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Book Review: The Cuban Missile Crisis

History appears to be staring us in the face.

While President Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin lock horns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, historians remind us that it wasn’t all that long ago when two other East vs. West leaders flexed their muscles and came eye-ball-to-eyeball, each waiting for the other to flinch.

61 years ago, the U.S. and Soviet Union, were on the brink of a nuclear exchange over missiles in the island of Cuba.  Only after some shrewd diplomacy between both leaders, a mutual level of trust, and some skilled news management (mostly by the White House), was catastrophe avoided and a diplomatic resolution reached without war breaking out.

British historian Max Hastings' well researched and superbly written new book, "The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962" recounts the high drama and nervous tension that took place between the White House and Kremlin.

The Cuban Missile Crisis might have been 61 years ago, but the skill with which Hastings revisits those 13 jittery days in October, 1962, you'd think you were watching a blockbuster Netflix drama.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk called it the "most dangerous crisis the world has ever seen." White House Counsel, Ted Sorensen, referred to it as the "Gettysburg of the Cold War"; while Kennedy Special Assistant and "Court Historian", Arthur Schlesinger Jr., described it as the "finest hour'' of the Kennedy presidency.

The drama began on October 16, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy was shocked beyond belief when he was presented with indisputable evidence that the Soviets had placed medium-range (1,100 miles) and intermediate missiles (2,200) in Cuba, a mere 100 miles off the coast of the United States.

Not only was Kennedy stunned, but he felt deceived and lied to. It was only in September of that year, after all, when Kennedy’s brother, Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Attorney-General, met with Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, who conveyed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s personal guarantee that no surface-surface-missiles had been placed in Cuba.

Khrushchev was hoping to sneak the missiles into Cuba without the U.S. noticing; so that on November 7, on the 45^th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, he would announce to the world what he had done in a bold attempt to close the missile gap or “level the playing field.”

Fortunately for the U.S., the missiles were discovered early enough before they became operational. Still, Kennedy knew he had to act decisively and quickly before they became operational.

President John F. Kennedy meets with members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM) regarding the crisis in Cuba.

Photo Credit: JFK Library and Presidential Museum, Boston

***

Before deciding how to respond, Kennedy formed an Executive Committee (which became known as EXCOMM), comprised of members of the National Security Council.

The committee was made of some heavy hitters, including: Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense), Dean Rusk (Secretary of State), Maxwell D. Taylor (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Paul Nitze (Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs) and Robert Kennedy (Attorney-General), among others.

The Cuban Missile Crisis has been held up by many historians, including Max Hastings, as classic case study of crisis management and what to do and not to do when international crisis strikes, which makes it still relevant today.

When EXCOMM first assembled, most members, took a hawkish stance, strongly advising the president that military action was needed, probably air strikes (to take out the missiles) followed by a land invasion.

From the very start, the room became uncomfortably heated. Most thought a strong offensive was the only way to send Khrushchev a message that the United States couldn’t be pushed around. Many additionally articulated the belief that if Kennedy didn’t respond aggressively to this blatant act of deception, who knows what kind of duplicity the Soviets might take in the future.

In addition to responding to the Soviets, John Kennedy, only 44 years old, needed to send his own country a message that he had the mettle for the job and couldn’t be bullied by Khrushchev despite his youth and inexperience in foreign policy.

Kennedy, after all, was coming off of the disastrous and embarrassing Bay of Pigs fiasco (April, 1961) when the U.S. military invasion in Cuba failed to overthrow Fidel Castro, the belligerent communist leader. Then, just six weeks after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna (June, 1961), which was equally disastrous for the youthful U.S. President. He ended up engaging the Soviet leader in communist ideology and simply was unprepared (and over his head) for such a weighty discussion with the well-seasoned 61-year-old Soviet leader, who, many observed, walked all over him. Kennedy later, privately, told New York Times Washington Bureau Chief, James “Scotty” Reston, that the summit was the “worst thing in my life…he [Khrushchev] savaged me.”

So, when the Cuban Missile Crisis presented itself, you would think that Kennedy would feel the overwhelming need to take aggressive action in Cuba. The 1962 mid-term elections were looming, and many Democrats were already questioning Kennedy’s chances of re-election in the 1964 presidential election.

If Kennedy botched Cuba, he knew he was destined to be a one-term president.

Surprisingly, whatever course of action Kennedy finally decided on, politics and the upcoming elections took a back seat in his decision making.

The EXCOMM’s meetings resulted in multiple options being discussed, revised, debated, debated some more, before deciding on a course of action.

