question, first asked by defense
attorney Maximilian Schell at the outset of the film: do you consider yourself free of
responsibility for crimes committed by the Nazis? The film then presents a series of
characters from a variety of different backgrounds who represent various levels of direct
and indirect responsibility for the rise of Hitler and the deaths of millions of Jews. While
judges who'willfully manipulated the law appear very guilty of complicity in these
crimes, the role of others such as a Nazi General’s widow, a young girl who refirsed to
break off her friendship with a Jewish man in spite of the danger she knew her friendship
posed, and a maid and butler who worked for a Nazi family evoke much hazier opinions
from the audience on the levels of their guilt. Marlene Dietrich, as the widow, represents
the German citizen who simply will not admit atrocities even occurred in the aftermath of
the genocide. Likewise, the maid and butler initially claim to have been totally unaware
of the horrors being perpetrated by the Germans, but then express the refrain commonly
uttered by German citizens during the 1950’s and 1960’s in which they claimed even if
they did know what was happening, what could they have done about it.

The film sets out to recount a trial of four judges accused of participating in
crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1948. The two main

combatants in the movie are Richard Widmark, as the prosecutor who blames Germany

79

and all her citizens for the genocide, and Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney who
is attempting to create a future for Germany by highlighting the universal guilt of many
nations and individuals beyond those seated in the courtroom or even within Germany
itself. Schell reminds the court that the Soviet Union, the Vatican, Churchill, and even
American industrialists are responsible for what happened to the Jews of Europe.
JudgmonLaLNuromborg brought these issues into the public sphere of discussion for the
first time in America. Prior to the release of this film, issues of responsibility and the role
of bystanders in the deaths of Jews were not broached in American society due in part to
their uncomfortable and inconclusive nature of these themes.

However, the financial success of this movie does in some respects reflect
America’s increasing willingness to confront the more difficult and disturbing aspects of
the genocide. The concluding message of the film, although somewhat ambiguous,
seems to have been stated by a defendant portrayed by Burt Lancaster who finally admits
‘if we did not know it was because we did not want to know.’ W
was nominated for nearly every major Academy Award and won Best Actor honors for
Schell’s performance and a Best Screenplay trophy for previously blacklisted writer
Abby Mann, who had adapted his own Playhouse 9O script to make the movie.

Moreover, the film proved to be very lucrative at the box office. The film’s final note, in
which the viewer is told that none of the judges sentenced for their crimes were still
serving their sentences due to Cold War politics certainly seemed to have been added as a

means of advocating the death penalty or a similarly severe punishment in the impending

80

Eichmann verdict, thus reflecting the contemporary concerns of the international
community.

As noted earlier, one of the aims which Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion had
hoped the trial would achieve was to alert the public that many Nazis were still at large
living as fugitives all over the world. Following Eichmann’s capture, Nowswook ran an
article which described efforts underway to determine the fate of former Hitler aide
Martin Borman and other Nazis previously assumed to have died in the final days of the
war. Two weeks later, Nooswook again did a story on the 500 top Nazi fugitives
“scattered from Germany to Latin America to the Middle East” including Borman, Hans
Haple, Fritz Katsman, Professor Horst Schumann, and Dr. Mangle [sic] and noted that as
a result of the Eichmann Trial renewed efforts were underway to apprehend these and
other criminals. ’6

Perhaps the most interesting capture to follow the arrest of Eichmann occurred in
1963 and was widely publicized in American papers. Under the headline “Sleuthing
Adds Two Footnotes to History”, IhoNeu/lorklimos reported former Nazi Karl
Silberbauer was suspended by the Vienna police force and awaiting trial for charges
stemming from his arrest of Anne Frank and her family in 1944.'7 Anne Frank had
become a cultural icon in America during the 1950’s as her story was adapted to reflect
broader concerns, and it was through Anne which Americans discussed elements of the

genocide. Anne’s story evolved with public discussion and awareness of the Holocaust.

 

16 “They Hide, They Hunt,” mm #55 20 June 1960, 64-
" “Sleuthing Adds Two Footnotes to History,” Now_Y_ork_I1mos 21 November 1963, 1.

81

While there was little mention of exactly who arrested Anne in the 1950’s or whether the
person or persons were ever found, one of the themes which the Eichmann Trial brought
into the public discourse was the existence of fugitive Nazis living under assumed names
who went unpunished following the war’s close. Just as Anne had become America’s
collective victim of the Holocaust, the realization that many Nazis had eluded capture and
punishment fostered by the trial led audiences to advocate and then applaud the arrest of
Silberbauer as they would the arrest of any criminal who had harmed a friend or relative.
It cannot be stressed enough that the Eichmann Trial transformed collective
American awareness and discussion of the Holocaust by emphasizing the particular
suffering inflicted upon European Jewry. The trial built upon the Exodus phenomena in a
different direction by once again giving Jews agency in the tragedy but this time
suggesting that they may have had a hand in their own destruction. Western audiences
heard first hand accounts of the harsh conditions and cruel treatment afforded to Jews in
concentration camps all over Europe. Just as the Hackett and Goodrich stage adaptation
of WW allowed Otto Frank the opportunity to reshape his daughter’s
story and memory, the Eichmann Trial gave Israeli Jews the chance to retell the story of
the genocide and emphasize the particularity of Nazi crimes. While the trial emphasized
Jews as the targeted victims in the story of the genocide, several works were published
which also dared to ask previously taboo questions relating to the role of Jews in their
own deaths. Although this was purposely not emphasized during the proceedings, the

complicity of some Jews- especially Jewish leaders was an issue which crept not only

82

into the testimony of countless survivors who had been called as witnesses for the
Prosecution, but also in the account offered to the court by Adolf Eichmann.

The issue of Jewish complicity seems to have been first brought to the attention of
American audiences in Raul Hilberg’s 1960 historical work IhoDostruotjonofjho
Europoaudews. Hilberg’s study received very high marks from critics but was
predominantly popular among scholarly circles where it was widely praised as the most
complete and well-researched piece to date dealing with the Holocaust. Hilberg
concluded that “the reaction pattern of the Jews was characterized by almost complete

”'8 However, he devoted relatively little space to developing this

lack of resistance.
argument more fully with stronger evidence. The author criticized the methods by which
Jews tried to appease Nazis by resorting to standard or rational logic in their appeals.
Ultimately, Hilberg claimed, “insofar as the Jews cooperated in other ways, the attempts
at forestalling not only availed nothing but actually fitted into German plans. Playing
into German hands, they speeded the process of destruction.”19 Ihoflesrructjonofirho
Euroooaoleurs was a massive book aimed largely at academic audiences, and as a result
of the sheer quantity of issues with which it dealt, Hilberg’s arguments linking Jews at
least in some extent to their destruction went largely unnoticed by the American public.
Also in 1960, Bruno Bettelheim’s Iholnformodfloarr was released in America

and continued the assessment of Jewish culpability in their destruction much like Raul

Hilberg. Bettelheim took a different tack than Hilberg in pursuing his argument by

 

'3 Raul Hilberg, WWW, Quandrangle: Chicago, 1961, 662.
”Ibid., 665.

83

defining and speculating far more deeply on the psychological motivations behind Jewish
complicity in their deaths. The author examined Jews within ghettos and concentration
camps who were in a position to resist their oppressors but instead chose not to rebel.
Bettelheim found that “the persecution of the Jews worsened, slow step by slow step,
when no violent resistance occurred. It may have been Jewish acceptance, without fight,
of ever harsher discrimination and degradation that first gave the SS the idea that they
could be gotten to the point where they would walk to the gas chambers on their own.”20
Iholnformodfioort presented no great answers to the provocative questions it
posed and in fact concluded on a note of fi'ustration. “Millions of the Jews of Europe
who did not or could not escape in time to go underground as many thousands did,” wrote
an exasperated Bettelheim, “could at least have marched as free men against the SS,
rather than to first grove], then wait to be rounded up for their own extermination, and

”2' Finally, Bettelheim ended his work on a

finally walk themselves to the gas chambers.
question, wondering “why then did millions walk quietly, without resistance, to their
death . . . why did so few of the millions of prisoners die like men?”22

It is on this note of confusion, ambiguity, and even despair which Bettelheim ended his
book.

