Rabbi Wise, Human Soap, and the Editors of The Christian Century

[Archie]

Rabbi Wise had been receiving a variety of atrocity/extermination reports thoughout the second half of 1942. He finally made these reports public in late November following a meeting with Sumner Welles.

Here is the Jewish Telegraphic Agency report from Nov 25, 1942
https://www.jta.org/1942/11/25/archive/hitler-has-ordered-annihilation-of-all-jews-by-end-of-1942-washington-hears

Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, after a conference today with Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles and other high officials of the State Department, declared that Hitler has ordered the annihilation of all Jews in Europe by the end of this year.

“This news is substantiated in documents furnished to me by the State Department this afternoon,” Dr. Wise said. “It is one of the last made acts of destruction which Hitler will perpetrate before he is called to judgement.”

Note that Wise strongly implies that the "information" had been substantiated by the State Department. But in fact all he says is that the State Department passed along some documents to him.

Declaring that a representative of President Roosevelt, who returned a short time ago from a mission abroad, told him that “the worst fears about the fate of the Jews under Hitler are true,” Dr. Wise estimated that “one-half of the five million Jews in the territories occupied by the Nazis have already been destroyed.”

Dr. Wise said that he has been receiving reports for three months indicating that Hitler has been extremely wrathful because the extermination of the Jews has not proceeded more quickly. “The Nazis,” he declared, “have used various means of killing off large portions of the Jewish population, including poison and asphyxiation, but have now found that the most efficient method is for a doctor to inject an air bubble into the victims’ veins. In this way a single doctor can kill 100 persons in an hour.” He added that the Nazis have set a value of fifty marks, about ten dollars at pre-war rate of exchange, for each corpse, and are reclaiming them for soap fats and fertilizer. Corpses are also being exhumed for this purpose, he said.

And then from the NYT from Nov 26, "Slain Polish Jews Put at a Million," we have an account of the same press conference.

Rabbi Wise explained that his group believed in the authenticity of the extirpation order on the strength of affidavits obtained by the State Department from Jewish sources of information in free countries.
[...]
Rabbi Wise said the State Department documents included affidavits from "reliable persons who knew" of such atrocities as turning Jewish bodies into fats and soap and lubricants, and of the latest Nazi method of killing Jews by having doctors inject air bubbles into their veins. He said that earlier gassing with prussic acid had been found too expensive.

Even by Holocaust standards, these claims are pretty wild. From the NYT account, we learn that the ultimate source for the "information" was a collection of "affidavits" from Jewish sources which the State Department had merely passed on. In the months previous, the State Department had elected not to forward some of this kind of stuff to Wise and the Jews had raised a fuss about it. (Tangentially, it's interesting that Wise says here that the Germans had abandoned Prussic acid in late 1942 due to cost).

Not surprisingly, this announcement was meant with some skepticism in the press, particularly the assertion that the State Department vouched for the claims. The editors of The Christian Century, an American Protestant publication, openly challenged Wise with a December 9th editorial, "Horror Stories from Poland." The editors noted that “although Rabbi Wise went out of his way to place the responsibility for his charges on the State Department, that branch of the government has conspicuously refrained from issuing any confirmation.” They further remarked that Wise's soap story was ”unpleasantly reminiscent of the ‘cadaver factor’ lie which was one of the propaganda triumphs of the First World War.”

Wise responded indignantly with a letter published on Jan 13, 1943. “It would appear that you are more interested in seeking to prove that figures which I gave out in the name of five important Jewish organizations of America are inaccurate in respect to Jewish mass massacres in Hitler-occupied countries than you are in making clear to American Christians how unspeakable has been the conduct of Hitlerism against the Jewish people.” He then accused them of having a “frankly or disguisedly anti-Jewish attitude whenever it deals with Jewish subjects"... “Whether this is merely a reflection of a personal Judeophobia on the part of the editor, or whether it conveys the considerable attitude of the editorial board of The Christian Century is not for me to say. Christian ministers with whom I have discussed the problem have felt your article reflected the subconscious desire not so much to express compassion for the victims of Hitlerism as to shield Hitler from the consequences of his crime. I confess that I cannot quite understand that you should seem to be spiritually unconcerned about the tragic fate of the people whose gift to the world you purport to revere and worship. I take it for granted that the above letter will appear in the columns of The Christian Century, and for your sake I trust a deeply penitential word of your own may be added.” He also reiterated his claim about the State Department confirmation.