As the president’s advisors pushed for military action, it was Robert McNamara, the defense secretary, who first proposed something new, a naval blockade, as an aggressive action without having to fire a shot. When McNamara first proposed the idea, it did grab the attention of other EXCOMM members, but of all the options discussed, the naval blockade or quarantine appeared to be the weakest option.

History will look fondly on Kennedy for having the courage to weigh all the options carefully before endorsing the idea of a naval blockade, which called for the U.S. military forming a “ring of ships around Cuba” (that is, a quarantine) to prevent any Soviet ships from transporting additional cargo into Cuba.

Some of the best minds, the “best and brightest,” cheered military action, but it was Kennedy who ultimately made the decision to embrace the quarantine, giving Khrushchev time to rethink keeping missiles in Cuba before war broke out.

Kennedy would later say, “if we had to act in the first 24 hours, I don’t think probably we would have chosen as prudently as we finally did.”

The other remarkable feature of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the way Kennedy was able to manage the news, and keep his plans for a quarantine under a cloak of secrecy.

President John F. Kennedy delivers a radio and television address to the nation (October 22, 1962) regarding the Soviet Union’s military presence in Cuba. Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C.

Photo Credit: JFK Library and Presidential Museum, Boston

***

Before taking his case to the American people in a nationally televised address on October 22, the White House was hearing whispers that the Washington Post and New York Times, in particular, were piecing things together and were planning to report on the U.S. response to Cuba.

Kennedy personally telephoned New York Times’ publisher Orville Dryfoos and Washington Post publisher Philip Graham to request they refrain from publishing any details of his ultimatum to Khrushchev. The Post agreed immediately, the New York Times, especially James “Scotty” Reston, reportedly had to think about it before deciding to hold his fire.

Philip Brenner, Professor of International Relations at American University, told me that even Kennedy’s press secretary Pierre Salinger wasn’t aware of the EXCOMM meetings (until the night of Kennedy’s televised address on October 22), because “Kennedy thought it would be easier for him to lie to the press if Salinger did not know the truth.”

Readers of Hastings book couldn’t help but wonder if the debates of the Cuban Missile Crisis had happened during Joe Biden’s administration, would the West Wing have been as successful in preventing details from leaking out?

James G. Hershberg. Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University, doubts that it would. “There are far more extremists around in Congress, the media, social media, and blogosphere,” Hershberg explained, “who couldn't care less about being responsible, and would happily ignore or violate official pleas just to up their audience and promote their case.”

And Renata Keller, associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, who focuses on the Cold War and international history, echoes Hershberg’s sentiments. “The close relationship that previous U.S. presidents (but especially Kennedy) had with the press has declined considerably over time due to a number of factors, including the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the rise of the internet and social media. I think it's harder to keep anything secret these days.”

In addition to his deft management of the news cycle, Kennedy fostered a level of bipartisanship when planning his response to Soviet missiles in Cuba. It was important for Kennedy to inspire “unity on the home front.” He telephoned Dwight D. Eisenhower and urged that the Republicans not make the Cuban Missile Crisis partisan.

Today, the word “bipartisanship” is an ugly word and rarely invoked in the halls of Congress. But the political climate in Washington was much different 61 years ago.

Just hours before Kennedy’s October 22^nd address to the nation, Charles A. Halleck (Republican leader in Congress) and other congressional leaders were flown to the White House from all around the country (Congress was in recess) where they were informed of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Both Halleck and GOP Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL), among other Republicans, were shocked of the missile revelations, but pledged their support to the president on his stated course of action.

Anyone following American politics today would have a hard time believing that Republicans in the 118^th Congress today would rally around President Biden if he were faced with the same international crisis.

Six days after Kennedy’s national televised address to the nation in his call for a quarantine; and after many sleepless nights and anxious moments--he and Khrushchev struck a deal on October 28^th. The Soviets agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for the United States agreeing not to attack Cuba.

An additional sweetener to the deal was the U.S. pledge to withdraw its nuclear arsenal from Turkey. This part of the deal, however, was agreed to privately and didn’t become public knowledge for quite some time. Khrushchev always maintained the missiles in Turkey could have destroyed Moscow, Kiev, and other major Soviet cities. The U.S. countered they were never operational and didn’t pose any danger.

Walter Lippmann, an influential columnist at the time, was reportedly the first to propose that the U.S. remove its missiles from Turkey in a New York Herald Tribune, October 25, 1962 column, three days after JFK’s television address.

