Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note Abbreviations
- Introduction: “Last Voice from the Abyss”
- PART I 1933—1941
- PART II 1942—1945
- 5 “To Awaken the Conscience of Christendom”: Pressure to Publicize the First News of the Extermination Campaign
- 6 “Amidst the Advertisements on Page 19”: Placement Decisions and the Role of the News Editors
- 7 “All Jews Are Not Brothers”: The Publisher's Fight with Zionists
- 8 “The Semitic Question Should Be Avoided”: German Atrocities and U.S. Government Propaganda
- 9 “Final Phase of Supreme Tragedy Has Begun”: The War Refugee Board and the Destruction of Hungary's Jews
- 10 “Political Prisoners, Slave Laborers, and Civilians of Many Nationalities”: The Liberation of the Concentration Camps
- 11 “Lessons from the Hitler Tragedy”: The Publisher and the Aftermath of War
- Conclusion: “The Horrible Story Was Not Told”
- Appendix A Key Individuals
- Appendix B Key Institutions
- Appendix C List of Front-Page Stories
- Notes
- Index
5 - “To Awaken the Conscience of Christendom”: Pressure to Publicize the First News of the Extermination Campaign
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note Abbreviations
- Introduction: “Last Voice from the Abyss”
- PART I 1933—1941
- PART II 1942—1945
- 5 “To Awaken the Conscience of Christendom”: Pressure to Publicize the First News of the Extermination Campaign
- 6 “Amidst the Advertisements on Page 19”: Placement Decisions and the Role of the News Editors
- 7 “All Jews Are Not Brothers”: The Publisher's Fight with Zionists
- 8 “The Semitic Question Should Be Avoided”: German Atrocities and U.S. Government Propaganda
- 9 “Final Phase of Supreme Tragedy Has Begun”: The War Refugee Board and the Destruction of Hungary's Jews
- 10 “Political Prisoners, Slave Laborers, and Civilians of Many Nationalities”: The Liberation of the Concentration Camps
- 11 “Lessons from the Hitler Tragedy”: The Publisher and the Aftermath of War
- Conclusion: “The Horrible Story Was Not Told”
- Appendix A Key Individuals
- Appendix B Key Institutions
- Appendix C List of Front-Page Stories
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Hitler's prophecy for the destruction of the Jews moved closer to realization with a new Nazi plan devised in January 1942. Almost as soon as the Einsatzgruppen had gone into operation in the Soviet territories in June 1941, it became apparent that the mobile killing squads were too unwieldy to accomplish Hitler's goal of a Jew-free Europe. So on January 20, 1942, senior German officials met at Wannsee in suburban Berlin to establish the administrative procedures that would expand the murder machine. The Germans' solution to the Jewish problem would escalate beyond killing hundreds of thousands of Jews through mass starvation, sporadic pogroms, widespread disease, and back-breaking labor; they were poised to murder millions in specially designed, efficiently operating extermination centers.
Camps for mass gassings had already been set up in Chelmno, north of Lodz, and at Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz facility in Silesia. In the first half of 1942, the major extermination centers, Belzec, Sobibor, Birkenau, Maidanek, and Treblinka, began operation. The mobile killing squads were not finished yet either. They made a second sweep through the Crimean, adding another half-million Jews to their tally.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Buried by the TimesThe Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, pp. 135 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005