Wise was not aware that the editors had already contacted the State Department before running the editorial. The editors shot back that they had indeed “taken the trouble to inquire." “The state department promptly replied through an accredited officer. Unfortunately, it specified that its reply was 'not for publication.' We have that reply in our files; it does not support Dr. Wise’s contentions. Our editorial comment on his charges was written in the light of the state department’s reply to our question.”

I was pleased to see that Walter Laqueur identifies the accredited officer as M.J. McDermot, chief of the Division of Current Information, and he supplies McDermot's full response.

I today informed correspondents in confidence and am glad to give to you, not for publication, that Rabbi Wise was in the Department several months ago and again yesterday and he had consulted with the Department in connection with certain material in which he was interested and he now has this material. The State Department had only sought to facilitate the efforts of his Committee in getting at the truth and the correspondents should direct all questions concerning this material to Rabbi Wise.

Laqueur then comments: “In short, the State Department wanted to have nothing to do with the content of the message.”

Sources
Robert Ross, So It Was True, pg 173-175
Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, pg 183-185
Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret, pg 227
Rafael Medoff, The Jews Must Keep Quiet, pg 123-125
Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, pg 287

Ross is a Protestant. His account of this episode is reasonably fair. Lipstadt, Laqueur, and Medoff are Jewish writers and they all spin the skepticism of the editors as something of a scandal. Novick is also a Jew but more in the Norman Finkelstein mold. He only briefly discusses it in an endnote; he is critical of Wise and doesn't try to hide his deception : "A few days earlier, representatives of the American Jewish Committee and of B’nai B’rith had pressed Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress as to whether the State Department vouched for the veracity of the “soap” story, and wished it disseminated. Wise assured them--falsely--that this was the case." Of all the accounts, Medoff's is the most grating because he goes out of his way to cover for Wise and also somehow avoids mentioning the soap claim so the reader never has any idea of how ridiculous Wise's claims actually were. Lipstadt to her credit not only mentions the soap but also the air bubble injection but I think it's because she's so dumb she doesn't realize that you're supposed to bury such embarrassing stories.

[Sannhet]

this announcement was meant with some skepticism in the press, particularly the assertion that the State Department vouched for the claims. The editors of The Christian Century, an American Protestant publication, openly challenged Wise with a December 9th editorial, "Horror Stories from Poland." The editors noted that “although Rabbi Wise went out of his way to place the responsibility for his charges on the State Department, that branch of the government has conspicuously refrained from issuing any confirmation.” They further remarked that Wise's soap story was ”unpleasantly reminiscent of the ‘cadaver factor’ lie which was one of the propaganda triumphs of the First World War.”

The first US Holocaust Revisionist? Or, better termed, Holocaust Skeptic.

Do we have access to a primary copy of this newspaper's 1942 editions? It would be useful to see both this Dec. 9, 1942 editorial as well as the full edition for context and possibly other surprises.

[Hannover]

This would be the same shyster Stephen Wise who contradicted the fake narrative when he said that 1,250,000 - 1,500,000 Polish Jews were homeless in Europe, outside of Poland, & alive after WWII
see:
WJC's Stephen Wise said 1,250,000 - 1,500,000 Polish Jews homeless in Europe, outside of Poland, & alive after WWII
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10191

Hoisted by their own petard again.

- Hannover

[Archie]

Sannhet, I was not able to find the full original Christian Century articles online. The quotes above are just what I was able to glean from the works cited.

Hannover, very interesting link. Thanks. From a Zionist perspective, there are some conflicting incentives. When they were looking to establish Israel as a Jewish state, they wanted to give a sense that there were millions of Jews with nowhere to go and they wanted Palestine to be the solution. This contradicts the extermination thesis because they want to claim a big death count and a big survivor/refugee count at the same time. But such inconsistency doesn’t bother a guy like Wise who adapts his propaganda to suit the given moment.

