--- title: Truth Behind the Myth of American Ignorance on the Holocaust description: A U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit shows the limits of American understanding—despite coverage, including in TIME, of Hitler's rise canonical: https://time.com/5327279/ushmm-americans-and-the-holocaust/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-07-10T14:00:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2024-01-24T11:30:37.000Z article:section: History og:title: Truth Behind the Myth of American Ignorance on the Holocaust og:description: An issue of TIME from 1933 helps lead to a key insight og:url: https://time.com/5327279/ushmm-americans-and-the-holocaust/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea2a6c16734ad5bc/69893458cf40a82ff1c4c9f2/1101330710_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 400 og:image:height: 225 og:image:alt: July 10, 1933 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Truth Behind the Myth of American Ignorance on the Holocaust twitter:description: An issue of TIME from 1933 helps lead to a key insight twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltea2a6c16734ad5bc/69893458cf40a82ff1c4c9f2/1101330710_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'It's Not That the Story Was Buried.' 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Last Nazi Trials [Watch (HLS stream): The Last Nazi Trials](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/iBig1Tcg.m3u8) (7:02)  _Published 2016-05-03. The trial of a former Nazi guard brings forth questions about justice and forgiveness for Holocaust survivors and German citizens._  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:30 AM UTCPublished: Jul 10, 2018 2:00 PM UTC  The July 10, 1933, cover of TIME The July 10, 1933, cover of TIME TIME  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:30 AM UTCPublished: Jul 10, 2018 2:00 PM UTC Few are as aware that the news is the [first draft of history](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/press%5Fbox/2010/08/who%5Fsaid%5Fit%5Ffirst.html) as is the team behind a recently opened exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). To put together [_Americans and the Holocaust_](https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main), they combed through the German news column in more than a decade’s worth of issues of TIME magazine — and parallel sections from many other magazines and newspapers — and what they found refuted a persistent, though oft-debunked, [myth](https://books.google.com/books?id=I3lItIwOzCkC&pg=PA42&dq=myth+that+americans+didn%27t+know+about+holocaust+until+1945&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ46eHqJDcAhVCON8KHVqJBqQQ6AEIXTAJ#v=onepage&q=myth%20that%20americans%20didn%27t%20know%20about%20holocaust%20until%201945&f=false) about World War II and the Holocaust: the idea that, as the museum [puts it](https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/museum-opens-new-exhibition-americans-and-the-holocaust), “Americans lacked access to information about the persecution of Jews as it was happening.” Looking at the news that publications like TIME ran in the 1930s and ’40s shows that, in fact, Americans had lots of access to news about what was happening to Europe’s Jewish population and others targeted by the Nazi regime. But it also highlights a central truth about this period — and human beings in general. Reading or hearing something is not the same as understanding what it truly means, curator Daniel Greene tells TIME, and there’s a wide “gap between information and understanding.” Case in point: Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, on the cover of the July 10, 1933, issue of TIME Magazine, from 85 years ago this Tuesday. Though TIME’s 1933 article, about Hitler’s new cabinet, didn’t yet treat Hitler with complete seriousness — he was referred to as a “Vegetarian Superman” — it didn’t pull punches on the ideas behind his ascent. The article presented as fact that the consolidation of Nazi rule had lifted the spirit of the German people, even as the world watched warily, and explained that one tactic above all was helping Hitler and Goebbels with that uplift: “explaining away all Germany’s defeats and trials in terms of the Jew.” It would have been impossible to read the story and miss the danger Hitler presented to his country’s Jewish citizens: --- > “” --- That chilling last line also appeared on the [front cover](http://time.com/vault/issue/1933-07-10/page/1/) of the issue. The magazine reported that sterilization of Jewish citizens had been discussed, and explained the economic consequences Jewish businesses were already facing. As Greene points out, these already horrifying concepts gain an extra layer of terror with the help of hindsight, as we know now that they were only the beginning. So what’s the source of the myth of American ignorance? It can sometimes be hard for historians to tell what people were actually absorbing from the news of the day, but Greene doesn’t think that’s the main reason for this supposed gap. The main story in the 1930s was the Great Depression, but Greene says that news of the persecution — and, later, murder — of Jews in Germany did show up in print. “It’s not that the story was buried,” he says. “Just like news is there today of Syria or of the danger to the Rohingya, it punctures through our consciousness at certain times.” He theorizes that perhaps there’s an element of trying to excuse things or “let Americans off the hook,” without fully processing the fact that the Roosevelt administration made a conscious decision, even after the U.S. entered the war, to focus on military defeat of the Nazi regime and leave the rescue of Holocaust victims as a lower priority. Americans did have an idea what was going on, though — as is true with any news story — some people followed it more closely, and some details were hidden. It would have been public knowledge in the late 1930s (and [not entirely controversial](http://time.com/4118178/paris-attacks-jews-syrian-refugees-history/)) that the U.S. was [denying](http://time.com/4651998/stl-manifest-holocaust-remembrance-twitter/) [entry](http://time.com/3914106/history-migrant-ships-st-louis/) to [some](http://time.com/5331601/anne-frank-family-escape-us-cuba-visas/) refugees from Hitler’s regime, and by the 1940s, a precursor to the United Nations was publicly [condemning](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/12/18/85062953.