The BBC and the holocaust

The BBC like to show their sympathy for Jews by running programmes about the holocaust and 'comedians' on the BBC often attack the Dail Mail as 'having supported the Nazis in Germany'. So I was intrigued to read these two Independent articles (my emphasis).

1) From 1993

'ANTI-SEMITISM in the higher ranks of the Foreign Office and the BBC during the Second World War led to a policy which suppressed news about Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews, new research will show this week.

The attitude was reinforced by a belief that the British population was anti-Semitic and that anti-German propaganda about atrocities in the First World War, which was often fiction, had made the public sceptical of such stories. Early in the war the Government and the BBC agreed that this time, British propaganda would contrast Nazi 'lies' with British truthfulness and a 'good clean fight'.

The evidence is contained in documents from the BBC archives and Government papers at the Public Record Office, which have been uncovered during research for a new Radio 4 series, Document. The first programme will tell of the relationship between the Foreign Office and the BBC between 1939 and 1945.

The papers, together with interviews with some of the surviving figures, show that both Foreign Office and BBC officials held a low opinion of Jews, and believed this was shared by the public.

They deduced that saving millions of Jews would not be seen as a desirable war aim by the British. At other times they justified suppression of details of the atrocities by arguing that they would not be believed.

News reports could only be carried if, in the view of the BBC and the Foreign Office, they were well-sourced. If the sources were Jewish, they tended not to be believed.

The Foreign Office was, with hindsight, astonishingly sceptical about atrocities. As late as 27 August 1944, Victor Cavendish Bentinck, assistant under-secretary, was still doubting the existence of gas chambers. 'I think we weaken our case against the Germans by publicly giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence.

'These mass executions in gas chambers remind me of the story of the employment of human corpses during the last (1914-18) war for the manufacture of fat, which was a grotesque lie and led to the true stories of German enormities being brushed aside as being mere propaganda.'

Another Foreign Office official, Roger Allen, notes: 'It is true that there have been references to the use of gas chambers in other reports; but these references have usually, if not always, been equally vague, and since they have concerned the extermination of Jews, have usually emanated from Jewish sources.'

He goes on: 'Personally I have never really understood the advantage of the gas chamber over the simpler machine-gun, or the equally simple starvation method.'

...

Some reports of a systematic policy to exterminate Jews were published in newspapers. On 25 June 1942 the Daily Telegraph reported that 700,000 Polish Jews had been killed, some by mobile gas chambers. Most newspapers by the end of June were writing of more than a million dead, and Hitler's plan to exterminate all Jews.

But most of Britain, as well large parts of Europe and the British Empire, regarded the BBC as their most reliable source of information. The war gave the corporation a platform which established the reputation it has enjoyed since.

The BBC did mention mass extermination of the Jews when it reported the Commons speech made by Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, on 17 December, 1942, in which he declared that Germany was 'now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe'.

...

In April 1943, Trevor Blewitt of the BBC's talks department suggested that a Sunday night talk on 'the subject of the Jew' might be given by 'a Jew unconnected with the world of business, explaining that he has no particular brief for the Jews but is unashamed of being one'. He suggests the entertainer Ronald Frankau 'who is unknown to be connected with any racket . . . and who is a man of profound British sympathies, upbringing and education'. The suggestion was rejected. C V Salmon, assistant director of talks, wrote: 'We agreed to drop the suggestion of a talk by a Jew, but would still like to submit the proposal for a talk on race hatreds of which the German attitude to the Jews might be an example, to be undertaken from a fairly lofty standpoint.' He suggests Julian Huxley as the speaker and the whole matter is referred to the BBC board.

On 9 February 1943, the director of talks, G R Barnes, complained about an interview which strayed into forbidden territory by discussing anti- Semitism: 'Personally I don't want to touch the subject, except by implication in talks on other subjects,' he wrote.

...

At other times it was suggested that mention of the Jewish plight in Europe would only inflame anti-Jewish feeling in Britain, even though Eden had noted at the Cabinet committee on refugees in 1944 that the main effect of his Commons statement on Jewish massacres in December 1942 had been to stimulate complaints that the Government was not doing enough to help the victims of the Nazi regime.

The BBC accepted unquestioningly the Ministry of Information's advice that anti-Semitism was rife in Britain, and felt it was not its role to do anything. On 17 November 1943 the director-general, Robert Foot, issued a policy directive . . . 'that we should not promote ourselves or accept any propaganda in the way of talks, discussion, features with the object of trying to correct the undoubted anti-Semitic feeling which is held very largely throughout the country'.

The corporation should confine itself to reporting in news bulletins 'the facts as they are reported from time to time of Jewish persecutions as well as any notable achievements by Jews, particularly in connection with the war effort (e g recent case of Jewish soldier who won the VC).'

In June 1943 Mr Foot, rejecting another proposed pro-Jewish broadcast, makes a comment which reveals as much as anything about the place of Jews in the BBC's prevailing world view. He said the broadcast 'would be only likely to make matters worse, since the anti-Semites would demand the right to reply, which would be difficult to refuse.'

At the very end of the war, Richard Dimbleby made his historic broadcasts from the concentration camp at Belsen. In the light of the BBC's wartime policy, it comes as no surprise that these broadcasts mention only in passing the Jewish identity of victims, or that Belsen's gas chambers and the sheer numbers of its dead so shocked the BBC newsroom that they refused to use Dimbleby's reports until they had seen them confirmed in newspapers.'

Did you spot that key paragraph?

'The BBC accepted unquestioningly the Ministry of Information's advice that anti-Semitism was rife in Britain, and felt it was not its role to do anything. On 17 November 1943 the director-general, Robert Foot, issued a policy directive . . . 'that we should not promote ourselves or accept any propaganda in the way of talks, discussion, features with the object of trying to correct the undoubted anti-Semitic feeling which is held very largely throughout the country'.'

How different the BBC's attitude towards 'Islamophobia' is today.



2) From 1995:

'The Holocaust was the best-kept secret of the war. Then its horrors were revealed - apparently for the first time - by BBC war reporter Richard Dimbleby's now famous broadcast of 19 April 1945. So shocked was the BBC newsroom that it refused to transmit the recording until, on threat of resignation, Dimbleby persuaded them it was one of the most important news stories of the century.

What was not admitted at the time was that the Dimbleby dispatch from Belsen was by no means the earliest news the BBC had received of the destruction of the European Jews.

New material, from a five-page directive in the Public Record Office, reveals that by 1943 the BBC had evidence which conclusively proved Hitler's plan for the "total extermination of European Jewry". Entitled "Special annexe on Extermination of the Jews: Evidence of Nazi policy and practice", it was compiled by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), the government body that guided the BBC's overseas broadcasting.

Surprisingly, the document says nothing about making public its harrowing contents. Indeed, government policy was the reverse. "Jewish sources are always doubtful," says one handwritten note in the margin of a Foreign Office memorandum on conditions in Poland. Another Foreign Office circular suggests: "The Jews tend to exaggerate German atrocities."

Other confidential internal memorandums show an unwillingness by the BBC to broadcast on behalf of the Jews. "Any direct action to counter anti-Semitism would do more harm than good," wrote Sir Richard Maconachie, controller of the home service, on 15 April 1943. May E Jenkin, Children's Hour assistant director, stated: "If you give Jewish broadcasters an inch, they come clamouring for a mile." Despite the evidence from the PWE, the BBC foreign and home news boards concluded: "It seems desirable to soft- pedal the whole thing".

Leonard Miall of the wartime overseas service says that the BBC was "very careful to avoid giving currency to rumours that might not be true. We didn't want to jeopardise our general credibility. In the process, we did undoubtedly play down the extent of the Holocaust." In wartime, government censors made sure that the BBC would never be able to say anything contrary to official policy.

The government line, echoed by the BBC, was to win the war, then save the Jews. "We wanted to keep the Middle East quiet," says Sir Frank Roberts, a Foreign Office mandarin in charge of monitoring German activities. "It was an important part of our war effort. We had to be careful we didn't give the Arabs the impression that we had suddenly turned over into a pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist organisation."

Lord Weidenfeld, a Jewish refugee publisher, adds: "There was nothing ideological or mythological about this. It wasn't deeply instinctive racial hatred. It was expediency."

Conclusive proof that the BBC avoided publicising the Holocaust until the war was virtually over comes from Paul Winterton, a wartime News Chronicle Moscow correspondent and BBC contributor. Eight months before Dimbleby walked into Belsen, he accompanied the Red Army into Majdanek, the first Nazi death camp to be liberated. His account survives in the BBC sound archive. Winterton speaks of "the most horrible story I will ever have to tell you" and describes in brutal detail this appalling extermination camp.

Winterton, now in his eighties, recalls the BBC's reaction to his broadcast. "I was given a kind of reprimand. They told me they didn't want this atrocity stuff. They seemed to think it was Russian propaganda."

Eventually, Winterton's dispatch went out in August 1944, but it was heavily edited and broadcast only on the overseas service.

There was an immediate outcry from the United States, demanding a war crimes commission, and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, the British ambassador in Moscow, telegrammed London to seek clarification. The Foreign Office did its best to bury the story. "The Russians will manage this more effectively than we," one official was minuted as saying. "It may relieve us of unpleasant responsibilities in deciding what are and what are not war crimes," another noted.

The Foreign Office had not formulated its policy on war crimes; it had to keep the Middle East happy, and could not afford a loss of morale at a critical stage in the war. Ostensibly, Winterton's contract with News Chronicle did not allow his broadcast to go out. In reality, the BBC, in line with the Foreign Office, had the perfect excuse to maintain a very British silence on the Holocaust.'

Doesn't it make you proud to be British! Should the BBC apologise for its part in hiding the truth of what was happening to Jews in Germany?