The following letter was addressed to the head of MediaNews, the corporation that owns the San Jose Mercury News, the monopoly paper for the 10th largest city in the USA.

Now, you need a little patience when you read it because the background – a set of fictitious claims by Richard Cohen – isn’t set out here.  But it isn’t really the particularities of this case that prompted this posting at MR.  The reason for posting the letter is to show how we have set about attacking false Holocaust claims using the adversary’s own language and topped it off with the RD theme of ending slurs (especially against us).  I feel it is novel to attack false Holocaust claims in this way, and it is certainly “in your face”.

Bo

Dear Mr. Singleton,

We emailed preliminary objections to you on 9/27/06 about the use of an undocumented and unsubstantiated “bloody bits” anecdote passed off as true in a Richard Cohen column that veered sharply from being opinion into being an assertion of fact, and printed in the San Jose Mercury News on 9/26/06. We have now had an opportunity to read all the reviews, related literature, and the entire 512-page book that contains the single-sourced bloody bits anecdote, The Lost, published in AD 2006.

The Bloody Bits Anecdote

The bloody bits anecdote in Cohen’s column is a bowdlerized single-sourced claim in a “deposition” reprinted in “The Lost,” a book by David Mendelsohn. It is our considered judgment that “The Lost” is a work of fact (the travelogue part) mixed with fiction (the bloody bits anecdote part), and that Steven E. Wright, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, failed his duty of due diligence when he printed the bowdlerized bloody bits anecdote on his op-ed page as fact.

 

“The Lost”

“The Lost” purports to be a report by David Mendelsohn of his globe traveling to uncover the fate of six of his family members during World War II. The bloody bits anecdote is unrelated to his family members – it’s just plopped into the middle of the book on page 228, unconnected to the rest of the book except for two brief references on pages 235 and 456. The bloody bits anecdote is not argued, defended, or shown to be true by any supporting sources. Even the “deposition” cited which contains the bloody bits anecdote is uncorroborated and unsubstantiated, and there is nothing in “The Lost” that would allow us to find the original copy of the cited “deposition” containing the bloody bits anecdote in order to research it further. The qualifications and reputation of the deponent are not cited.

“The Lost” is already being retailed at 40% off list price, and will undoubtedly be changed by book-sellers to a work of fiction, like “The Painted Bird” by Binjamin Wilkomirski and “Fragments” by Jerzy Kosinski.

We are forced to agree with Adam Kirsch who states in his 9/20/06 New York Sun review that, “Thanks to his persistence, the Internet, and a lot of frequent flier miles, Mr. Mendelsohn tracked down the last few people in the world who still remembered Shmiel Jäger and his daughters. But these Holocaust survivors, by definition, had escaped or hidden themselves before the Jägers were killed, and so they could know their fates only from hearsay.”

Yet it is such World War II hearsay that Wright relies on to promote the bloody bits anecdote that Cohen cites as truthful and factual context for an AD 2001 photograph in his 9/26/06 column.

Note that “The Lost” contains no bibliography, no footnotes, no quotation marks around purported quotations, and no index. How can it be taken seriously as an historical work? Legitimate histories demand the context that is provided by bibliography, footnotes, quotations, and index.

 

The Players

The players in this tawdry drama are Daniel Mendelsohn, author of “The Lost,” a postmodern kind of guy who makes “The Lost” almost entirely about himself, his travels, his feelings, his frustrations, his musings, his fears, and his wonderfulness.

About the only thing Mendelsohn leaves out of “The Lost” is the topic of his AD 1999 book which discusses his flamboyant sexual life on the docks and darkened streets of New York City, a most edifying spectacle. A sympathetic reviewer named Mark Oppenheimer in his 9/8/06 review in The Forward states, “One persistent problem with ‘The Lost’ is that the author is irritatingly coy about his own celebrity. For example, one could finish this book and still be surprised to learn that Mendelsohn’s last book, “The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity,” published by Knopf in (AD) 1999, was a much-lauded attempt to put a literary gloss on a particular version of gay male sexuality; it is strange that nowhere in so personal a book as “The Lost” does Mendelsohn linger over his gayness or his success as an author.”

A reviewer named Ron Rosenbaum picked up portions of the bloody bits anecdote from a “deposition” reprinted in “The Lost” featuring the alleged horrific death of a mother and an infant in World War II, and brandished a bowdlerized version of it in his 9/24/06 review for the New York Times.

Then Richard Cohen, in a display of malice and sloth, repeated the bowdlerized bloody anecdote reported by Rosenbaum and told us we couldn’t “bear” the ending of the bloody anecdote. Yes, we can “bear” it, and we’ll explain why, and we’ll reproduce that ending below.

And then Stephen E. Wright, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, in a similar display of malice and sloth, promoted the truthfulness of Cohen’s bloody bits anecdote.