Bettelheim’s work was certainly provocative and offered many compelling

psychological opinions from the author related to the mental strength and weakness of

 

2° Bruno Bettelheim, IheJnfonnedeAmonomxmaMassAge The Free Pressr Glencoe. 259-
21Ibid., 263.
22 Ibid., 264.

84

humans in captivity. However, Bettelheim’s work was decidedly unobjective and
actually quite poor history. He frequently omits mentioning events or circumstances
which may have contradicted his thesis that Jews went passively to their deaths and that
Jewish leaders contributed greatly to the destruction of European Jews. While this work
again raised the issue of Jewish complicity among the small circle of its readership, the
role of Jews in their own destruction had not managed to enter mainstream public
discussion of the genocide prior to the start of the Eichmann trial.

During the interview with Adolf Eichmann which appeared in Life magazine in
November, 1960, the former Nazi officer tellingly recounted how impressed he was with
the passivity exhibited by Jews as they were about to be killed. According to Eichmann,
“I watched the last group of Jews undress, down to their shirts. They walked the last 100
or 200 yards- they were not driven- then they jumped into the pit. It was impressive to
see them all jumping into the pit without oflering any resistance whatsoever.”23
Although the trial did not directly deal with this topic, the testimony of survivors and at
times of Eichmann himself led reporter Hannah Arendt to more fully pursue this theme in
her work Eiohmannjn WWW published in 1963.
This piece was a compilation of articles written by the author as a reporter for Ihon

Xorkor during the trial. It dwelled mostly upon the ordinariness of Eichmann’s character

also on the role Jews played in their own destruction.

 

2’ Wilhelm Sassen, “Eichmann’s Own Damning Story,” Life 28 November 1960, 102.

85

Arendt leveled particularly harsh criticism at the Jewish councils of Europe and
blamed their leaders for greatly contributing to the numbers of Jews deported and
murdered during the genocide. According to the author, “Jewish officials could be
trusted to compile the lists of persons and of their property, to secure money from the
deportees to defray the expense of their deportation and extermination, to keep track of
vacated apartments, to supply police forces to help seize Jews and get them on trains,
until, as a last gesture, they handed over the assets of the Jewish community in good
order for final confiscation. . . we still can sense how they enjoyed their new power.”24
Moreover, this work strongly criticized the decision by J udenrat leaders of deciding who
must be spared by introducing categories ranking Jewish citizens according to their
prominence. The acceptance of these categories by the Jewish community, was,
according to Arendt, “the beginning of the moral collapse of respectable Jewish

”25 While Jewish community leaders were particular targets to come under fire in

society.
this study, Jewish civilians also were criticized by the author.

She wrote, “the Jews registered, filled out innumerable forms, answered pages and
pages of questionnaires regarding their property so that it could be seized the more easily;
they then assembled at the collection points and boarded the trains. The few who tried to

hide or to escape were rounded up by a special Jewish police force. As far as Eichmann

could see, no one protested, no one refused to cooperate.”26 She then added, “Without

 

2’ Hannah Arendt, Ejohmanoindomsulom, Penguin Books: New York, 1963, 118.
2’ Ibid., 131.
26 Hannah Arendt, Ejohmannjolomsalom, Penguin Books: New York, 1963, 115.

86

Jewish help in administrative and police work- . . . ~there would have been either
complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German manpower?” Rather than
search for the historical or psychological motivations behind their decision to passively
comply with Nazi orders, Arendt was primarily interested in emphasizing that Jews did
not fight back when challenged largely because tyranny was internalized by its victims.
The author extends this observation by claiming this not only hurt the Jewish cause but it
helped the Nazis in their extermination program who “had regarded this cooperation as
the very cornerstone of their Jewish policy.”28
Whereas Hilberg and Bettelheim’s reports treated this topic very carefully and
often ambiguously, Arendt’s work possesses an almost damning tone to its findings. “As
Eichmann told it,” she recounts, “the most potent factor in the soothing of his own
conscience was the simple fact that he could see no one, no one at all, who actually was

”29

against the Final Solution. Indeed, in an article written at the trial’s conclusion, Elie

Wiesel admitted, “the Jews themselves failed to do everything they should have done:

30 . .
” The role of Jews In their

they ought to have done more, they could have done better.
own destruction entered into mainstream American discourse following the release of
Arendt’s study.

Arendt’s work provoked a torrent of bitter criticism from Jewish observers and

critics following its release. As in the Bettelheim study, Arendt’s history was poorly

 

2’ Ibid., 117.

2‘ Ibid., 124.

29 Hannah Arendt, Eiohmonnjrrlomsflom, Penguin Books: New York, 1963, 116.
’0 Elie Wiesel, “Eichmann’s Victims and the Unheard Testimony,” Communion: 512.

87

constructed and riddled with historical exaggeration and inaccuracies. Jacob Robinson
and other prominent Jewish writers and editors suggested that Arendt’s book could be
viewed as anti-Semitic as a result of her determination to prove that Jews were passive
and meek in the face of the tragedy. Once again, Eichmann in Jerusalem presented the
genocide in a decidedly unobjective fashion designed to prove the author’s philosophical
themes related to tyranny and bureaucracy while omitting elements and events which
might contest these theories.

These works which dealt with the Jewish role in their extermination undoubtedly
contributed to the simultaneous appearance of works detailing the heroism of the Jewish
resistance at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. As we shall see in the next chapter,
the public discussion of the genocide in America evolved sometimes in response to the
discussion itself. That is, these images of passive Jews provoked new images portraying
Jews as tough and strong during the early 1960’s. However, another series of works also
appeared during the 1960’s which presented the stories of survivors and reflected the
guilt and confusion of Jews themselves who had managed to live through their ordeal.
Together, these conflicting works contributed to the evolution of America’s awareness
and comprehension of the Holocaust.

The Eichmann Trial was significant because it emphasized the particularity of the
Nazi crimes. This emphasis transformed the more universalistic discourse which had
previously existed by taking it in several new, more difficult directions. One of these was

towards refuting claims of Jewish passivity with images of heroic resistance. Another as

88

we will also see was to foster audience interest in the stories of the survivors themselves.
Finally, the Eichmann Trial reawakened Americans to the brutality of the Holocaust and
laid the groundwork for future studies which explored the direct and indirect
responsibility of nations and individuals previously unassociated with the extermination
of the Jews. Whether or not the American public’s interest in the trial itself was sustained
throughout its entire length, the arousal of this interest and the media stories which
accompanied Eichmann’s capture and trial were critical in reshaping how Americans
dealt with the genocide and what kinds of works were presented to Americans on the

Nazi genocide.

CHAPTER 4
THOSE WHO DID NOT PERISH

America’s awareness and understanding of the Holocaust itself was
fundamentally transformed by a series of works written by and about survivors of the
genocide in the early 1960’s. Works such as Elie Wiesel’s N1gh1(1960) and Primo
Levi’s WW (1960) represented the first primary accounts authored by
survivors who had been in the death and concentration camps to reach mainstream
American audiences. For the first time, these memoirs described the day to day rigors of
camp life and vividly recounted the physical and mental deprivations which were part of
their experiences in the concentration camps. Not only did these works profoundly alter
how America thought and talked about the genocide, they also helped foster an
environment among mainstream American audiences which prompted new works dealing
with the plight of survivors in contemporary society. All told, the body of pieces dealt
with in this chapter marked the beginning of a profoundly new and different era of
consciousness of the genocide among American audiences.