[Sannhet]

On Christian Century:

Stephen "The Red Rabbi" Wise's attack was that he:

accused [ The Christian Century ] of having a “frankly or disguisedly anti-Jewish attitude whenever it deals with Jewish subjects"... “Whether this is merely a reflection of a personal Judeophobia on the part of the editor, or whether it conveys the considerable attitude of the editorial board of The Christian Century is not for me to say. [...]"

Editorials from Christian Century have been published in a variety of academic sources. I read or skimmed a few. The magazine was NOT some kind of right-wing, nationalist, "Christian Fascist"-type publication, as I think Red Rabbi Wise means to imply there (the usual tactic is innuendo and insinuation). One of its editorials from early 1942 slams the internment of the Japanese on the US West Coast in concentration camps, for instance, as well as expresses support for an early form of what would later be known as Civil Rights for Blacks. I wouldn't expect either of those to be editorial positions of an ethnonationalist magazine active in the 1940s. (What it does show is that Jewish power and influence was far from total in the 1940s.) They were also, during the war years, against the drive to round up large numbers of foreign nationals from enemy-belligerent countries, a lesser-scale version of what the Germans were doing at the same time.

Christian Century's editorial line on the Holocaust changed over time, it seems, always reacting to events. I found their lead editorial dated May 9, 1945, which expresses full-on belief in the Holocaust after those photos of the stacks of bodies from Bergen-Belsen were published. This is a tangent worth a fresh thread:

Editorial in "The Christian Century" on May 9, 1945 expresses outrage at concentration camps, fails to mention something
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13469

[Archie]

David Wyman also discusses this episode in his book The Abandonment of the Jews. It's a decent book and competently researched but like many orthodox offerings, the analysis is absurd. In terms of perspective Wyman's similar to the hardcore Zionists like Rafael Medoff. I assumed he was Jewish but apparently he's a Gentile (and both of his grandfathers were Protestant ministers to boot).

Wyman gives some purported quotes from Wise's meeting with Sumner Welles (page 51). Welles allegedly told him:
"I regret to tell you, Dr. Wise, that these confirm and justify your deepest fears."
"There is no exaggeration. These documents are evidently correct."
"For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these to the press, but there is no reason why you should not. It might even help if you did."

Wyman adds a footnote that explains this is Wise's version of what was said which Wyman of course takes as absolutely reliable. "Officials in the Division of European Affairs maintained for months afterward that the State Department had never confirmed the extermination reports. But all the evidence indicates that Wise's description of the meeting was accurate." What evidence would this be? Wyman doesn't tell us.

Then regarding the interactions between the State Department and the Christian Century, Wyman's says (page 65-67), "Although the State Department's response neither affirmed nor denied Wise's statements, the Christian Century chose to view it as a denial." He further comments on the State Department's reply to the CC saying "It did not deny Wise's contention either, but the Christian Century left that fact unmentioned."

Summary
-A few months earlier with the Riegner telegram episode, the State Department had withheld sensational material from Wise, although Wise ended up hearing about it anyway. The State Department then apparently asked Wise not to publicize such unconfirmed reports in the press.
-Wise met with Welles. Wise's version of events is that Welles had confidence in the reports. It's apparently true that this time Welles tell Wise not to talk to the press. But I think Welles was humoring Wise somewhat and perhaps the department had grown tired of trying to censor him as they had for several months. Whatever Welles's exact attitude, it's clear many others at the State Department (e.g., Breckenridge Long) were much more skeptical of these kinds of reports.
-Wise called a press conference and said that the Nazis were killing people with air bubble injections and were using the corpses to make human soap. Nobody accepts such stories anymore so the specifics of the reports were false. Even from a believer standpoint, they could only be "true" in some vague way. I guess the theory would have to be that there really were "exterminations" going on, it's just that the reported details were total fabrication.
-Wise further claimed the information was substantiated by the State Department: "This news is substantiated in documents furnished to me by the State Department this afternoon." Technically, Wise said he got documents from State (true) and that "the documents" substantiate the reports. But his intention was to strongly imply the info had been vetted by the State Department. And that was how everyone interpreted it. The NYT report on this said "Wise Gets Confirmations."
-The CC doubted this and wrote to State and got a reply wherein State distanced themselves from Wise's claims. From this the CC editors concluded correctly that the State Department absolutely DID NOT vouch for these claims. And they considered that Wise was being deceptive with his suggestion that they did.

