A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (88 page)

15. Duane Tananbauni, Tine Bricker Amendment Controversy: A Test of Eisenhower's Political Leadership (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 31, citing John Bricker Papers at the Ohio Historical Society.

16. Eisenhower was frustrated at having to fight off the isolationists within his own party, and he blamed Bricker. He told his press secretary, James Hagerty, that "if it's true that when you die the things that bothered you most are engraved on your skull, I am sure I'll have there the niud and dirt of France during [tht I invasion and the name of Senator Bricker." ibid., p. 151, citing Foreign Relations of the I'nited Stales, 1952-1954, vol. 1, pp. 1843-1840. In the face of sustained pressure by the administration, Eis=shower Republicans defected to join liberal Democrats in handily defeating Bricker's version of the measure 511-42 (two-thirds being required in this case). But a watered-down Democratic Jternative (the George resolution) lost by just one vote (60-31) in February 1954. Ibid., pp. 167-180.

17. Letter to Thelma Stevens, reel 1, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library.

18. Reel 1, Lenikin Papers, NewYork Public Library.

19. See Jessica Tuchman Matthews, "Power Shift," Foreign Affairs, January/February 1997, pp. 50-66.

20. Other organizations included the World Alliance for International Friendship Through Religion, the International League for the Rights of Man, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the National Conference for Christians and Jews, the American Friends' Service Committee, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs.

21. Even during World Wir II, when one might have expected attention to be drawn to Hitler's Final Solution, Hollywood had avoided the subject. Of the more than 500 narrative films made on war-related themes between 1941) and 1945, for instance, virtually none focused upon the persecution or extermination of Jews. The dearth of coverage is all the more striking when we note that American Jews played major roles in writing, directing, financing, and acting in Holly- wood.Yet at the time the power of Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, and others did not incline them to emphasize Jewish then ies. Many famous Jewish actors, including Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, John Garfield, and Edward G. Robinson changed their names so as not to sound Jewish. See Ilan Avisar, Screening the Holoca ist: Cinema's Ima'es of the I'rtirnai,'inable (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 96-97. Avisar notes that Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator (1940) was an exception for its attention to the plight of Jews. Avisar cites Lewis Jacobs, "World War II and the American Film;" CinetnaJnmtal I (Winter 1967-1968):21.

22. Jeffrey Shandler, Whit' America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 30, 34. Sec also David Margolick,"Television and the Holocaust: An Odd Couple;' Neu, York "Times, January 31, 1999, pp. A3 I-A32.

23. Lawrence Langer wrote, "There is little horror in the stage version; there is very little in the Diary itself.... They permit the imagination to cope with the idea of the Holocaust without forcing a confrontation with its grim details." See Lawrence Langer,"The Americanization of the Holocaust on Stage and Screen," in Langer, Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

24. "How 'Cheerful' Is 'Anne Frank'?" Variety, April 1, 1959, p. 2, quoted in Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust (NewYork: Routledge, 1999), p. 34.

25. Cynthia Ozick, "Who Owns Anne Frank?" New Yorker, October 6, 1997, pp. 76-87.

26. Judgment at Nuremberg included edited footage taken by Allied forces entering Germany and liberating concentration camps.The Allies' documentary, Nazi Concentration Camps, was first presented as evidence by the prosecution during the Nuremberg trials. See Lawrence Douglas, "Film as Witness: Screening'Nazi Concentration Camps' Before the Nuremberg Tribunal," Yale Law Journal, November 1995, pp. 449-481. Americans first saw images of the camps and their survivors in the spring of 1945, when motion picture companies, with General Eisenhower's encouragement, produced newsreels using similar documentary footage. Shandler, While America Watches, p. 10.

27. Shandler, While America Watches, pp. 77-78. Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews, rejected by successive publishers, was published in 1961 after being subsidized by a survivor family. See Leon A Jick,"The Holocaust: Its Use-Abuse Within the American Public," Yad Vashem Studies 14 (1981): 307.