A progression of books, plays and films beginning with John Hersey’s Iheflau
in 1950 gradually expanded American awareness of and interest in aspects of the
genocide while slowly but steadily pushing the boundaries of what Americans were

willing to discuss relating to the more troubling elements of the genocide. This evolution

89

90

in discourse and growing awareness of the particularity of the Nazi extermination
program aimed at Jews coincided with the rise of an increasingly vocal and volatile civil
rights movement in America. As the struggles of African Americans to achieve full
equality in the United States increasingly drew greater coverage and sympathy from
mainstream American audiences and the media, interest in the racial extermination
program of the Nazis grew substantially among the American public. People began to
reexamine the Holocaust in the early 1960’s and to draw tentative comparisons between
the plight of Jews in Nazi Europe to the suffering of African Americans in the United
States. Together, the dually evolving discourse on the Holocaust and increasingly
strident civil rights struggle fostered curiosity among some Americans in the more
disturbing and unique elements of the Nazi genocide.

This chapter examines when and how public discussion of the Holocaust in
America first began to deal with concentration camps and their effects on survivors in
contemporary society. As we have seen in earlier chapters, works released during the
1950’s and early 1960’s either wholly ignored the concentration camps altogether or
treated them as an abyss of death where victims were sent and presumably murdered
immediately on anival. Authors and producers sought to present the genocide in such a
manner as to avoid repelling mainstream audiences and seemed feel that Americans
would not be interested in material related to life within the camps. While these pieces
made important first steps in raising awareness and understanding of the genocide among
the American public, they left readers with no sense of what experience in concentration

camps must have entailed. Therefore, the release of the Wiesel and Levi memoirs in

91

1960 and their success both financially and critically marked the first time that the subject
of the camps was dealt with in any sort of detail within America and helped pave the way
for future stories by and about survivors and their experiences to be published and
accepted by a significant portion of the American public.

Collectively, survivors stayed on the fringes of society during the 1950’s and
largely kept their stories within themselves. As historian Edward Linenthal notes, '
“Adapting to American culture, survivors generally wanted to turn away from the horror
they had lived through, become Americans, build a new life, and take advantage,

”I

cautiously, of the American dream. There were pressures placed upon Holocaust
survivors to remain silent and suppress their stories by both Gentiles and Jews as was
discussed in Chapter One of this work. Many of those who had managed to survive the
genocide and were now living in America also were coping with the tremendous physical
and mental losses inflicted upon them during the tragedy. The burdens of memory,
which really lie at the core of the survivor experience in post-Holocaust society, could not
be described to the American public before audiences first understood that many but not
all Jews were sent to the crematoriums immediately following their arrival at Auschwitz
and other camps.

Fifty years later in American society, Holocaust survivors have attained a lofty
status, particularly among Jews, as moral exemplars whose insights are particularly

valuable and important in this day and age. Historian Judith Miller writes, “among the

2 0 0
chosen people, they have become the chosen of the chosen.” Moreover, there IS a certaln

 

lEdward Linenthal, BrssenringMomory, Viking Press: New York, 1995, 6.
2 Judith Miller, W, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

92

sense of urgency which accompanies the words of survivors today in light of the fact that
many are elderly and soon all will have passed away due to natural causes. Miller echoes
these sentiments when she adds, “many have become obsessed of late with speaking out.

”3 Efforts to preserve

They feel compelled to tell their stories now, before it is too late.
the stories of survivors through multi-media techniques received a recent boost when
director Steven Spielberg embarked upon an ambitious plan to establish a film archive
featuring interviews with over 100,000 survivors currently living in the United States.
The Spielberg project, along with his film Sohindlofisldst and the opening of the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. has contributed to the high profile
survivors now occupy on the American cultural landscape. Furthermore, survivors today
are often interviewed in the media for their perspective on genocidal massacres in places
such as Rwanda and Bosnia and many speak regularly to groups of school children,
church congregations and other community organizations. As Primo Levi notes in the
preface to the 1993 edition of SuryiualjnAusohwjtz, “The need to tell our story to ‘the
rest’, to make ‘the rest’ participate in it, had taken for us, before our liberation and after,
the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with our
other elementary needs.”4 However, the respect which survivors receive today from the
American public and the desire to hear their stories is a relatively new phenomenon,
which has its origins in the initial literature to emerge at the very end of the 1950’s.

In 1959 Philip Roth wrote what may be the definitive critique of Jewish

assimilation into suburban culture in his series of short stories entitled Goodbyo

 

3112111., 220.
’ Primo Levi, W111, translated by Stuart Woolf, New York: Collier Books, 1960, 9.

93

Qo1umbus. Roth’s work received critical acclaim for its cutting analysis of the
shallowness of suburban culture and the sacrifices Jews collectively chose to make in
order to gain acceptance among their Gentile neighbors throughout the 1950’s. While the
title story received the most critical acclaim and attention, the book’s final story, E11,_1ho
Eanafio, subtly dealt with themes and issues previously ignored by more mainstream
works relating to the relationship between American Jews and survivors of the Holocaust.
During the course of this short story, Roth raised several difficult questions concerning
American Jews’ perceptions of survivors and themselves in the wake of their increasing
acceptance and assimilation into mainstream American culture and life.

E1L_LhoEanario tells the story of Eli Peck, a reformed Jew living comfortably in a
mixed suburb during the 1950’s. Eli serves his community as its attorney and has the
difficult task of soothing tensions between townspeople and several orthodox Jews who
have opened a Yeshiva on the edge of the village’s residential area. Initially, Eli looks at
the Yeshiva and the Jews dressed in traditional attire there with condescension and
perhaps loathing. In a letter to the school’s director he writes, “Woodenton, as you may
not know, has long been the home of well-to-do Protestants. It is only since the war that
Jews have been able to buy property here, and for Jew and Gentiles to live beside each
other in arnity. For this adjustment to be made, both Jews and Gentiles alike have had to
give up some of their more extreme practices in order not to threaten or offend the other.
Perhaps if such conditions had existed in prewar Europe, the persecution of the Jewish

people, of which you and those 18 children have been victims, could not have been

94

carried out with such success- in fact might not have been carried out at all.”5 In this
manner, Eli expresses his fear that his own relative comfort might be jeopardized by the
Old-World appearance and customs of these unassimilated Jews while also shifting guilt
upon the victims themselves for the suffering they endured during the Holocaust. As we
have seen in previous chapters, several works were released during the early 1960’s
which focused upon the culpability of Jews in Europe in light of their seeming
compliance and passivity during the genocide.

As the story progresses, the emphasis shifts from forcing the Yeshiva to relocate
to merely convincing the adults who reside there to dress and act more American when
they are traveling through the community. Eli cannot understand why it is so difficult for
one man in particular to shed his orthodox clothes and assimilate into the community’s
culture. Finally, the director angrily lectures Eli on why the man’s clothes and customs
are so dear to him. He tells Eli, “he has nothing. Nothing. . . . A mother and father? No.
A wife? No. A baby? No! A village full of friends? A synagogue where you knew the
feel of every seat under your pants? . . . And a medical experiment they performed on him
yet! That leaves nothing, Mr. Peck. Absolutely nothing!”6 These lines finally impress
upon Eli the suffering which this man has endured and the plight which faces many
survivors in contemporary society. Moreover, it forces Eli to reexamine his perception of
survivors and of the genocide itself, as he comes to realize the physical and mental
devastation wrought upon not only those who perished, but also upon those who

survived. With this description, Roth first introduced many American readers to the

 

’ Philip Roth, Wm, Vintage lntemational: New York, 1959, 262.
6Ibid., 264.

95

complexity of issues relating to survivors and also highlighted the ignorance of American
Jews and Gentiles held in reference to the genocide and to the continuing burdens placed
upon survivors.

Through Roth’s short story, mainstream American readers were first introduced to
characters who were physically and mentally destroyed as a result of their experiences
during the Holocaust. While E11._tho_Eanatio shed some light onto the previously
undiscussed plight of survivors in contemporary society, it did not deal with more
complex issues relating to the ordeals they had endured in Europe and the guilt which
their experiences had forced upon them. In fact, it was not until the translation of Primo ‘
Levi’s Sun/128L111 Ausohudtz and Eli Wiesel’s Night in 1960 that mainstream audiences
were presented with materials which focused upon the suffering inflicted upon those who
lived within the camps and the massive privations they suffered on a daily basis.