We see Wyman tries to spin all of this as the CC editors being misleading rather than Rabbi Wise. He assumes Wise's account of the meeting with Welles is completely accurate and he interprets the State Department reply to the CC as somehow vindicating Wise because they didn't go out of their way to explicitly reject the claims. A very strained interpretation.

[Breker]

Archie:

David Wyman also discusses this episode in his book The Abandonment of the Jews. It's a decent book and competently researched but like many orthodox offerings, the analysis is absurd. In terms of perspective Wyman's similar to the hardcore Zionists like Rafael Medoff. I assumed he was Jewish but apparently he's a Gentile (and both of his grandfathers were Protestant ministers to boot).

You're trying to make a distinction without a difference.
From the Zionist Wiki:

Wyman was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth (Sword) and Hollis Judson Wyman, a teacher, of American and Jewish descent.[3][4] His grandparents were Protestant ministers and Wyman was a protestant himself.[5][6] Wyman earned an A.B. in history from Boston University and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.[4] From 1966 until his retirement in 1991, Wyman taught in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he twice chaired the Judaic studies program.[4][6]

As if anyone but a Jew is TWICE chair of a Judaic studies program.
David Wyman also holds honorary doctoral degrees from Hebrew Union College and Yeshiva University,
And how can a book be "decent" and "competently researched" while being "absurd"?
Wyman is profit seeking huckster.

For bonus information on the slimy Wyman, there is a whole lot here: https://codoh.com/search/?sorting=relevance&q=wyman
Additionally:
Book Review by Mark Weber - The Abandonment Of The Jews: America and the Holocaust: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p369_Weber.html

Using Comics To Educate About The Holocaust: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8017

Revisionists called 'scholars' / judeo-supremacists go wild: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2477

"Holocaust-deniers are not scholars or researchers -- they are bigots who try to hide their anti-semitism behind the mask of fake scholarship,'' said Wyman Institute Director Dr. Rafael Medoff. "For a U.S. government report to call them 'scholars' gives them the legitimacy they desperately crave but do not deserve.''

The weird world of Hillel Kook: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1847
B.

[Archie]

Wyman was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth (Sword) and Hollis Judson Wyman, a teacher, of American and Jewish descent

Ah, I didn't notice that bit. The same article also refers to him as a "non-Jew." It sounds like he's perhaps a quarter Jewish by blood (maybe less) and was raised Protestant.

And how can a book be "decent" and "competently researched" while being "absurd"?

I'm distinguishing between the factual content and the analytical content. The book is well researched and has professional citations. Much of the information is worthwhile and actually dovetails with standard revisionist arguments. It just has a tendentious presentation and obtuse conclusions. Guys like Wyman and Gilbert always double-down rather than apply Occam's razor.

I would say the same about David Irving's original Hitler's War thesis. Irving found no evidence that Hitler had any knowledge of any holocaust going on or of gas chambers or of Auschwitz being an extermination facility. And he concluded that therefore ... it must have happened behind Hitler's back . His research was good but then he reaches a rather silly conclusion.

[Breker]

Thanks, Archie.
People like Wyman, and Irving as well, remind me of Eric Hunt, who because of obvious pressures of living in the now oppressive Europe and having a wife & child there, back tracked from his previous conclusions.
The problem for Hunt and the vile Zionists is that Hunt's well researched writings and videos, which rather massacre the "Holocaust" narrative, do not change just because he decides to cave in to the "The Usual Enemies of Free Speech" and stop publishing. The facts remain the facts and cannot be changed.
B.

[Archie]

Here is the full original text of the articles referenced in the initial post.