 

The Context: I Samuel 15:3 and II Kings 2:24

In order to keep things in perspective or, as Cohen insists, to provide context, we are dedicating this essay to two Biblical passages. Mendelsohn makes quite a fuss about his Biblical analyses, so we will use the same text. The Bible teaches from ancient times that women and children are acceptable victims in war, for example:-

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” [I Samuel 15:3]

Undoubtedly a lot of bloody bits of women and babes were created in that divinely-inspired attack, so we can probably “bear” reading the end of Mendelsohn’s bloody bits anecdote.

And we see that God even has a sense of humor about killing children, for example:-

“And he (the prophet Elisha) went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he (the prophet Elisha) turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.” [II Kings 2:23-24]

Sounds like a lot of bloody bits of children to us, and provides an excellent context for this essay.

 

The Bloody Bits Anecdote

The bowdlerized bloody bits anecdote that Wright endorses as true is this from the Cohen column:-

“Ron Rosenbaum makes this point in his New York Times review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s new book about the Holocaust, ‘The Lost.’ He cites, for instance, Mendelsohn’s description of the murder of a single woman. ‘The Ukrainians and the Germans who had broken into her house found her giving birth….When the birth pangs started she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd…who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth….The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown….’ I stop here. The rest is more than you can bear.”

If there is anything about this that screams Artful Anecdote or even Big Lie, it is the use of ellipses in four places, as well as the endorsement by Wright of a quote by Cohen of a quote by Rosenbaum quoting a “deposition” that was quoted in “The Lost.”

In fact, the claim that Mendelsohn gave a “description of the murder of a single woman” is a lie – Mendelsohn simply claimed to reprint a “deposition” which contained the bloody bits anecdote, he didn’t describe it. That is, this a bowdlerized quote of a quote of a quote of a quote, endorsed as true by Wright.

Even the use of the definite article “the” placed before “Germans” above is a lie. We understand why the “the” was placed there by Rosenbaum and Cohen, but the “deposition” does not have it.

And what would a “dumpster” be in Ukraine in World War II?

And why did Cohen pretend that “The rest is more than you can bear.” (There’s that she bear context again.) The part that Cohen thinks we cannot “bear” from Rosenbaum’s review is as follows:-

” ... The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown — It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with her bleeding bits hanging.”

Graphic certainly, but nothing compared to hundreds of similarly murderous anecdotes from Genesis through Malachi, just like the bloody bits left by two she bears from 42 children’s bodies. And not even titillating to those surrounded by Hollywood’s violent, bloody, desensitizing films and TV shows. And don’t even think about the spectacle of a late-term abortionist’s abattoir, bleeding bits, dead babies momentarily on the brink of life, blood on the wall, and blood on the floor. How wimpy and frail does Cohen think we are, we who have been utterly desensitized to bleeding bits by war, TV news, TV entertainment, abortionists, and Hollywood films?

 

“The Lost”: A Book Of Hatreds

“The Lost” is a book of hatreds beginning with page 14 when we first encounter the slurs “peasant” and “goyim,” and on page 19 when he introduces us to additional hate terms, “shiksha” and “gentile.”

Astonishingly for a book published in AD 2006, Mendelsohn reveals his and his ancestors’ bold supremacist mind set in using “peasant” and “goyim” and “shiksha” and “gentile” during 300 years of his ancestors and Poles and Ukrainians residing in a small village together.

Let’s take a look at Mendelsohn’s and his family’s minds in this regard.

First, it is and has always been obvious that, when a person in one group reaches out and names or labels the members of another group, the act has to be based on a claim of supremacy by the person doing the naming. Mendelsohn may fancy that he is quite the sophisticated writer and reviewer, but he exposes himself and his family as vulgar boors addicted to supremacy claims with his and their “peasant” and “goyim” and “shiksha” and “gentile” gratuitously applied to the family’s neighbors for 300 years.

Second, Mendelsohn’s use of these hate terms is simply a way to smother the diversity subsumed under those labels. In AD 2006, it is grotesque for anyone to announce in such a frontal way that the Other lacks all diversity. Yet Mendelsohn finds himself completely comfortable with this level of continuing hate in behalf of his family in Ukraine.

Third, Mendelsohn’s use of these hate labels is evidence of the contemptuous turn of his mind toward the Other. Mendelsohn lacks all insight into the fact that the vibrant, richly-textured Slavic Ukrainians living near his family may have resented this naming and labeling, this smothering of their diversity, and this contempt. How many years of aggravated naming and labelling does it take to provoke an entirely understandable neighborly backlash? Let’s see, Mendelsohn’s family lived in their multicultural home town for 300 years before World War II – did none of his family ever think that they were storing up wrath with their supremacist, anti-diversity, and contemptuous vocabulary?

 

Stephen E. Wright Failed His Duty

However one might want to express Wright’s duty, perhaps a duty to guarantee honesty to the readers of the San Jose Mercury News about a claim of fact tucked inside a column of opinion, he failed vividly and completely.

Wright proved that the San Jose Mercury News will print anything as true if presented as fact, and never apologize or retract.

Bo Sears
RestingDefamation.org