Primo Levi’s SundyuljnAuschudtz was originally released under the title Iflhis
1s_a_Mon in Italy in 1947. Levi’s work chronicles the degradation and suffering inflicted
upon its author during his year in Auschwitz and illustrates the demoralizing and
decivilizing structure of the camps. Shortly after the release of Levi’s work to American
audiences, Elie Wiesel’s Night was translated from its original French version and
released in America. It recounts Wiesel’s experiences as an adolescent in the camps of
Auschwitz and Buchenwald and grapples with many of the same issues and themes raised
in Levi’s account. The decision to translate these works and release them in America-
years following their original publication- seems due, at least in part, to a belief among

American publishers that the evolving discourse regarding the genocide in America had

96

progressed to the point where readers understood that for some the camps did not mean
instant death and in spite of the misery which marked life within the camps there were
people who managed to survive.

Sumiualjnfiusohwirz and Night focused upon the camps and the twin burdens of
guilt and memory plaguing those who managed to survive. Together, these works
brought the concentration camps into the evolving American discourse regarding the
genocide and generated further interest among readers in elements of the Holocaust
which had previously been ignored or considered taboo in American culture. Their
release coincided with another important work, Andre Scharz-Bart’s fictional Last of the
Just, which also dealt with the grim violence and illogical nature of life within Nazi
Europe. Moreover, the glowing reviews which these pieces received increased awareness
about this previously omitted element of the genocide and fostered the publication of
subsequent works such as Edward Wallant’s IhoPownhrokor and Sidney Lumet’s film
version of the Wallant novel. Consequently, they were critical in establishing the camps
as a unique aspect of the genocide among American audiences and in stirring empathy
among American readers for the horrors which survivors endured during their ordeals.

Perhaps the most striking quality of both the Levi and Wiesel works remains their
ability to convey how horrible life was in the camps while maintaining an extremely
dignified and objective tone devoid of graphic violence or excessive descriptions of
brutality. In a review of Levi’s piece which appeared in IhoNeflfijmosman, David
Caute noted, “His [Levi’s] story is told without melodrama, without self-pity, but with a

muted passion and intensity, and an occasional cry of anguish, which makes it one of the

97

most remarkable documents I have ever read.”7 In the hands of less talented writers, the
omission of the more gruesome elements of the genocide might have fostered works
which continued to gloss over the horror and tragedy of the camps. However, the
understated and poetic writing of Levi and Wiesel produced countless chilling and
indelible images while exposing the full brutality of the camps by focusing upon the
internal breakdown and gradual destruction of individuals occurring as a result of
psychological atrocities which were so fundamentally a part of the camps’ structure and
purpose. While reviewing Night, one reviewer noted, “this spare, unblinking recollection
is one of those hard facts which surmount the inferences and generalizations one feels
compelled to make about them.”8 Emerging from these texts are the eloquent
observations of two survivors on the camps.

While both of these works described the hunger and harsh conditions of the
camps, they also emphasized the indescribable elements of the entire concentration camp
experience. The dehumanization of prisoners through hunger and fatigue fostered a
community structure among victims predicated upon the laws of animals rather than the
laws of humans. As a result of the importance of even a crumb of bread or a drop of
soup, objects ordinarily taken for granted such as spoons and bowls often meant the
difference between one man’s life and another’s death. The works of Levi and Wiesel
recounted the absence of privacy, compassion, and reason within the camps. As Levi

notes, “In the Lager it is useless to think, because events happen for the most part in an

 

7 David Caute, review of W by Primo Levi in W, , #59 19 March,
1960, 410.
a James Finn, review of Night by Elie Wiesel in Qomrnonureal, #73 9 December, 1960, 282.

98

unforeseeable manner; and it is harmful, because it keeps alive a sensitivity which is a
source of pain, and which some providential natural law dulls when suffering passes a
certain limit.”9 Through these pieces, American readers first found themselves presented
with descriptions of the daily regimen in Auschwitz and the operation of these camps.

The Nazi genocide of European Jews was predicated on the idea that Jews were
filthy, sub-human creatures who were polluting Germanic culture with their very
existence in European society. Historian Lucy Dawidowicz notes that this ideological
dehumanization of Jews was essential to Hitler from his earliest days of influence.
Within MoirrKamof Hitler wrote, “If the best men were dying at the front, the least we
could do was to wipe out the vermin. If at the beginning of the war [WW1] and during
the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held
under poison gas . . . the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”10
The camps served as a means to turn hateful propaganda into reality by recrafting Jewish
prisoners into the decivilized and repellent creatures described by Hitler and other Nazi
bureaucrats in their hateful rhetoric and publications. WM; and Night,
emphasized the debilitation of victims upon their arrival to the camps in great detail and
highlighted the transformations in character which the camps provoked from the
prisoners.

While these books did not nearly reach the size audience which works such as
AmcErankLDianLoflaloungfiirl, Exodus, or ludgementatfluremhlug, their impact on

the evolving discourse regarding the genocide is comparable. As a result of these pieces,

 

9Primo Levi, S_umua1_at_Ausoh_1tz, translated by Stuart Woolf, New York. Collier Books, 1960, 171.
'0 Lucy Dawidowicz, IhoflarAgainsnholLs, New York: Bantam Books, 1975,158.

99

the subject of the camps began to be broached in more detail by American authors than
ever before. Moreover, the memories described by Wiesel and Levi fostered interest in
what happened to those who did not die within the camps following the Holocaust.

Another unique aspect of the camps largely undiscussed and perhaps
unbeknownst to American mainstream audiences in 1960 was the intentional burden of
responsibility forced upon victims and survivors within the confines of the killing centers.
As Elie Wiesel noted in a 1961 article, “guilt was not invented at Auschwitz. It was

”1’ Indeed, guilt was disfgured at Auschwitz, and the works of Levi and

disfigured there.
Wiesel began to deal with reasons why survivors were often wracked by guilt as well as
depression following their ordeal. In Nighi, Wiesel described how memories of his
thoughts and actions still haunt him years after his liberation. When he and his father are
separated from one another with his father on the brink of death, Wiesel recounted his
having thought, “Don’t let me find him! If only I could use all my strength to struggle for
my own survival, and only worry about myself. . . immediately I felt ashamed of myself,

12
ashamed forever.”

Levi also described numerous instances and experiences when as a
result of hunger and fatigue he acted in ways which have left him greatly scarred and
ashamed for his past behavior. He concluded, “Survival without renunciation of any part
of one’s own moral world- apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune- was
conceded only to very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and

”13

saints. Through the perversity of the camps and the silence which followed their

 

” Eile Weisel, “Eichmann’s Victims”, Commonm. December, 1961, 516.
’2 Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. by Stella Rodway, New York: Bantam Books, 1960, 101.
'3 Primo Levi, SuruiimLaLAusohuhz, translated by Stuart Woolf, New York: Collier Books, 1960, 92.

100

liberation, survivors were thus burdened not only with their horrible memories but also
with largely unwarranted guilt for their role in the deaths of their friends and family.
These pieces were hailed as important contributions to American awareness of the
Nazi past. They also laid the foundation for future works to deal with the plight of
survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The burden of guilt certainly weighed upon
these authors as they write, but so did a more generally burdensome memory of the
horrors which they witnessed. AS Wiesel eloquently wrote, “Never shall I forget that
night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times
cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the
little faces of the children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a
silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. . .
Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.

”1" Beyond these twin burdens of guilt and memory, these authors both offered

Never.
insight into the human condition and ruminations on the meaning of life throughout their
texts. Combined with the elegant prose and stark style which marked these works, Levi
and Wiesel- in their near literary brilliance- initiated the idea among American audiences
that survivors offered a unique and important perspective on suffering and human nature
as a result of their harsh ordeals.

