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Media Accounts
Question
What media accounts of the Nazi concentration camps did the average [Gentile] American have access to from 1960 or so to 1970?-- Life magazine, Readers' Digest, Newsweek, the popular press, and any widely available books, etc.
This information will be used in my Ph.D. dissertation. I am interviewing Gentile Americans who were born between 1945 and 1960, some of whom remember reading about the Holocaust when they were teenagers, but they don't remember exactly where they read the accounts.
Yale F. Edeiken answers:
Hello. I am one of the people who answers questions for The Holocaust History Project. As a member of the generation you are studying (although I am Jewish), I will attempt to relate what I remember. Perhaps other member of our group will supplement this answer.
At the beginning of the period you are studying was the
Eichmann trial and, towards the end, the Arab-Israeli War of
1967. During both of these periods there was a flood of
information about the Holocaust in the popular press. This was
especially true during the Eichmann trial but most people do not
remember that there was similar coverage in 1967. At the
beginning of this period Life magazine published an interview
with Eichmann made before his capture; it was quite a sensation.
The talking heads of that day were sure that the combined Arab
forces would make short work of Israel and that there would be
another Holocaust.
Uris Exodus and Mila 18 while novels they
were widely read. There was also another popular novel The Last of
the Just (John Hersey?) which concerned the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The Diary of Ann Frank This was widely read in American
secondary schools.
Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem was also widely read in
secondary schools and colleges.
In addition I well remember a series of mass market
paperbacks published by Ballantine Books under the general
heading of military history. These had lurid covers which belied
the often scholarly material inside. Lord Russell's The Scourge
of the Swastika was published in this manner. I believe that
Kogon's The Theory and Practice of Hell was also published by
Ballantine. They also produced less well-known books such as
Comer Clarke's Eichmann: the Man and his Crimes and Will
Frischauer's The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. Thus there
were quite a few paperbacks on drug-store racks with blurbs like
"The savage truth about Adolf Eichmann, commandant of Hitler's
ovens and gas chambers, who ruthlessly murdered over 6,000,000
Jews."
I can remember few movies that dealt directly with the
Holocaust. Although Exodus was made into a movie, the
descriptions of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Auschwitz did not
survive the translation into the movie. On the other hand, many
who saw the film might have been inspired to read the book.
Likewise "Judgment at Nuremberg" (based on the medical trials)
was a highly regarded movie. The final movie I remember was the
George Steven's version of The Diary of Ann Frank.
I am sure that there were TV shows in this era as well.
There was one "Twilight Zone" episode about a concentration camp
commander who returns to a concentration camp full of the ghosts
of the people he murdered. I am sure that at least one of series
of short documentaries on CBS known as "The Twentieth Century"
concerned the concentration camps.
I hope that this information is helpful.
Yale F. Edeiken back to the list of questions
The Holocaust History Project
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