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=LedeAsset®ion=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=1) the Nazi policy of [extermination](http://time.com/4636171/wannsee-conference-75-years/). But, especially in that era, when [genocide](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1865217,00.html) was still a neologism, it would have been difficult for everyday Americans to fully comprehend just what was happening. _Read more:_ [_Behind the Picture: Joseph Goebbels Glares at the Camera, Geneva, 1933_](http://time.com/3880669/goebbels-in-geneva-1933-behind-a-classic-alfred-eisenstaedt-photo/) To wit, one item that’s part of the USHMM exhibition shows public opinion polls demonstrating that while half of U.S. respondents in 1943 thought the fact that 2 million Jewish Europeans had been murdered was just a rumor, by 1944 about three-quarters believed concentration camps were really part of the Nazi plan — and yet they still couldn’t fathom the number of victims involved. (A Gallup poll that year shows that most people who dared to guess [thought the number killed would be in the hundreds of thousands, or less](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/public-understanding-holocaust-wwii-today/).) Today, the fact that 6 million Jews were killed has been “seared in our collective understanding of the Holocaust,” Greene says, but at the time, that number was hard to process. It still can be, which is why he says [recent evidence](http://time.com/5235725/holocaust-history-survey/) of growing gaps in knowledge about the Holocaust is particularly troubling. So, while the 1933 TIME cover shows that it would be reasonable to expect Americans in the early 1930s to know about the persecution and prejudice at the heart of Hitler’s government — and to then follow the news of the mass murder to which it would lead within a decade — it’s still no myth to say that Americans, [especially](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the%5Fvault/2014/05/02/holocaust%5Fliberation%5Fletter%5Ffrom%5Famerican%5Fsoldier%5Fat%5Fdachau.html) those who personally witnessed the liberation of the camps, were shocked to discover the extent and cruelty of what was happening in Europe. “You can’t say that Americans didn’t know anything,” Greene says, “but you also can’t blame them for not predicting the Holocaust.” **_Correction: July 10_** _The original version of this article misattributed the source of a 1942 condemnation of Nazi policy. The statement was issued by a precursor to the United Nations, not the organization that bears that name today, which was established in 1945._ ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Our family had tried so hard to stay together. My sister Edith was about 12 years old was sent in the direction that my mother went. The SS guard he motioned me to in the direction other young adults went. I didn't move. I leaned over peering into the crowd and trying to see if Edith had caught up. I was horrified that she would not find our mother. She would be lost to our family, alone amongst strangers. The trauma of this separation Lingers with me to this day. [ MUSIC ] [ SOUND ] [ CROSSTALK ] It's not a matter of Sending him to jail for the rest of his life. I don't feel that, that will help, but what's happening now will help. And today, I must do what I'm asked to do and not stop and cry because that is not what's required at the moment [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Okay look at me. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ LAUGH ] It's a teaching moment for the entire country of Europe to rethink and learn from it. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] The lawyers were searching for people Survivors. They asked, would I come, and do I know anything about this Nazi guard, and of course no. I was much too distracted to look into his face, but I was not required to have remembered the face, so I said yes. If I can help. I would come. So far over the last seven decades, prosecutors just focused on the murder of the people who arrived in Auschwitz on the lam and then were gassed right No prosecutor ever brought forward a charge, saying that a guard is also responsible for making it possible that the people who were prisoners in the camp were murdered systematically. And the indictment against Hanning is the first indictment that actually says Auschwitz was altogether A organized factory of mass murder. Not only the selection on the [ INAUDIBLE ] This is, I am here. Right here standing here. As I said in the testimony, I had just been separated from my younger sister, and as I was saying I didn't leave. I actually defied orders, I just stood there. How am I to leave her like this? People tell me, you know she died, you know everybody died, and it's been a long time. And it doesn't help. [ MUSIC ] This is Council Aide and Justice Says it's too little, and is a enormous failure, it's a system in the end does the right thing, it's better than not going. I think the main purpose of this trials is to give justice to our clients, it's for them. I just want him to Hear from me and others who testified, what the consequences were of what he did at a young age. But he keeps his eyes down, head down. I don't know whether he doesn't want to face the survivors. What his motivation is. I really don't know. [ FOREIGN ] And the further you go down in the chain of command, the more the question arises of how far legal responsibility goes. And if none of the witnesses know the defendant, this, in the view of the defense, is a testament to how unremarkable the defendant possibly was. [ MUSIC ] I'm not interested in the personality of the defendant. For me he's a broken, failed person. What is he supposed to do? He's defending himself? That's ridiculous. What is he supposed to do? He's defending himself? That's ridiculous. If he was a warden in Auschwitz, I already judge him. I can't judge that. Forgiveness? Maybe he just... How many people followed? How many people killed? Maybe they didn't have a choice but to act in that way? [ MUSIC ] There's a lot of talk of forgiveness, I'm very surprised about it. Everybody had to do their part or it wouldn't have worked efficiently. How does mass murder get forgiven? [ MUSIC ] The crime is so enormous, it's not a forgivable crime, it's a crime to be analyzed and learned from. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5327279/ushmm-americans-and-the-holocaust/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5327279/ushmm-americans-and-the-holocaust/"},"headline":"'It's Not That the Story Was Buried.' 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