Andre Schwarz Bart’s Lasjofiholusl was a fictional works which was also

eloquently written and dealt with elements of the genocide previously undisccussed

among the American public. The novel was a bestseller for almost 25 weeks following

 

1’ Elie Wiesel, Nighi, trans. by Stella Rodway, New York: Bantam Books, 1960, 32.

101

its American release (it had been initially released in French in 1959) and drew many
excellent reviews from Jewish and secular critics and observers. This piece certainly
remains important in terms of generating further interest and awareness of the genocide
and its particularly Jewish element through its pages. However, its focus was not on the
camps but on the darkness and brutality of life within Nazi Europe, culminating in the
deportation of its main character to Auschwitz. As such, it functioned as a reality-check
to the works released following the success of Exodus which Westemized Europe’s
ghettos and glamorized the resistance efforts of Jews.

Shortly after the release of Levi and Wiesel’s groundbreaking work, Edward
Wallant’s IhoBaumhrokor appeared in American bookstores and presented an entirely
new series of themes related to survivors of the Holocaust and the challenges they faced
in contemporary society. The novel offers a fictional account of a month in the life of a
Holocaust survivor who runs a pawnshop in a broken down section of the Harlem ghetto
during the late 1950’s. Through the course of the story, a series of events unfold which
ultimately force the main character to confront his buried past. Wallant’s work represents
a departure from other works related to the genocide which preceded it in that the novel
explores the horrors of the camps and the burdens which these memories placed upon
survivors struggling to find their place in contemporary American society. In a review of
the novel, one critic labeled it “an unforgettable, raw, horrifying portrait of man’s

inhumanity to man. The book is merciless in its realism; it is not for the thin skinned.”15

 

'5 Review ofIhoBaunhrokor by Edward Wallant in xirkus, #29 1 June, 1961, 478.

102

As we have seen in many of the pieces examined within this study, works dealing
with the genocide which also reflected contemporary domestic concerns tended to be
more widely accepted by American mainstream audiences. Whereas Ihoflafl and Diary
oLArmoErank offered reassurance to Americans during the early and mid 1950’s, Tho
Embrokor offers very relevant and piercing social commentary on the impoverishment
of America’s inner cities which was becoming a major concern among Americans in the
early 1960’s. This undoubtedly increased the book’s relevance to American readers and
generated interest among a wider swath of the domestic audience.

IhoBayynhrokor also reflects how Americans perceived Jews during the early
1960’s. At the time this novel was written, Jews were increasingly assimilated into the
fabric of mainstream American life. Data Collected by Charles Stember in Joursjnjhe
MindofAmorioa found that while Jews had become increasingly accepted, they were still
considered to be somewhat ‘mystical’ by their non-Jewish neighbors. Wallant builds
upon this imagery in his descriptions of how others view the survivor due in part to his
religion and also as a result of his having survived the Holocaust. “Only the
Pawnbroker,” the author writes, “with his cryptic eyes, his huge, secret body, seemed to

”16

have some sly key, some talisman of knowing. The novel built upon American

perceptions of Jews and embellished upon these observations by hinting at the main
character’s “mysterious history” and “strange survival of fantastic horrors”.l7 American

readers were just beginning to understand the massive suffering survivors endured while

in the camps. Amidst the crime and poverty of the inner city, Sol Nazerrnan represents

 

'6 Edward Wallant, Ihokaunhrokor, New York: Harcourt, Brace, &World, Inc. 1961, 71.
'7 Edward Wallant, Ihofiaumhrokor, New York: Harcourt, Brace, &World, Inc. 1961, 75.

103

the man who has suffered most- beyond what any of the pawnshop’s customers can even
imagine.

Pawnshops embodied the hopelessness and problems of the urban ghetto during
the early 1960’s. Customers sell their most personal and private mementos in these shops
for paltry sums of money. As Wallant notes, pawnshops are “a place where poor people

obtain ready cash on the collateral of anything and everything.”18

The poor people who
frequent the shop are each searching for a way out of their problems and out of the ghetto.
Customers part with their most cherished goods, including baby shoes, school trophies,
and wedding rings hoping that the money they receive will be enough to help them restart
their broken lives. Wallant offers a compelling but not entirely convincing analogy
between the demands placed upon the inner city poor and the oppression heaped upon
Jews during the early stages of the Holocaust. The crime and violence which plague the
ghetto are abhorrent and seem, as Wallant argues, to be desperate responses by inner city
youths to their hopeless situation. However, the severity of their oppression and the
absence of an organized government program specifically designed to eliminate inner city
residents highlights the inappropiateness of this broad metaphor.

The central character in the novel is Sol Nazennan, and his primary goal is to
keep his suffering buried deep within himself to avoid having to confront his staggering
losses inflicted upon him during the Holocaust. In its review of the novel, Iimo
magazine desribed Sol Nazerrnan as “that literary rarity- the character whose sorrows

”l9

seem as real as the reader’s own. Sol’s primary means of achieving this goal resides in

 

”rod, 130.
'9 Review of W in Iirrre #78, 18 August, 1961, 75.

104

his practiced ability to ignore the suffering of his customers. Nazerrnan’s position in the
shop is not unlike that of the Kapos in the camps- his physical and psychological well-
being remains contingent upon his total lack of empathy for those suffering around him.
Throughout the novel, Sol refers to his customers in non-human terms, describing them
as animals, creatures, and beasts. In this manner, Nazerrnan distances himself from his
customers and blames them for their broken lives. As the novel proceeds, however, Sol
finds it harder and harder to maintain his cold exterior to customers whom he can fully
sympathize with due to his own experiences during the genocide.

Wallant poses two major questions through Sol Nazerrnan: has Sol really
survived the Holocaust, in a spiritual sense? and what is the purpose behind his survival?
Sol’s coldness to his customers extends into his private life as well. He treats his family
with disdain and has no friends to speak of . “I am safe within myself” notes Sol, “1 have

20 -
” Of course, a series of events

made an order for myself, and no once can disturb it.
occurring throughout the story gradually force Sol to confront his past and drop this wall
which he has built up over the years. However, it is quite clear that while Sol survived
the camps, his reentry into society has been far from smooth. He trusts no one, has no
friends, and ignores his family. Moreover, Wallant makes a strong point in emphasizing
how difficult adjusting to American life was for someone who had been born and raised

in Europe. This marked the first fiction or non-fiction work in which an author examined

difficulties faced by survivors who not only had to contain their memories, but also

 

20Edward Wallant, IhoBaumhrokor, New York: Harcourt, Brace, &World, Inc. 1961, 119.

105

needed to insert themselves into a foreign society and learn new customs and a new
language.

Through a series of flashbacks in the novel readers are exposed to the brutality of
the camps. These scenes are powerful, but they also represent Sol’s version of his past,
and thus the flashbacks nearly always end with Sol helplessly watching a family member
suffer as he stands paralyzed with shock and fear. Through this unique perspective,
Wallant goes on to detail the unwarranted guilt and shame which burdens S01 and
highlights how despite Nazerrnan’s best efforts, his past dictates his present. Wallant’s
work does not pretend to be the definitive work on the camps or on survivors- rather it is
a study in how one man remembers the camps and how he interacts with these troubled
memories.

The burdens of guilt and memory are the driving forces behind Sol’s every
thought and action. Sol’s guilt is indicative of the guilt expressed by many survivors who
placed the blame for their having suffered so intensely on themselves. The novel echoed
themes raised in the works of Levi and Wiesel pertaining to the victims holding
themselves responsible for the suffering of their families and fiiends. IhoBau/nhrokor
goes even firrther when interrogating the guilt plaguing survivors by also showing how
many viewed their very existence and survival as emblematic of their failures to stem the
suffering of their loved ones who perished in Nazi camps. Moreover, there are
distinctions in levels of guilt among survivors themselves, as Wallant describes the
differences between Goberrnan, a Jewish survivor who must live with the fact that he

turned his family into the Gestapo in order to survive, with Sol, whose guilt revolves

106

largely around his paralysis in the face of the horrors and brutality he witnessed as a
prisoner. IhoBawnhrokofis emphasis on guilt marked the first time an American work
highlighted the specific and unique difficulties encountered by survivors as a result of
their experiences in concentration camps.