In fact, many argue, the “turning point of the crisis” came when the U.S. agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey. Others contend Khrushchev already made up his mind to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba before Robert Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin struck a deal that both countries would remove its missiles from Cuba and Turkey.

What’s most astonishing reading about such a tense time in American diplomacy, is that the Cold War was at its zenith; one wrong move, one miscommunication, one blunder by either side, could have ignited a deadly nuclear exchange.

A misstep that practically triggered a war was when a U.S. U-2 plane, flown by Rudolf Anderson Jr., entered Cuban air space. The jittery Soviets thought he was spying on secret locations of tactical nuclear weapons near America’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and was prematurely shot down (and killed) on an order given by Soviet Lieutenant Stepan Grechko.

Both Khrushchev and Kennedy were quick to intervene and defuse the U-2 plane incident and avert a disastrous showdown between the two countries.

The final important lesson many come away with after reading Hastings, “The Abyss” is that both Kennedy and Khrushchev, despite being rivals, never made their confrontation personal. Unlike many of his EXCOMM advisors, Kennedy found a way to place himself in Khrushchev’s shoes. The U.S. President never wanted to embarrass or humiliate his Soviet foe. On the contrary, he wanted to give Khrushchev enough rope to extricate himself from the perilous situation without bringing his country down in a heap of flames.

Relations between Biden and Putin are so biting, bitter, and personal, you wonder whether they’re equipped with the finesse to solve their issues with reason and sound judgement (like Kennedy and Khrushchev demonstrated) and removing their personal feuds from the equation.

In lessons learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy would later write: “Respect is central to international relations, even between adversaries.”

The big lesson learned by Robert McNamara was that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a “political problem” not a tactical problem. Kennedy’s former defense secretary stressed, going forward, nuclear weapons should never be used to solve “political problems.”

As Max Hastings so eloquently wrote, both Kennedy and Khrushchev, held fast to a motto every national leader should embrace: “BE AFRAID!”

“Neither John F. Kennedy, nor Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev,” Hastings wrote, “was deficient in personal courage, but what distinguishes them from Fidel Castro and from some military commanders on both sides of the Iron Curtain is that the two men were prudently haunted by consequences.”

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

March 4, 2023

FOOTNOTE: To give you some idea how obsessed President John Kennedy was with controlling the news cycle, here is a heated phone conversation he had with State Department spokesman, Lincoln White, who apparently issued a press statement, suggesting further action by the U.S. would be forthcoming if a peaceful solution was not found, angering JFK, because such a threatening statement was never authorized by the White House.

Cuban Missile Crisis: Additional Resources

Audio Clips from Kennedy White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (National Security Archive, George Washington University) 

"To The Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis" (condensed audio with visible transcripts from EXCOMM members on what military options were being considered via Youtube)

Audio Recordings and Transcripts of advice President Kennedy received from his most trusted advisors (from The Miller Center at the University of Virginia)

 

Did Ethel Rosenberg Deserve the Electric Chair?

 

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951.

Photo Credit: Not provided.

***

British author and journalist, Anne Sebba, who has written biographies on some shadowy British figures, including Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson, among others, traveled across the Atlantic to explore one of the most controversial characters of them all in her new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy."

In one of the most highly debated cases in American history, Ethel, along with her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union classified information on the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Ethel Rosenberg was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt, an American boarding house owner, was hanged (July 7, 1865) for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The Manhattan Project was a code name attached to a top-secret project involving Allied scientists working to develop an atomic bomb. According to recorded testimony, British physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Los Alamos, met with a Soviet agent (named Raymond) on two different occasions and transferred notes on the working design for the atomic bomb.

Fuchs would eventually be arrested and pressured to name his co-conspirators. He confessed to spying and passing to the Soviets information about the Manhattan Project.

There isn’t much debate surrounding Julius Rosenberg, the husband of Ethel Rosenberg. He was a card-carrying Communist party member since December 12, 1939, approximately six months after marrying Ethel in a small civil ceremony.

Mountains of court testimony, FBI records, and recently declassified cables, show irrefutably that Julius Rosenberg was a prime mover and shaker of a spy ring which involved transferring classified information about the development of the United States first atomic bomb from the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) to a courier, Harry Gold, who was alleged to have passed it on to the Soviets.

Testimony reveals David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold at Julius Rosenberg’s request; a sketch that was eventually transferred to the Soviets.

 Greenglass worked as a machinist-soldier stationed at Los Alamos. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to assist in this espionage ring.