"Horror Stories from Poland," 9 Dec 1942

Beyond doubt, horrible things are happening to the Jews in Poland. It is even probable that the nazis are herding all the Jews of Europe, so far as they can capture them, into Poland with the deliberate intention of exterminating them there. A responsible official of the nazi foreign office once told an editor of this paper that Hitler's policy called for the "humane extermination" of the Jews. He was speaking in perfect English, and knew exactly what he was saying. There is probably little humaneness about what is going on in Poland, but plenty of extermination. The nazis are loading upon themselves in that country a weight of guilt for which Christian Germany will, we hope, one day hold them to account. We question, however, whether any good purpose is served by the publication of such charges as Dr. Stephen S. Wise gave to the press last week. In the first place, although Rabbi Wise went out of his way to place the responsibility for his charges on the state department, that branch of the government has conspicuously refrained from issuing any confirmation. In the second place, Dr. Wise's figures on the numbers of Jews killed differ radically from those given out on the same day by the Polish government in exile. Whereas Dr. Wise says that Hitler has ordered all Jews in nazi-ruled Europe killed by the end of this year, the exiled Polish government claims only that orders have been issued for the extermination of half the Jews in Poland the end of this year and that 250,000 had been killed up to the end of September. In the third place, Dr. Strasburger whose "underground" figures are used to support Rabbi Wise's charges is the same Polish leader who is campaigning in this country for the complete destruction of Germany. And in the fourth place, Dr. Wise's allegation that Hitler is paying $20 each for Jewish corpses to be "processed into soap fats and fertilizer" is unpleasantly reminiscent of the "cadaver factory" lie which was one of the propaganda triumphs of the First World War.

"From Rabbi Wise," 13 Jan 1943

Editor The Christian Century:

Sir: In the Christian Century of December 9 I read an editorial statement, presumably from your pen, under the title "Horror Stories from Poland." It would appear that you are more interested in seeking to prove that the figures which I gave out in the name of five important Jewish organizations of America are inaccurate in respect to Jewish mass massacres in the Hitler-occupied countries than you are in making clear to American Christians how unspeakable has been the conduct of Hitlerism against the Jewish people.

You make what I would regard as a false charge against me if it were true, as it is false, which charge moreover is of a piece with a number of your references to the writer in recent years. The Christian Century writes: "Although Rabbi Wise went out of his way to place the responsibility for the charges on the state department, that branch of the government has conspicuously refrained from issuing any confirmation." Had you taken the trouble to inquire, you would have learned that the state department not only authorized the publication of the statement I made, but for months had been seeking with our help to make sure of the accuracy of the statements with respect to Jewish mass slaughter.

I assume that you may have read the declaration in the House of Commons a few days ago by the minister for foreign affairs, Mr. Eden, which declaration spoke for the United Nations, including our own country, the governments in exile and free France, and has made a permanent record of the Hitler infamy.

I am not interested in having an apology from you for your insinuation with respect to the lack of veracity which you chose to impute to me. What interests me profoundly as a Jew, as an American, as a reverent comrade of many Christian ministers and laymen throughout our country, is the knowledge that The Christian Century almost uniformly takes a frankly or disguisedly anti-Jewish attitude whenever it deals with Jewish subjects. Whether this is merely the reflection of a personal Judeophobia on the part of the editor, or whether it conveys the considered attitude of the editorial board of The Christian Century, it is not for me to say. Christian ministers with whom I have discussed the problem have felt that your article reflected the subconscious desire not so much to express compassion for the victims of Hitlerism as to shield Hitler from the consequences of his crime. I confess that I cannot quite understand that you should seem to be spiritually unconcerned about the tragic fate of the people whose gift to the world you purport to revere and worship.

I take it for granted that the above letter will appear in the columns of The Christian Century, and for your sake I trust a deeply penitential word of your own may be added.

Stephen S. Wise

The Free Synagogue,
New York, N.Y.

[On the day Rabbi Wise's statement was published charging Hitler with paying for Jewish corpses to be rendered into fats and ordering that all Jews in German-occupied Europe should be killed by the end of the year, The Christian Century inquired of the state department concerning the authorization by that agency of the government which Rabbi Wise again claims in this letter. The state department promptly replied through an accredited officer. Unfortunately, it specified that its reply was "not for publication." We have that reply in our files; it does not support Dr. Wise's contention. Our editorial comment on his charges was written in the light of the state department's reply to our question.--The Editors.]