28. Irving Spiegel, "Shrine Honors Hitler's Victims," New York Times, May 30, 1959, p. A5.The article quotes an inscription on a newly dedicated shrine in Jerusalem, in memory of those who died in the "Nazi holocaust in the years from 1933-1945" ("Holocaust" was not yet capitalized). The word "Holocaust" derives from the Greek holokauston; it is a translation of the Hebrew churban, which means a burnt offering to God and appears in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 7:9). Scholars disagree as to how and when the word first crept into the American lexicon. Some scholars credit Elie Wiesel's Night (1959) with popularizing "Holocaust" as a proper noun. Hilberg did not use the term in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961). Jick, "The Holocaust," p. 309.

29. Gerd Korman, "The Holocaust in American Historical Writing," Societas, Sumpter 1972, p. 261;Jick, "The Holocaust," p. 314.

30. As Wiesel himself remembered, "The big publishers hesitated, debated, and ultimately sent their regrets." One reason they gave was that American readers "seemed to prefer optimistic books"; Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (New York: Knopf, 1996), p. 325. Primo Levi recalled that several big publishing houses refused his manuscript, and the small house that accepted it published a mere 2,500 copies and went bankrupt soon thereafter. In Levi's notes to the Italian edition of Survival in Auschwitz, he described the book's falling into oblivion. "In that harsh period after the war," Levi wrote, "people had little desire to be reminded of the painful times that were hardly over." Ruth K. Angress, "Primo Levi in English," Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, vol. 3 (Chappaqua, N.Y: Rossel Books, 1986), p. 319.

31. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed 48-0 with 8 abstentions, from Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, the USSR, Yugoslavia, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. Lemkin was wrong in believing the coverage overwhelmingly favored the declaration. In 1948, for instance, the New York Times published eighty-seven articles on the declaration and fifty-eight on the genocide convention. But Lemkin resented articles on the convention that appeared under headings such as "Two U.N. Achievements."

32. For a detailed account of the drafting of the declaration, see Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001).

33. See Josef L. Kunz, "The United Nations Convention on Genocide," American Journal of International Lau, 43, 4 (October 1949): 738-746.

34. This campaign to create binding human rights conventions was eventually caught up in Cold War politics. Two separate covenants were introduced-one on civil and political rights and one on economic and social-but neither was opened for signature until 1966 and neither went into effect until 1976. The nonbinding Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has probably been more influential than either of these two international laws.

35. Lemkin, "The U.N. I:, Killing Its Own Child," pp. 1-2, reel 2, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library.

36. Lemkin also lobbied forcefully against a proposal put forth by Francis Biddle to draft a code of international criminal law, or a "Code of Offenses Against the Peace and Security of Mankind," which deemed aggressive war the "supreme crime." Lemkin was afraid this emphasis on aggression would replicate Nuremberg's mistaken neglect of genocide, which for him was the only "supreme crime." Sep "Text of Biddle's Report on Nuremberg and Truman's Reply," New York Times, November 13, 1946, p. 14. Although the draft code of offenses included the definition of "genocide," it omtted the term itself.

37. Lemkin, "Memo on Genocide Convention" (1953), reel 2, Lemkin Papers, NewYork Public Library. Lemkin appears to have drafted the memo on somebody else's behalf.

38. Raphael Lemkin to Senator H. Alexander Smith, June 12, 1952, forwarded to Assistant Secretary of State John D. Hickerson; Assistant Secretary of State John D. Hickerson to Raphael Lemkin, June 26, 1952; reel 2, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library.

39. Eleanor Roosevelt became a favorite target. In December 1951 she forever earned Lemkin's disdain when a reporter asked her to comment on the charges lodged by East European expatriate and exile groups in the United States that the Soviet Union was committing genocide. Roosevelt replied casually: "How could you prove it? I'm not sure you can prove that. Unless you can prove it, there's no use bringing it up" Lemkin had worked closely with nongovernmental groups derived from the formerly independent Soviet states and hoped to develop an indictment against the Soviet Union. It was difficult to gather evidence of atrocities carried out behind the iron curtain, but he was sure he had mustered enough proof to bring the weight of public opinion down upon the Soviets. Although Roosevelt had been a frequent critic of Soviet human rights abuses, Lemkin heard her skepticism as a familiar form of denial. The former first lady might as well have been dismissing his cause in Madrid in 1933. "The U.N. Review: U.N. Keeps Hope Alive for Missing Korea P.O.Ws;Trygve Lie Urges Effort to Bar New War," New York Herald Tribune, December 30,195 1, p. 12.