While Ihoflawnhrokor raises many complex and difficult questions through its
story, it definitely is not literature of the caliber of the Levi or Wiesel pieces. Rather,
Wallant aspires to write at a level apparently too high for his talents, resulting in an
abundance of contrived metaphors, superficial descriptions, and sometimes very flimsy
dialogue between characters. In spite of these shortcomings, Ihofiaumhrokor still
received relatively positive reviews from critics and the general public alike. Reviewer
David Boroff adds, “W sometimes fails: its prose is often strained- but
Edward Wallant is a gifted writer who probes with a kind of troubled tenderness into

21 -
” Moreover, the novel pushed Amerlcan awareness and

pools of human darkness.
understanding of the genocide to a new and different level by focusing on the debilitating
effects of the camps for those who managed to survive their imprisonment.

Following the release of the novel, the Eichmann Trial captured the attention of
the American mainstream public. The testimony offered by Jewish victims during the
trial further corroborated the horrors described in the Levi, Wiesel, and Wallant pieces.

Moreover, they fostered an environment among Americans conducive to the adaptation of

the Wallant novel to the big screen. It was becoming acceptable to discuss the plight of

 

2’ David Boroff, review of Ihoflaunhrokor by Edward Wallant in W, #44, 26 August,
1961, 16.

107

survivors in contemporary society and to describe their experiences within concentration
camps in mainstream American publications.

Just as the film versions of AnnoErankLDimflaloungflifl and Exodus
generated increased interest in the literature that spawned them, Sidney Lumet’s 1965
film version of the Wallant novel further familiarized American audiences with the plight
of Sol Nazerman. However, Ihofiawnhrokor was a very different kind of movie than
others which preceded it and dealt with elements of the genocide. Unlike these other
films, Lumet’s work offered no redeeming message, no life affirrning lessons, no
mythical portraits of courageous Jewish fighters destroying the Nazi enemy. Sol
Nazerrnan is a pitiful man who cannot separate his past from his present and therefore
cannot coexist with others in contemporary society. As reviewer Bosley Crowther of the
W935 succintly stated in his review of the film, “It is not an ennobling picture
that . .. Sidney Lumet has directed. It is a picture of the shabbiness of man— of the

”22 The gritty reality of

misused, debilitated hero, as well as those among whom he lives.
this movie makes it incredibly compelling, and also difficult to sit through. In fact, the
Lumet film represents everything previous movies related to the genocide strived very
hard not to be- a depressing, chilling, frustrating, and deeply troubling story.

Movies which dealt with elements of the genocide prior to the release of The
Pawnbroker often tied their premieres in with festive events and ‘considerable hoopla’, as

one Variety reporter noted. The premiere of DiaryoLAnnoErank was met with

international publicity attention, and acclaim in 1959. About one year later, Otto

 

22 Bosley Crowther, review of W directed by Sidney Lumet, in Now_Y_ork_I1mos, 21 April
1965, 51.

108

Preminger’s Exodus opened in theaters with contests and benefits tied into the movie’s
premiere across the nation. Shortly thereafter, celebrities and diplomats from around the
world gathered in Berlin to participate in opening festivities honoring the first run of
ludgomonraLNuromburg. However, the release of Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker
opened in relative silence and is indicative of the fundamental differences between this
film and earlier works related to the genocide. The suffering of So] Nazerman was too
solemn to defile with ‘the Hollywood treatment’ given to these other films, which
allowed and encouraged audiences to leave theaters feeling largely untroubled, upbeat,
and spiritually rejuvenated at their conclusion.

Through the use of innovative cinematic techniques and superb acting, director
Sidney Lumet’s version of the Wallant novel challenges viewers to attempt to understand
how a Holocaust survivor views and acts within contemporary society as a result of his
past ordeal. Many contentious debates have been waged in academic circles during
recent years over whether literature or non-fiction are the more appropriate forms of
retelling the horror of the camps to foreign audiences. Some feel it is inappropriate to
present the camps in fictional manners and that the experiences of survivors are
trivialized by literary conventions. However, IhoBawnhrokor feels genuine, and through
the convincing portrayal of S01 by Rod Steiger, viewers cannot help but to come away
from this film with a deeper sense of the burdens of memory which plague this and
presumably other survivors as a result of their experience during the Holocaust. Moreso

than any other film related to the genocide released prior to 1965, the Pawnbroker

109

conveyed to audiences the ‘essence’ of one survivor’s troubled existence in contemporary
society.

The character of Sol Nazerman is rich and well-textured in the Wallant novel but
much more complex and stubbornly imperfect in the Lumet movie. In a sense, Lumet has
crafted Sol Nazerman into the anti-Anne Frank, a character who despises life and yet
grudgingly continues to live out of punishment to himself for having survived the
Holocaust. For Sol, because of everything, he believes that people are really bad at heart,
and his past dictates his every waking thought and action in his tortured present.

Steiger’s performance as Sol is difficult to review objectively. He is simply
spellbinding in the role of the survivor. Steiger’s acting lends unusual depth to Sol’s
character and the subtleties in the actor’s emotions and body movements contribute to the
sense of genuine sympathy evoked from viewers as the film proceeds. The haunting
silence and uncomfortable coldness which forms Sol’s exterior is unnerving on screen,
and Steiger manages to gradually display the effects of Nazennan’s evolving breakdown.
‘I didn’t die’ says Sol near the film’s conclusion, in a nearly whispering voice,
‘everything that I loved was taken away from me and I didn’t die. Nothing I could do.

’23 Nazerman embodied the survivor in all of his/her complexity and

nothing. nothing.
built upon the theme of guilt which was so central in the Levi and Wiesel works. It is this
guilt which has been so creatively and depressingly caught on film through the use of

unusual montage techniques to convey flashback sequences and the merging of the past

and present.

 

2’ Sidney Lumet, mm, 1965.

110

One of the film’s most provocative scenes occurs when several black street toughs
come into the shop and begin asking questions about Sol’s tattoo. They ask if he belongs
to a secret society and then ask ‘what do we do to join?’ Sol dryly responds, ‘learn to
walk on water?24 This exchange raises the issue of the importance of educating
Americans about the Holocaust, particularly minorities. For it is clear that these young
men do not really know what the tattoo represented or about the genocide and all it
entailed and it is precisely the Puerto Ricans and African Americans who many felt were
at greatest risk in America at this time. As film historian Judith Doneson notes, “the
Jewish victim indirectly becomes a victimizer because of his inability to rise above his

” 25 Lumet emphasizes that those who most need to know about the

own suffering.
genocide due to their status in America are the ones least informed about the Holocaust
and least likely to learn more about in the future- a point still relevant in today’s society.
However, it is also important to know that 801 cannot teach them what they must learn
about the genocide because he will come undone if he begins recounting his experiences.
The paradox is that Nazerman can only continue existing through suppression but clearly
his greatest contribution to society would be in telling his story to avoid future genocides
of the kind he endured.

Although the subject matter was intensely depressing and the film ended on a
decidedly downbeat note, The Pawnbroker won critical and public acclaim in 1965.

Certainly part of its success was due to the film’s ability to offer relevant social

commentary to urban audiences in light of the progressing civil rights struggle within the

 

2’ 25Sidney Lumet, Ihofiau'nhrokor,1965.
2"Judith Doneson, IhoHolooausrmAmoriomfllni, New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1987,112.

111

United States. However, the success of this film also depended heavily on the gradually
progressing dialogue which initially began in 1950 among American mainstream
audiences and stirred curiosity and interest among audiences in the suffering of survivors
during and after the Holocaust.

It is tempting and quite easy to blame Americans for not being more
compassionate and empathetic to the plight of those who survived the camps and
struggled to insert themselves into American society in the 1950’s. However, this
criticism is somewhat misguided only in that mainstream audiences by and large had no
real sense of the depths to which life had sunk for Jews and others trapped in Nazi camps.
The significance of the Levi and Wiesel works rested in their ability to push mainstream
awareness, interest, and discourse in the genocide to its deepest and most informed levels
while addressing the terror of experiences within the camps.

Through the works which appeared in America during the 1960’s, mainstream
discourse regarding the genocide finally incorporated the concentration camps and their
essential and unique role in the murder of six million Jews. These pieces pushed
American awareness and understanding of the genocide to new levels by emphasizing
how these camps functioned and the debilitating psychological torture inflicted upon
those who endured their ordeals.

Once Americans possessed a rudimentary understanding of the camps, they could
begin to empathize with the deep scars left upon those who managed to survive. The
novel and film Ihoannhrokor highlighted the complexity of issues facing survivors and

pushed American audiences beyond the simplistic and life affirming messages put forth

112

in works to emerge during the 1950’s. Moreover, these works stressed the challenges
facing survivors to not only put their lives back together without their family and friends,
but to do so in a foreign country while adapting to an alien culture and customs.

The works to appear in the early 1960’s fundamentally transformed how
Americans thought and discussed the genocide in public. They fostered an interest
among the American public in subjects not discussed previously and laid the groundwork
for future works to appear relating to the genocide, the camps, and the survivors
themselves. While many historians date the beginning of a Holocaust consciousness in
America after the 1967 Six Day War, these pieces and their acceptance among a large
segment of the American public stand counter to those claims. By the time the film
version of The Pawnbroker was released, Americans were presented with and responding
to material that argued that Jews were the primary targets of Nazi hatred and killing, Jews
suffered disproportionately more losses than other ethnic groups during the Holocaust,
the concentration camps were designed to not only kill prisoners but also to dehumanize
those who labored within them, and that survivors were burdened with unique and
tremendous burdens of guilt and memory far beyond the suffering they had endured

during their ordeals.

Epilogue

This study grew from my initial interest in when and how Americans first
collectively began to publicly discuss the genocide of the European Jews. Contemporary
scholars have pointed to the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and the reaction of American Jews
to this crisis as the birth of a “Holocaust Consciousness” in the United States. While I do
not refute that the Six Day War in Israel spurred a new level of sustained public
awareness and interest in the genocide, through the course of my research I have found
that awareness and interest in the genocide gradually grew among the American public
throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. The foundation laid by works released during this
period greatly impacted not only how Americans understood, remembered, and discussed
the genocide, but also gave agency to the 1967 public and collective American Jewish
reaction to events in Israel. As a result of my research, I now view the dichotomy posed
by some contemporary scholars between pre 1967 ‘silence’ and post 1967 ‘awareness’ in
the story of the genocide as reductionist and generally untrue.

On the eve of the Arab Israeli War of 1967, Americans were presented with and
expressing interest in material which had evolved over the years to include each step in
the particular and unique destruction of the European Jews, from isolation and

ghettoization through deportation and elements of life and death in the camps. The final

113

114

phase of this evolving discourse, which introduced the complexities of guilt and anguish
continuing to plague those who survived the genocide, symbolized the extent to which a
genocide consciousness had been crafted in America and pervaded into the public
discourse. The language and imagery of this discourse would be critical in understanding
the urgency and coverage granted to American Jews during the 1967 Middle Eastern
crisis.

As war was set to break out in Israel, American Jews marshalled their resources
and raised unprecedented amounts of money in little over one week to prevent what many
viewed as the beginning of ‘another Holocaust’. The media devoted considerable space
to not only covering the ensuing war, but also to documenting the passionate reactions of
American Jews to the impending conflict. Under banners reading Never Again! and
Remember Auschwitz! American Jews appealed to the collective memory of American
Jews and non-Jews in the hopes of averting what some viewed as the seeds of another
genocide.

Ironically, this collective memory was largely constructed throughout the 1950’s
and 1960’s through forms of popular representation and fictional accounts. The
American response to the genocide as it was occurring was largely apathetic and
disinterested between 1933 and 1945 for a variety of reasons. One of the chief hurdles to
overcoming this apathy were the lack of victims and elements of their sirffering with
whom Americans could relate to their own experiences. Through works such as Iho
12mm and several others, a public discourse was constructed in America

which offered audiences an opportunity to identify and grieve with the plight of victims

115

and in this manner more deeply feel and come to know the history of the genocide. Over
the course of the next sixteen years, this public discourse created a strong series of
images, phrases, and language which fostered a sustained public interest in the genocide
and went on to become, in effect, the American public’s collective memory of this
tragedy.

Following the 1967 War, a multitude of new works relating to the genocide were
released within America aiming to capitalize on the public sentiment and feelings sparked
by the American Jewish community’s fund-raising efforts. The public discourse relating
to the genocide branched off into many new and complex directions as a result of these
pieces. However, this discourse built from the foundation of understanding initially
erected prior to the Six Day War and was predicated upon the ability of these earlier
works to create identification and interest among general audiences while responding to
contemporary events and trends in American culture.

Today, the genocide of Europe’s Jews remains an important and dynamic element
within the American collective memory. The works which have been explored in this
study were critical to creating and sustaining inital interest in the genocide as an
important historical event with valuable lessons and meaning for contemporary society.
The critical and financial success of Steven Spielberg’s Sohindlorisjrist and extremely
high visitation to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum stand as testaments to the level of

importance which the genocide has acquired in American thought and memory.

“Bibliography”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books Cited
Abzug, Robert. Insidodholroiousfloan. New York and Oxford: Oxford Press, 1985.

Arendt, Hannah. Eiohmunoindomsalom. New York: Penguin Books, 1963.

Bauer, Yehuda. IhoHoloouusLioHistorioalPorsmcjiuo. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1978.

Bettleheim, Bruno. IhoInformodHoartoAutonomuinoMossAgo. Glencoe: The Free
Press, 1960.

 

Breines, Paul. -. .-
Jomy. USA: Basic Books, 1990.

Dawidowicz, Lucy. W. New York: Bantam Books,
1975.

Doneson, Judith. IhoHolooausLinAmorioanfilm. Philadelphia. The Jewish
Publication Society, 1987.

Frank, Anne. WW. Translated by B.M. Mooyaart-

Doubleday. With an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Bantam
Books,1952.

Friedlander, Saul. Memomflflomandthdxtenninationofthflewmffiumpe

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Friedlander, Saul. RoflootionsonNazism. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984.

Friedlander, Saul. ed. WW. Cambridge: Harvard Press,
1992.

Gallup, George. W. New York: Random
House, 1972.

116

117

Hackett, Albert and Frances Goodrich. IhoDianLofAnnoErank. With a foreword by
Brooks Atkinson. New York: Random House, 1956.

Hayes, Peter. LossonsjndLogaoios. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.
Hersey, John. Ihoflall. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

Hertzberg, Arthur. Iholowsi'nAmorioa. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Hilberg, Raul. Ihoflosjmotiooofthofiiuopoarrlefls. 3 vols., Chicago:
Quadrangle Press, 1961.

Insdorf, Annette. mdehhlLShadMSLEilmdeheHolocaust New York: Vintage
Books, 1983.

Kammen, Michel. Mysrio_Chords_of_Momom. New York: Knopf, 1991.

Kaplan,Mike, ed. it‘s ’ ‘ ‘0 .1‘ H1- ‘ ‘ :00. 0 Us. __ .10 3.1‘
Aoards. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985.

Kershaw, Ian. IhoNazLDioLanrship. London: Edward Arnold Press, 1985.

Kronenberger, Louis. W. New York: Dodd, Mead &
Company, 1961.

Lampell, Millard. W. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
Levi, Primo. SuryiualjnAusohmrz. Trans. by Stuart Woolf. New York: Collier, 1960.
Linenthal, Edward. BrosomingMomoiy. New York: Viking Press, 1995.
Lipstadt, Deborah. BouondBoliof. New York: The Free Press, 1986.
Maier, Charles. Ihodlnmastorahlofiast. Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1988.

Marrus, Michael. IhoHolooaustjnflisjom. London: Meridian Books, 1988.

Miller, Judith. W. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1990.

Morse, Arthur. WhiloSixMilliooDiod. New York: Random House, 1968.

Noakes, J. and G. Pridham, eds. NazimrAHistondnflocumentsandEyeMtncss
Accounts. New York: Schocken Books, 1988.

118

Novick, Peter. ijoormityjatflohloflroam. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1988.

RabinowitZ. Dorothy. NerquxesJummmftheHolocaustidmngmAmenca. New
York: Avon Books, 1976.

Reitlinger, Gerald. IhoEinaLSoluIiou. Norvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1953.

Ringelblum, Emmanuel. NotosEromjhoflarsaflhouo. reprint, New York: Schocken
Books, 1974.

Roth, Philip. W. New York: Vintage Books, 1959.

Roth, Philip. RoadingMysolflaodflhors. New York: F arrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.

Rousso, Henry. IhoNithSyndromo. With a Foreword by Stanley Hoffman.
Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1991.

Rubenstein, Richard L. and John K. Roth. AoproaohomAusohurirz. Atlanta: John
Knox Press, 1987.

Sanders, David. idmfiersex. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967.

Schnabel, Ernst. Brofilodnfiourago. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958.

Schudson, Michael. W- New York: Basic Books, 1992.

Stember, Charles Herbert, et al. ImsmthoAmorioaand. New York: Basic Books,
1966.

Stroop, Jurgen. WW. Trans. by Sybil Milton.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.

Uris, Leon. Exodus. Garden City: Doubleday, 1958.
Uris, Leon. M11a_18. New York: Doubleday, 1961.
Wallant, Edward. Ihofiayynhrokor. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1961.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Stella Rodway. New York: Bantam Books, 1960.

Wyrnan, David S. ThoAhandonmomofjholeurs. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

119

ARTICLES AND REVIEWS

Ainsztein, Reuben. “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Poles.” Midsuoam, (Autumn
1963)

Bauer, Yehuda. “Whose Holocaust?” Midsiroam 26 #9 (November 1980), 42-46.
Blocker Joel. “Fantasy in Israel,” Commomary 27 (June, 1959).

Robert Coleman. Review of W by Millard Lampell, in the NourXorloMjiror (12
October, 1960).

Bosley Crowther. Review of Exodus by Otto Preminger, in W (16
December, 1960), 44:1.

Dawidowicz, Lucy. “Boy Meets Girl in Warsaw Ghetto” Midsuoam (Summer, 1960),
109-113.

Eichmann, Adolf. “Eichmann’s Own Damning Story.” Lifo (20 November, 1960), 20-

24,
101,102,104,106,109-112.

Rose Field, Review of M11118 by Leon Uris, in the NoquQrkfioraldIribuno (4 June,
1961L 28.

Gurion, David- Ben. “The Eichmann Case as Seen by Ben-Gurion.” NourXorinmos
Magazino (18 December 1960), pgs. 7,62.

Handlin, Oscar. “Ethics and Eichmann.” Commomary (August, 1960), 161-163.

Robert Hatch. Review of Ihoflall, by John Hersey. In IhonRopuhlio 122 (April
1950): 18.

Hift, Fred. “Exodus Harassed by Reds, Arabs.” Marion (25 May, 1960), 15.
Hofstadter, Samuel. “Not a Human.” Neflorklimos (8 January, 1961), 17.

J ick, Leon. “Use and Abuse of the Term Holocaust in the American Public.” Xad
Wilkes XIV (1981), 303-318.

Kaes, Anton. “History and Film. Public Memory in the Age of Electronic
Dissemination.” HisromundMomory #2 (Fall, 1990), 111-128.

120

Kaye, Harvey. “The Making of American Memory.” Amorioanfluartorly. 46 #2 (June
1994), 251-259.

Lampell, Millard. “Bringing Mall to the Stage.” Midsuoam (Autumn, 1960), 14-
19.

Langer, Lawrence. “The Americanization of the Holocaust on Stage and Screen.” in
EromfiostoLSjroonoHoihmood, ed. S.B. Cohen. Bloomington, Indiana Press,
1983, 213-230.

Levenburg, Aliza. “The Bestseller and the Sabra.” Joudshfromior 26 (June, 1959), 25-
27.

Meyer Levin. Review of W, by Anne Frank and
translated by B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday. In Mime}: (15 June, 1952).
p. 1, 27 (V II).

Lifo. “Eichmann and the Duty of Man? (5 December, 1960), 46.

Lifo. “Shining Young Stars.” (21 November, 1955), 104.

Linenthal, Edward. “The Boundaries of Memory.” Amorioanfluartorly 46 #3,
(September, 1994), 406-433.

Who. “The Six Day War and Jewish Power.” (8 June, 1987), 7-10.
Nowmook. “Nazi Killer of Millions.” #55 (6 June, 1960).

Nowmook. “Sparkling Season.” (19 December, 1955), 53-67.

W. “American Nazi Stoned in Boston.” (15 January, 1960), 3(L).
Nourjorklimos. “Times Square Renamed For Warsaw Ghetto” (20 April, 1963).
W. “Heroes of the Ghetto,” (19 April, 1963).

NouLYorinmosMagazino. “The Heroes of Warsaw’s Ghetto.” (21 April, 1963), 22-24.

O’Donovan, Patrick. “Reflections on the Eichmann Trial.” IhoNourRoouhiio (15 May,
1961), 6-8.

Palmer, Stuart. “Eichmann and Ourselves.” IhoNurion (20 August, 1960), 91-92.

Pawel, Ernst. “Fiction of the Holocaust.” Midsiroam (June/July 1976), 14-26.

121

Podhoretz, Norman. “Hannah Arendt on Eichmann.” Commonmiy (September 1963),
201-208.

Eleanor Roosevelt, introduction to AnnoErankglhoDiaryofaloungfiirl by Anne
Frank, trans. by B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday (New York and Toronto. Bantam

Books, 1952.
Rosenberg, Harold. “The Trial and Eichmann.” Commommy #32 (November 1961).

Rosenfeld, Alvin. “The Holocaust in American Popular Culture.” Midsuoam vol. 29 #6
(June/July 1983), 53-59.

Sassen, Wilhelm. “Eichmann’s Own Damning Story.” Life (28 November, 1960).

Schack, William. review of W, by Frances Goodrich and Albert
Hackett, Midsjroam (Winter 1956), 2-4.

Shmoys, Abram. “Unfinished Monument to Jews.” NouLYorklimos (10 April 195 8).

Spiegel, Irving. “Jews of World Mourn Victims of ‘43 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Now
Yorklimes (22 April 1963)-

Teller, Judd. “The House Broken Jew.” Midstream (Autumn, 1959). 91-94.

Robinson, Jacob. “Eichmann and the Question of Jurisdiction.” Commomaiy (July
1960), 1-5.

Rosenberg, Harold. “The Trial and Eichmann.” Commomary (November 1961),
369-381.

Marioty. Review of InjhoErosonooofMinoEnomios by Rod Serling (CBS Playhouse
90), (24 May 1960), 35:4.

Marion. “Leon Uris’ Blast at CBS for Serling’s Nazi Apologetics,” (25 May 1960), 26.

Wiesel, Elie. “Eichmann’s Victims and the Unheard Testimony.” Commommy
(December 1961), 510-516.

Young, James E. “Memory and Myth.” Momont 14 #4 (June 1989), 20-29, 59.

PERIODICALS CONSULTED

122

   

MICHIGAN sran UNIV. LIBRARIES
llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
31293014052017