Beyond Belief (40 page)

The proposal won strong press support. The Hearst chain,
New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Washington Post, New Republic, Nation, Commonweal
, and even
The Christian Century
all favored it. It also found a strong backer in the
New York Times
, which dismissed the two most frequent objections to it—that the free ports would be nothing more than concentration camps for refugees and that refugees, once admitted to the country, would find a way of staying there.
⁴³
(In fact the one such haven that came into being in the United States, at Fort Oswego, New York, did become a modified concentration camp, in that entry and exit from it were strictly controlled, and most of those interned there did remain in this country.)

But the press's support for the plan did not indicate a shift in its long-standing opposition to liberalizing American immigration laws. In fact, one of the reasons many papers were willing to support it was that it did not signal a change in the law. Typical of this sentiment was the attitude of the
Christian Century
, which favored the free port notion precisely because it could save lives without affecting America's immigration system “at all.”
⁴⁴
There were also opponents of the plan in the ranks of the press, though many did not vocalize their opposition until some refugees actually arrived. Among those who vehemently spoke out against the idea from the outset was the syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler, who warned that Roosevelt would use the plan to bring in “many thousands” of undesirable people.
⁴⁵

Not surprisingly, the strongest and most outspoken support for the idea came from the liberal press and journals, which had long been critical of America's immigration policy. But even as they praised the idea, they did not ignore the basic anti-immigrant sentiment which made such a plan necessary.
The New Republic
approved but called attention to the basic hostility toward refugees implicit in the plan:

Build a few concentration camps along the eastern seaboard [and] put the refugees into them with the understanding that they are to see no more of America than this, and will be sent somewhere else when the war is over.
⁴⁶

The liberal Catholic publication
Commonweal
supported the free port idea but also condemned American immigration policy for its lack of “liberality or charity.” Well aware of the reasons why such a plan appealed to many Americans, it sadly noted that “Grafton calls his plan ‘repulsive,'” adding, “We could not get anyone to try the nobler ones.”
⁴⁷

There was strong public support for the creation of free ports. A Gallup poll taken a few days after the publication of Grafton's column, which appeared in forty-one newspapers with a combined circulation of over 4 million, found the proposal had a 70 percent approval rate. That espousal of saving refugees, particularly without changing America's immigration policy, may have become a politically advantageous position was further suggested by a rumor then circulating that Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York and a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, was about to announce his own plan for harboring 100,000 refugees until war's end.
⁴⁸

As the Hungarian situation grew more dire, public and press pressure for the plan increased. At the end of May Senator Guy Gillette sought Senate approval for a resolution urging Roosevelt to create centers for “temporary detention and care” of refugee Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.
⁴⁹
In an editorial in May the
New York Times
again castigated the Allies by arguing that the tragedy in Hungary was “in part the fault of the United Nations, who did not offer them [Hungarian Jews] adequate places of refuge.” It was during that same week that
Christian Century
, apparently struck by the desperation of the Hungarian situation, came out in support of the free port plan.
⁵⁰

Meanwhile the War Refugee Board, aware of the importance of press support to get the measure accepted, was quietly pushing Jewish organizations to conduct a campaign to win approval for the plan from the press and radio commentators. Liberal journalists such as Max Lerner and I. F. Stone also worked to win press support for the plan. On June 1—in the wake of the news that a portion of Hungarian Jews had already been deported—Stone addressed a letter “to fellow newspapermen and to editors the
country over.” Published in that week's edition of
The Nation
, the letter argued that it was the press which could make the difference between a program that would die stillborn and one that would save lives. “A few sneering editorials” mocking Roosevelt's refusal to act could well effect a change in the White House's attitude.
⁵¹

After increased public pressure, threats from some House members that hearings would be conducted on a rescue bill if no action was taken, and questions from reporters at his press conference, the President announced his support of the idea. But, in a move which
Newsweek
accurately described as leaving matters in a “confused state,” he expressed his opposition to calling the refugee havens “free ports” and, more important, to establishing any of them “in this country.” In light of his statement,
The Nation
wondered just how sincere the President was about his putative support of this program. The
New York Post
dismissed his statement as too indefinite and wondered how, if this country refused to establish them, “can we ask other countries to set up havens?” At his next press conference, when asked to elaborate on his remarks and clear up the confusion, Roosevelt said that the government was considering using abandoned army bases to house refugees. Finally on June 9 the President told the press that 1,000 refugees and “that is all” would be brought to this country. The
Washington Post
described admitting 1,000 as “but a drop in the bucket compared with the needs.”
⁵²

In early August the 1,000 refugees, who were to be housed at the army base at Fort Oswego, arrived from southern Italy, where they had reached the safety of Allied territory. They were the only refugees brought here under this much-hailed program. Roosevelt, wary of arousing the anti-immigrationists, made it clear that he had no intention of expanding on this plan. As David Wyman points out, these 1,000 refugees arrived in this country at a time when immigration quotas were 91 percent unfilled. During the preceding year Sweden, a country about one-twentieth the size of America, had admitted 8,000 Danish Jews. Despite the paucity of the American response, the arrival of these refugees captured the front page in a way that the destruction of millions never had. By focusing attention on rescue, the press made it appear as if America was at long last forcefully responding to the terrible situation in Europe. In truth its action was a gesture,
a gesture that was, in the words of I. F. Stone, “a bargain-counter flourish in humanitarianism.”
⁵³

In June of 1944—as the Allies opened a second front and Hungary's Jewish community reached its final days—details about a place called Auschwitz began to be revealed to the world.
*
The description of Auschwitz was based on an extensive eyewitness report transmitted by four young Jews and a Polish major who had escaped from the camp there. After a long circuitous passage their information reached Geneva in mid-June. On the basis of their testimony it was firmly established that Auschwitz was not a labor camp or slave town with crematoria or even gas chambers attached. It was a place whose primary purpose was to serve as a killing center, a “model” killing center whose efficiency surpassed all others.

