A People's History of World War II by Marc Favreau

Author:Marc Favreau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-09-07T16:00:00+00:00

K: Once, though, I thought I broke through, in a meeting in Proskauer’s g home. But we didn’t. Did you see a poem that Ben Hecht wrote and Arthur Szyk9 did a lot of designs around?10 It appeared finally as an ad in various newspapers.h It was written in late 1942, because it was at the time of Christmas. It was a very sarcastic poem. It says, “Oh, Jews, don’t be bothersome, the world is busy with other news. Burn Jews . . .” and so on. And the last stanza said, because it was based on a story which was on the side, by Goebbels, saying that by Christmas the job of exterminating the Jews would be finished. And the last thing says, “Oh, world, don’t be sad” or something, and then he says, “by Christmas you will have your peace on earth without the Jews.” And then we had this straight text.

You know, most of the ads had an eye-catcher to get people to read. We had some expert advertising people helping us and they said, “Don’t write this dull copy that nobody reads. The more dramatic the situation, the more you need to do something to get somebody to read it.” We did all sorts. We sometimes did straight copy.

Well, the Times set the ad, and there was this business of a shortage of paper, so we had to wait a little. But we had it set meanwhile. And it leaked out. Apparently some frightened Jew read it, somebody who got frightened and thought that this will result in anti-Semitism. “What do you mean? You are attacking Christmas. How can you make a sneer of Christianity speaking of peace on earth without the Jews, and tie up Christianity with murder?” And, it got to—somehow it got to where it got. I get a telephone call from a man called Herman Shulman, who was president of the American Jewish Congress.11 He introduced himself, I knew who he was, I didn’t know him [personally]. He said that something very important has come up and he and Judge Proskauer, who was then president of the American Jewish Committee—and this was the most prestigious Jewish outfit you know. To them we couldn’t even get. We tried and got to some smaller guys around in those days, some small functionaries, but we couldn’t get to anybody on the top level. And he says that Judge Proskauer and he would like to see me at his earliest convenience, that Judge Proskauer was a little ill, and would I come to his home. We set an appointment for the same afternoon.

And I came there—he didn’t tell me what it was about—and I thought, “Wow! Something’s moving [on the rescue issue].” And they told me that they’d heard about this ad we were going to put in the Times, started making a long speech about how important it is not to print it. And I interrupted them, and I said, “Look, if you feel—I don’t think you’re right—but if you feel that this ad may do some damage, we won’t print it.

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