 So, exactly how did Ethel become linked in this spy ring?

When the FBI questioned Greenglass on June 15, 1950; in addition to naming his wife Ruth and Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring, he told the feds that Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius, was in Julius’s apartment room and typed hand written notes on classified information from him.

In fact, no handwritten or type-written notes were ever found and they were never presented in court, raising credibility problems for the prosecution’s case that Ethel Rosenberg was an accomplice to the spy ring. The charges that Ethel Rosenberg typed the notes, in other words, was unsubstantiated.

In exchange for their testimony, David and Ruth Greenglass were given appreciably lighter sentences.

It wouldn’t be divulged until 2008 that the Greenglass’s (both Ruth and David, active participants in the spying activity) lied in their original testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing notes that would facilitate the spy ring. They later claim they were coerced by the prosecuting team, led by the ruthless firebrand Roy Cohn, to fabricate their story so they could force Ethel Rosenberg to disclose additional badly needed information about the spy ring.

In order to save his wife from prosecution, David Greenglass told journalist Sam Roberts that he was squeezed by the prosecution to commit perjury. His false testimony additionally saved his wife from prosecution.

David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 after serving 10 years of his 15-year sentence. His wife, Ruth, was never charged.

***

Groundless accusations against Ethel Rosenberg and the reason she was sentenced to death becomes the central focus of Anne Sebba’s fascinating book.

Most observers who have followed the Rosenberg case reach the overriding conclusion that threatening Ethel with a harsh punishment would make her share more information about the spy ring. She never offered prosecutor’s any more damaging information about the espionage activity because she wasn’t privy to such information. She was merely the wife of a Soviet spy, not a collaborator.

Martin Sobell, an American engineer, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, told reporters in 2008 that Ethel was guilty only "of being Julius's wife.”

Anne Sebba writes that the true extent of Ethel’s complicity will probably never be clearly known, but points out, “it was not a crime under U.S. Law to approve spousal wrongdoing, either during the war or the time of the trial.”

The fact that Julius Rosenberg didn’t distance Ethel from the real crime capers during the intense questioning, left many historians and journalists scratching their heads why he wouldn’t save his own wife from possible execution.

Not all observers, however, are convinced Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t an active participant in the spy ring.

Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University, told me “the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg at the trial was overwhelming, and Soviet foreign intelligence documents that became available in 2005 provide conclusive evidence that she gave her husband invaluable assistance with his espionage ring.”   “She did not deserve to be put to death” Kramer concedes, “but she certainly was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and was justifiably convicted, despite the misdeeds of the prosecutors.” Kramer thought a sentence of 15 to 25 years for Ethel Rosenberg would have been more appropriate. 

Along with the dubious charges against Ethel Rosenberg, Anne Sebba drives home the critical point that the execution of the Rosenbergs happened during a time of heightened paranoia in the United States about Soviet aggression and Communist intrusion into leading American institutions.

At the time of the Rosenberg case, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prominent ring leader of the “Second Red Scare,” charged that the State Department employed over 200 Communist agents, triggering fear and suspicion, leading to the blacklisting of a number of individuals who were hauled in front of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of unfounded subversion and treason charges.

“For one brief moment in time,” Sebba wrote, “hysteria overtook common sense and, in order to appear strong in the face of credible Communist threat, the American government allowed this profoundly moral woman to be executed, and in the most brutally incompetent manner.” “It is hard to imagine,” Sebba went on to write, “any other country, in Western Europe of the wider free world, where this terrible fate would have been inflicted on Ethel.”

The death penalty unquestionably met with the approval of a number of Americans at the time. As many as 68% respondents in a 1953 survey, supported the death penalty.

The death penalty might have been ok with a majority of the American public, but there was pent-up outrage, internationally, for the death sentence of Ethel Rosenberg, which Anne Sebba underscores.

At the time of the trial, for example, The New York Times printed a letter from German born physicist, Albert Einstein, who wrote: “My conscience compels me to urge you (President Eisenhower) to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”

The Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) published a passionate plea from the pope not to execute the Rosenbergs. Before he left office, President Truman received as many as three million letters and telegrams asking the Rosenbergs not be put to death.

Further, U.S. Ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, predicted (probably correctly) that the Rosenberg executions would be viewed, many years later, as a knee jerk reaction to McCarthyism. The majority in France, in fact, opposed the executions which they viewed as “unjustifiable punishment.”

For decades after the trial, the Rosenberg’s sons Robert and Michael Meeropol believed both their parents weren’t spies and fought vigorously to clear their names.