There had been previous reports on Auschwitz, and Birkenau as well—some had even mentioned gas chambers—but none had attracted much attention. On March 22 the
Washington Post
devoted twenty lines on page 2 and the
New York Herald Tribune
devoted twenty-three lines to a summary of a “lengthy report” issued by the Polish government in exile. According to the dispatch, the Nazis had built gas chambers and crematoria at “a concentration camp at Oswiecim, southwest of Krakow,” which could “dispose of ten thousand bodies a day.”
⁵⁴
**
On June 4 the
New York Times
reported on page 6 that a young Pole who had been in Auschwitz and escaped when transferred to a camp in Germany had described the Auschwitz and Birkenau gas chambers. He related how in 1942 “trainload after trainload of Jews were shipped to camps for execution.”
⁵⁵
On June 16 the
New York World Telegram
and on June 17 the
Los Angeles Times
carried small UP dispatches on the execution of 3,000 Jews in gas chambers during the preceding March. The thirteen lines on page 3
devoted to this topic by the
Los Angeles Times
included somewhat garbled information on how these Jews had been moved from Birkenau to Terezin and “executed in gas chambers.” (The transfer had been from Terezin to Birkenau.) The
New York World Telegram
avoided this problem by cutting the dispatch back to ten lines and dropping all references to the place of execution.
⁵⁶

On June 20 the
New York Times
devoted twenty-two lines in the middle of page 5 to the news that 7,000 Czech Jews had been “dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and Oswiecim,” where they were “killed en masse.” That same day an even shorter Reuters dispatch on the 7,000 appeared in the
Washington Times Herald
. On June 25 the
New York Times
reported that “new mass executions” by gas had taken place at Auschwitz in recent weeks. The news was contained in thirty-three lines on page 5 of the paper.
⁵⁷

It was during the first ten days of July that the real extent of the horror that had been perpetrated in this place was reported by the press, but treated with great equanimity if not disinterest. When the same news based on the same eyewitness report was released four months later by the War Refugee Board and not, as was the case in June and July, by refugee organizations or governments in exile, it shocked the press in a way that it had not been shocked since
Kristallnacht
. Then dozens of papers published articles and editorials on the news.
⁵⁸
One of the reasons the War Refugee Board report may have had more impact was that it contained the complete report on Auschwitz. The earlier version had only been an eight-page summary. Nonetheless, the information released to the press in the summer contained the most critical information regarding Auschwitz and clearly indicated the scope of the tragedy taking place there.

The
New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times Herald, Seattle Times, Washington Star, Kansas City Star
, and
PM
were among those papers which, during the first ten days of July, reported the details of this killing center. The reports varied in length and detail—though most tended to be short—but all included one basic piece of information: between April 1942 and April 1944, when the eyewitnesses escaped, approximately 1.5 to 1.7 million Jews had been killed at Auschwitz and its satellite camp Birkenau. Most papers cited the Swiss-based European relief agencies, the International Church Movement Ecumenical
Refugee Commission, and the Fluchtingshilfe as their source for this information.
⁵⁹

As was so often the case during this period, of all the major dailies the
New York Times
had the most extensive information, but despite the magnitude of the horror, it was never on the front page. On July 3 the paper provided its readers with a list of the number of Jews “eradicated” in these camps, “excluding hundreds of thousands slain elsewhere.” There neatly listed midway down the center column of page 3 were the grim statistics:

To this number, the
New York Times
reporter noted, “must now be added Hungary's Jews. About 30 percent of the 400,000 there have been slain or have died en route to Upper Silesia [Auschwitz].” The article described how prisoners were “ordered to strip for bathing” and then taken to rooms into which “cyanide gas” was released. Death came in three to five minutes, after which the bodies were burned.
⁶⁰

The
Christian Science Monitor
and the
Washington Evening Star
carried slightly abbreviated versions of the
New York Times
report, while the
Los Angeles Times
and the
Washington Times Herald
carried highly truncated ones. The AP dispatch, used by most of the dailies which reported this news, was based on the
New York Times
story. The
Los Angeles Times
placed the report on page 5. The article referred to the number of victims as being between 1.5 and 1.75 million, but the headline cited the smaller figure of 1.5 million. It made no mention of gas chambers and claimed that the Jews were killed by being given a shot of phenol “near the heart.”
⁶¹
The
Washington Times Herald's
ten-line report stated that between 1.5 and 1.75 million Jews had been “put to death by
gas or other methods.” The headline over the story made no reference to a precise number and identified all the Jews killed as Polish: