President wanted my great-great uncle to tell America the truth
Newspaper editor flew to Auschwitz, revealed findings to Detroit Economic Club
I wasn’t going to say anything.
Then, I realized, saying nothing felt wrong.
It is essential, now more than ever, to remember and acknowledge and document the truth together. History matters. It matters to our past, our present and our future.
Stay with me. This is about you, too.
First of all, you know it’s really bad when the President of the United States feels we need assigned witnesses to document reality because it’s just too horrific to believe.
The situation I’d like to reveal — known by thousands and thousands of people in the past and almost nobody in the present — directly involves my family, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the City of Detroit, Auschwitz and protecting the truth.
A lot of people in the U.S. and Europe thought reports of concentration and extermination camps during World War II (1939-1945) “smacked of propaganda — the Germans are our enemies, therefore we must hate the Germans, so additional evidence must be given to whip up this hatred,” wrote historian Robert Jan van Pelt in “The Case for Auschwitz” published by Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing in 2002 and catalogued in the Library of Congress.
Even press outlets thought the Holocaust exaggerated, some newspapers even mocking what were considered unbelievable descriptions of death camps.
After the war ended, five-star U.S. Army General Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, said, “Get it all on record now — get the films — get the witnesses — because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”
So, immediately after the liberation of the concentration camp at Ohrdruf, Germany, Eisenhower wrote to General George C. Marshall on April 15, 1945 “in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”
‘Leave no doubts’
On April 19, Eisenhower cabled to Marshall the proposal to send members of Congress and journalists to “one of these places where the evidence of brutality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubts in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps,’” wrote van Pelt, a professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, whose research was used to successfully defend a libel case against Penguin Books in British Court brought by an alleged Holocaust denier.
The content of the highly detailed and gruesome book was prepared and submitted as an in-depth forensic report that van Pelt successfully defended in cross-examination in court. It is “a stunning courtroom drama and a vital document of historical evidence,” wrote Publishers Weekly.
Journalists: ‘Many were skeptical’
President (Harry S) Truman accepted Eisenhower’s proposal and on April 22, a plane left Washington for Weimar, Germany, via Paris, with six senators and six representatives, van Pelt said. “The next day, a plane with a similar destination left New York with 18 prominent journalists. Many were skeptical.”
The front page of The Detroit Free Press on April 24, 1945 said, “Eisenhower Asks Congress and Press to Witness Nazi Horrors”
The news article said, “It is of the highest significance … that General Eisenhower has invited a representative group of congressmen and editors to come to Europe and conduct a personal investigation. Among the editors now en route is Malcolm W. Bingay, editorial director of the Free Press.”
Note: Bingay was my grandfather’s uncle. He was a famed Detroit newsman and published author. My grandfather, Robert Gunther Wall, worked as a painter at the family shop in Corktown. All the family loved Uncle Malcolm. My Papa used to tell stories passed down about his great uncle.
Seeking truth
The whole country knew Uncle Malcolm as a man sent to find the truth.
“Bingay admitted a month later in a meeting at the Economic Club of Detroit that he was ‘frankly sceptical about the atrocity charges. Having lived through the First World War, I realized too many of them had been exploded as myths,’” van Pelt wrote.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote that he also changed his mind.
“I came here in a suspicious frame of mind, feeling that I would find that many of the terrible reports that have been printed in the United States before I left were exaggerations, and largely propaganda, comparable to reports of crucifixions and amputations of hands which followed the last war, and which subsequently proved to be untrue. It is my grim duty to report that the descriptions of the horrors of the camp, one of many which have been and will be uncovered by the Allied armies have given less than the whole truth. They have been understatements.”
Fake news, then and now
The American people — Detroiters — initially didn't believe the truth about Germany.
They dismissed news reports as fake news.
Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had controlled swaths of Europe, operating death camps where soldiers and their helpers tortured, gassed, burned, lynched, starved and shot six million Jews along with hundreds of thousands of political opponents, disabled people, homosexuals.
Jews shipped to Auschwitz came from Hungary, Poland, France, The Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy and Norway, according to the Auschwitz and Birkenau Memorial and Museum site.
German troops had invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany Sept. 3, 1939. German forces eventually surrendered.
Bingay, who also wrote a folksy “Iffy the Dopester” sports column, took pride in delivering the truth to Detroiters.
He collapsed at his desk at The Detroit Free Press, according to an obituary in The New York Times on Aug. 21, 1953, shortly after Eisenhower assumed the U.S. presidency.
Why now
Looking back, Eisenhower’s assignment in Auschwitz more than 70 years ago remains significant and meaningful.
“The mission is without precedent,” The Detroit Free Press said at the time. “The purpose is, by the telling of the whole story, to leave no shadow of a doubt in the minds of Americans about the authenticity of what is being uncovered.”
Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on Jan. 27 as an international day of recognition, established by the United Nations two decades ago. The date marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 1945.
The truth and consequences of history shape the future.
It is not about a moment in time — but every single day.
The idea of fake news isn’t new.
General Eisenhower and President Truman knew it could be very, very dangerous.
PS: As a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a roundup of world-class journalists, I hope you’ll check out the column link to news, commentary and features.
Thank you for taking the time to share this. So important to speak truth.
Phoebe— The most impactful evidence at the Holocaust for me: The shoes. Hard to explain away as “fake shoes”.