All that changed in 2008, when 91-year-old Martin Sobell admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy in a New York Times article. He additionally implicated Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring. According to the New York Times, “coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.”

After such a sobering revelation, the Rosenberg sons finally gave up the fight and acknowledged their father, Julius Rosenberg, was indeed a Soviet spy.

Both sons, however, continue to fight for the exoneration of their mother, Ethel Rosenberg. In 2016, they made an impassioned plea to President Barack Obama to clear her name without success.

Now that there’s a new president, I asked Michael Meeropol whether he and his brother would make a plea to President Joe Biden to decide for himself whether their mother was a spy?

Mr. Meeropol responded to my email only to say, “my brother and I are considering the possibilities, but we have not made any decisions yet.”

Thanks to Anne Sebba’s compelling narrative, readers are given an opportunity to decide for themselves whether prisoner number “10510” (from the Sing Sing prison overlooking the east bank of the Hudson River) really deserved to be executed shortly after 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953, along with her husband, Julius.

 

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

June 19, 2021

The Diary of Anne Frank: 69 Years after the New York Times Book Review

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, a gifted Jewish writer and diarist, never survived the Holocaust.

***

For those who love books and reading, you might be interested to know that the New York Times Book Review section celebrates its 125^th anniversary this year.

About 90 % of the books on my reading list are books I added after reading the Times Sunday Review of Books.

When did it all begin?

On October 10, 1896, the Times book review section was officially launched. It was originally published in the Saturday Review of Books and Art, based on the prevailing opinion that books should be treated as news. In 1911, it was moved to Sunday.

It wasn’t until August 9, 1942 that the Book Review section added a “Best Seller’s List.”

So, here we are, well into the 21^st century and I wondered which books, reviewed by the New York Times, have weathered the test of time and are still relevant?

There are so many books that are so influential and are as relevant today as when they were first published.

One of the first books that sprang to mind was “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.

Jeffrey Shandler, professor in the department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University thinks that “without a doubt Anne Frank's diary is one of the most influential books of the 20th century, in part because it has become one of the most widely read books of any kind, translated into dozens of languages and published in many millions of copies since it first appeared in Dutch in 1947.”

“Those who read the whole diary,” Shandler explained, “can see that it is a more complex text than the most familiar phrases that have been plucked from it. The diary voices anxieties as well as hopes about the dire situation Anne and her fellow Jews were facing and also dwells on Anne's coming of age under extraordinary circumstances” For this reason, Shandler said, “it has been recognized as an important text of adolescent female writing.”

Anneliese Marie Frank, a girl of Jewish heritage, was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Her childhood took a drastic turn when she was about four years old.

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis assumed power, Anne Frank, along with her elder sister, Margot, and their parents, Otto and Edith Frank, fled to Amsterdam. But when Nazi tanks stormed into the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and cruel anti-Jewish decrees were introduced, the Franks took refuge in Otto Frank’s office building. The Franks and four other Jews hid in a “secret annex,” (at Prinsengracht 263) which was a group of rooms at the top and back of a building that served as a warehouse and office for Frank’s Dutch-owned business. Otto Frank ran a pectin business. Pectin is a key ingredient for making jams, jellies, and other preserves.

During the day they had to be quiet, but later in the evening, they were free to roam around.

On her 13^th birthday, Anne Frank was presented with a red-checkered diary by her father, which she affectionately called “Kitty,” her imaginary friend. Anne would write in the diary from July 5, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Three days later, the family was captured by the Nazis and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in Drente, in the north of Holland. Less than a month later, they were deported to Auschwitz, the primary Nazi death camp in Poland. Less than two months later, Anne (15 years old) and her sister Margot (18 years old) were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany. There, emaciated and malnourished, they died from typhus. Historians estimate Anne and her sister died sometime in the spring of 1945. A mere 6-7% of Jewish children survived the Holocaust, compared with 33% among adults. Margot and Anne Frank were among the 6 million Jewish people and 1.5 million children murdered by Nazis.

Of the eight people that hid in the ‘’secret annex,’’ Otto Frank was the only one who survived. He was one of about 7,500 liberated from Auschwitz, out of more than one million.

One of the few remaining relics of his family was his daughter Anne’s diary, which was given to him by Miep Gies, one of the helpers in the annex who helped hide eight individuals from the Nazis, including Otto Frank and his family. Gies had kept the diary in a desk drawer.

After removing some highly personal and embarrassing passages, Otto Frank sought out a publisher for the diary, On June 25, 1947, Anne Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in Dutch in a small edition of 3,036 copies.