40. Glendon, A World Made New, p. 60, citing "Verbatim Record," June 12, 1947, Drafting Committee Meeting, Charles Malik Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

41. Lemkin, "The Truth About the Genocide Convention," p. 13.

42. "The Crime of Genocide," New York Times, October 20, 1957, sec. 4, p. 10.

43. Steven Schnur, "Unofficial Man: The Rise and Fall of Raphael Lemkin," Reforin Judaism, Fall 1982, p. 45. One letter from an unidentified Clara Hoover does appear in his correspondence. She wrote that she was shattered by Lemkin's "indifference" to her, his long disappearances, and his short-tempered returns. "You say that you are an unhappy man," Hoover wrote to him in 1959."I am, also.The best way to overcome unhappiness is to make someone else happy.You can do this very easily.... Don't add me to your list of hates and enemies. Is there no room in your heart for forgiveness?" Clara Hoover to Raphael Lemkin, reel 1, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library.

44. "28 Are Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, Including Truman, Churchill and Marshall." New York Tinies, February 28, 1950, p. 21; "Nobel Peace Group Lists 9 Americans," New York Times, February 24, 1951, p. 15; and Steven Jacobs, "The Papers of Raphael Lemkin: A First Look,"Jour- nal of Genocide Research 1, 1 (1999): 108. Lemkin appears to have been actively involved in the nomination drive, urging various acquaintances around the world to send letters to the Nobel committee on his behalf and even personally drafting their nomination letters.

45. Richard J, Walsh to Raphael Lemkin, February 16, 1955, reel 1, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library. Walsh did suggest that Lemkin contact John Hersey to see if he might be interested in writing a biography of Lemkin, an idea Lemkin himself had apparently earlier proposed. Walsh wrote that although he did not know Hersey personally,"I am certain that it will be much better to have you approach him directly, using your well-known ability to impress your point of view upon various persons."

46. Letters from publishers, reel 1, Lemkin Papers, New York Public Library.

47. Schnur, "Unofficial Man," p. 45.

48. A. M. Rosenthal,"A Man Called Lemkin;' NewYorkTitnes, October 18, 1988, p.A31. Lemkin is buried at Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Queens, New York. His tombstone reads: "Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) Father of the Genocide Convention."

49. By 1967, fifty-one countries had adopted the convention outright and seventeen more had adopted it with reservations.

50. Jay G. Sykes, Proxmire (Washington, D.C.: R. B. Luce, 1972), p. 35. Wisconsin had been home to the country's first graduated income and inheritance taxes, the first child labor law, and the first unemployment compensation law.

51. Ibid., p. 72.

52. Ibid., p. 90.

53. "Pledge to Plead Daily for Ratification of Genocide Treaty," Congressional Record, 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, 113, pt. 1:266.

54. William Proxmire, The Fleecing of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), pp. 6-7.

55. Proxmire later credited Jacob Javits (R.-N.Y.) with keeping the issue on the "front burner" in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for most of his twenty-four years in the Senate. "Jacob Davits: A Superb Senator," Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132, pt. 27:4123.

56. "International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," Congressional Record-Senate, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132 S 1355, pt. 2:2331.

57. Ibid., 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 1968, 114, pt. 21:27918.

58. Dan Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (NewYork: Knopf, 1987).

59. "Dissent from US Policy Toward East Pakistan," U.S. Consul General, Dacca, to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, April 6, 1971; quoted in Lawrence Lifschultz, Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution (London: Zed Press, 1979), pp. 158-159.

60. Congressional Record, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess.,1972, 118, pt. 12:15091.

61. See Rene Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996).

62. Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 267. In the fall of 1972, a $100,000 U.S. aid program to Burundi was suspended, but it was quickly restored after a $14 billion nickel deposit was discovered there and agents of Kennecott, Bethlehem Steel, and American Metals Climax began lobbying the State Department to improve its ties so it could influence the nickel's "final disposition."

63. Korey, An Epitaph for Raphael Le,nkin, p. 89.

64. Congressional Record, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1972, 118, pt. 16:20593.