After some modest success, Otto Frank successfully signed deals with publishers in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) and in France. Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in both German and French in 1950. The book wasn’t a best seller, but it did sell a respectable 4,600 first edition copies.

The real game changer for Anne Frank’s diary didn’t come until 1952, when the diary was published in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

American novelist Meyer Levin wrote a review of the book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review section on June 15, 1952.  After the review, sales of Anne Frank’s Diary exploded. A second print run of 15,000 copies was issued, followed by a third of 45,000 copies. It wasn’t long before, millions had read “The Diary of Young Girl.”

In the review, Levin wrote: “her book is not a classic to be left on the library shelf. It is a warm and stirring confession, to be read over and over for insight and enjoyment.”

Describing the optimistic view Anne Frank held of the human race despite the torment and harsh conditions they were living under, Meyer went on to write “There is anguish in the thought of how much creative power, how much sheer beauty of living, was cut off through genocide. But through her diary Anne goes on living. This wise and wonderful young girl brings back a poignant delight in the infinite human spirit.”

Most surprising to any who read Meyer’s book review, is the understanding of how stylish Anne Frank’s writing was at such a tender age. “I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, If I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

And as if to portend her imminent death, Anne wrote: “I want to go on living even after my death.” …. “I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”

The central message Anne Frank wanted to communicate to all of us was “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

F.K Schoeman, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies and director of the Jewish Studies program at the University of South Carolina, describing the unconscionable hate and discrimination that existed in Anne Frank’s lifetime, says, “we are implicitly asked by her diary to be aware of what it means to live in a racist, hateful, antisemitic, misogynistic, unjust world for the victims of these wrong ideals.” “The "lesson," so to speak, of The Diary,” Schoeman continued. “lies beyond the last page of the diary: the fact that when we let democracy and justice slip through our fingers, an innocent 15-year-old girl (and 1.5 million more children like her) can be tortured and murdered while the world looks on without doing anything to help.” 

“The Diary of a Young Girl” became so popular and so widely read after Meyer Levin’s book review, that a play about Anne Frank was written by the husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on October 5,1955 and continued through June 22, 1957, after 717 performances.

It was a smash success, winning a string of Tony awards, including Best Play, and Best Director (Garson Kanin). The play additionally received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with a 1956 New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play.

The play was then adapted for a motion picture, which premiered in 1959. The film didn’t match the blockbuster success of the Broadway play, but it did earn Hollywood actress Shelley Winters an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. “The Diary of Anne Frank” also took home Oscars for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Black-and-White).

Since Levin’s book review, along with the Broadway and film productions, the diary has been translated into some 70 languages and circulated in an estimated 30 million copies. 

Today, there is a cottage industry of tributes to Anne Frank and her diary, which includes: other films and television programs, ballets, operas, musical productions, paintings, drawings, sculpture, popular books, postage stamps, commemorative coins, videotapes, CD-ROMS, and mountains more.

A sliding bookcase in the "secret annex" that concealed the entrance to the hiding place at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Photo Source: Anne Frank House, Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam

***

In 1957, the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in (in the center of Amsterdam) was on the brink of being destroyed. But since there was so much fascination with Anne Frank, the house was preserved (with the “secret annex” intact) and opened as a museum on May 3, 1960.

In 2019, 1.3 million visitors paid a visit to the Anne Frank House, about 80,000 more than in 2018 and 40,000 more than in 2017 when the museum was renovated. According to a museum spokesperson, the number of visitors in 2020 was limited to 396,779, due to the COVID pandemic.

Asked whether the Diary of Anne Frank with its universal message of “courage” and “hope” in the face of danger still resonates today, Sara Sewell, Professor of History at Virginia Wesleyan University, thinks that the “diary had a tremendous impact on Holocaust Studies across the globe, particularly a generation or two ago. As the history of the Holocaust entered the US classroom, it was largely through Anne Frank, as she made this history accessible to millions of students who were also teenagers.”

As much as she praises Anne Frank’s diary for having such a profound impact on understanding the Holocaust, Sewell does point out a critical weakness of the Diary. The problem of “learning about the Holocaust through this text,” Sewell cautions, “is that it ends just as she began the most horrific phase of her persecution.” “In other words,” Sewell explained, “what people most need to know about the Holocaust (death camps and survival, death in camps) is not discussed, and therefore, readers have a skewed view of the Holocaust.”

It is rare, indeed, when a book review propels a book to such towering heights, but there’s no mistaking that Meyer Levin’s New York Times book review, written almost 70 years ago, helped immeasurably in making Anne Frank a household name, both here in the United States and around the globe.

 ---Bill Lucey

March 21, 2021

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Digitizing the Vatican Library Brings the Past Back to Life

Now that we are well into the 21^st century, have medieval social historians, like Joëlle Rollo-Koster from the University of Rhode Island, faded into the thin night air and lost their relevance?

Hardly!

Turns out, Rollo-Koster is more relevant than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world (deaths having soared past the two million mark worldwide), many are seeking out her knowledge and expertise to learn how COVID compares with the Black Death of the 14^th century. About 25 million people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351.

But thanks largely to the digitization of documents from the Vatican Archives, mostly on CD-ROMs, researchers like Rollo-Koster are able to search 14^th century manuscripts to see how the word, “plague,” for example, was used, before, during (1348) and after the Black Death.  

Thanks to the magic of digitization (including advanced key word functions), Rollo-Koster didn’t have to plow through 500,000 documents (an impossible task) and was able to narrow her search down to a manageable 300 entries to see how the word was used.

Rollo-Koster discovered the word, “scourge’’ was used to describe heretics or bad rulers. It wasn’t until after Black Death that scourge was used to describe the disease. If she hadn’t been able to access the Vatican Archives, such precise information would have never been found.

The digitization of documents from the Vatican Library and Vatican Archives is still far from being completed, but even at this early stage, it has been an incredible boon for researchers. The Avignon registrars from the Avignon papacy (1309 to 1376), for example, which totals about 500,000 documents, all are digitized.

Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), opened the Vatican Archives to historians in 1883. 

Anthony Grafton, an American historian of early modern Europe at Princeton University and author of “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” tells me that “DigiVatLab (Digital Vatican Library) during the last year, “has enabled scholars all over the world to continue to make discoveries and publish them, even when the library had to close (due to COVID), and it will continue to provide that service as normal conditions resume.”

Prior to DigiVatLab, Grafton said, scholars would have to journey to Rome on a sabbatical or during the interval between Commencement and the annual closing of the library.

Daniel Gallagher, a lecturer of Latin in the Department of Classics at Cornell University, says the digitization has helped expand accessibility to a wider group of scholars, especially those unable to make the trek to Rome.  Gallagher said “there are many scholars of Chinese history who have the expertise and access to corresponding sources outside the Vatican collection who can shed light on what is in the connection related to the Church’s activity in China.” Exciting stuff, Gallagher thinks.  “Correspondence between the missionary Jesuits and Franciscans in China and the Holy See reveals much about the culture and religion the missionaries were encountering and the means they used to communicate the Christian message to the natives they encountered. “

Once you consider how much rare material is actually housed inside the Vatican Library, you have a greater appreciation why it will take quite some time to digitize the entire collection.

It’s literally unfathomable to think that the library preserves 80,000 manuscripts of late-antique, medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance provenance, in dozens of languages, from Aramaic to Old Church Slavonic just for starters. Also, at the Vatican Library, there are 60,00 or more of western manuscripts, 8,000 books printed before 1500, along with a vast collection of nonwestern books and manuscripts, treasures of humanity. It houses two million printed books. In fact, if you placed the books end to end in the Vatican Library it would measure 31 miles.  Add to this: a 4th-century Bible, the world's oldest, as well as copies of St Peter's letters and the gospels of Luke and John, dating from the 3rd century and written in Greek on papyrus.

Of particular interest to many is a 1493-book about Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World and 11 or 12 love letters of King Henry VIII to his alluring mistress, Anne Boleyn, which includes a hand drawn heart at the bottom of the page by the smitten English king. Henry’s love letters were actually stolen by a Vatican spy to build a case against his annulment request from Catherine of Aragon. A 1,600-year-old manuscript, displaying Virgil's poems once studied by Raphael can be found at the Library as well, though that manuscript is largely off-limits even to the most credentialed scholars.

Believe it or not, prior to the 17^th century, the Vatican lent out its holdings to the general public. Patrons would often check out books with the chain still on them as a reminder they belong to the library. The Vatican Library, as you might imagine, back then, maintained a primitive circulation system (simple notebooks, registrars). Still, according to Anthony Grafton, “librarians from Platina [Italian Renaissance Humanist] on swore solemn oaths to preserve and account for every book in their care.”

Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster

Photo by Michael Salerno Photography

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To get a sense of a typical day for a scholar in the Vatican Library or Vatican Archives in the 21^st century, Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster, after rushing home to feed her dog on a pleasant Kingston, Rhode Island afternoon, took some time with me over the phone to discuss her experiences researching at the Vatican Library, mostly the Vatican Archives.

Rollo-Koster first explained to me that the Vatican Library is used primarily by literary scholars, the Vatican Archives, on the other hand, are mainly used by historians, especially social historians such as herself.

The criteria for gaining access to the library or archives is fairly straightforward: you need to be a researcher, historian, or scholar and need a letter of introduction. If you write a book using sources from the Archives, you need to give the book to the Library/Archives.

You can’t enter the library until you stopped by the Prefect or Secretary, were they’ll check your credentials, letter of introduction, and passport. At that point, they’ll issue you a pass which records exactly when you entered the Library.  All your personal items, moreover, are kept in a locker room. Personal items are strictly forbidden inside the Library or Archives.

Well into the 1980s, women who entered the Vatican Library or Archives had to be dressed in a long skirt. Pants worn by females were forbidden. The dress code imposed on women was relaxed sometime in the 1990s. Patrons to the Library aren’t allowed to make Xerox copies themselves. They need to fill out a form and present it to a library employee, which is then sent to the Prefect for approval.

Rollo-Koster said her area of study requires her to examine documents from the 1300s. To my surprise, Rollo-Koster said many of the documents are gorgeous, in tip-top shape, others are old and decrepit. Most librarians will then display the documents on a table underneath a book stand.

If patrons get hungry at the Library, they’re allowed to exit in the courtyard between the Archives and the Library. Many of the scholars will smoke cigarettes and talk with others about their projects. They also have access to a coffee shop and small cafeteria. “You have some of the best food in Rome here,” Rollo-Koster said.  If you arrive early enough, you can find a table. Otherwise, you just eat outside.

The French born Rollo-Koster (born and raised in Toulon) tells me the biggest satisfaction she gets through researching and writing about the 14^th century, is she is able to look at records of the lesser-known characters and bring their history to life.  “For hundreds of years,” Rollo-Koster continued, “no one paid attention, no one was interested in social history. They were interested in the history of the popes and the kings. The fact that those documents have been preserved, gives me a gate of entry. Those little guys who have disappeared from history, can have their stories retold, thanks to the Archives. “

Another major point that Rollo-Koster stressed to me is that contrary to popular belief, the 14^th century documents found at the Vatican Library and Archives are not dry, dead documents. “Documents can really bring life” “My aim” Rollo-Koster said, “is to bring back to life, all those people who have disappeared from history. The Vatican Archives gives me access to those people.”

So, exactly when did the Vatican Library and Archives collect such a staggering amount of information?

Most historians point to the well-read Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), beginning in 1451, who re-established Rome as an academic center of worldwide stature, by building a modest library of over 1,200 volumes, including his personal collection of Greek and Roman classics and a series of texts brought from Constantinople. Nicholas wanted to establish not only a collection of books, but an institution. Nicholas additionally wanted to create a library at St Peter’s for general use by the Roman Court.

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) is credited with propelling the Vatican Library into an institution with the installation of books in a custom-built and beautifully decorated suite of rooms with gorgeous paintings.

A lesser-known fact about the growth of the Vatican Library is many from the Vatican were dispatched to ransack private and institutional libraries across Europe, searching in monasteries, above all for rare texts that had been copied and studied in antiquity and the early Middle Ages; documents, in other words that had fallen out of fashion. Leading erudite copyists were employed by the Vatican to translate into Latin the works of Greek poets, philosophers, and historians, many of which had been unknown in the West since ancient times.

Others, such as historian and Italian humanist Furvio Orsini, sold his books to the Vatican in exchange for a pension. The books remained in his possession until his death.

By Sixtus’s death in 1484, the Vatican Library housed more than 3,600 manuscripts. The concept of a central archive of the Holy See didn’t develop until Pope Paul V (1605-1621). In 1783, all remaining material in Avignon was brought to Rome; and in 1798 the archives of Castel Sant'Angelo (papal residence, fortress) were transferred to the apostolic palace, the official residence of the pope.

Today, the library now includes a rich history of science, learning, and the arts, on par with any institution in the world.  This we have Pope Nicholas V to thank for rejecting the common belief in the 15th century that Renaissance humanism represented a potential threat to the Church and its teachings.  Nicholas, undoubtedly going against the grain, encouraged the study of the pagan classics. 

Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor of Catholic Studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington, underscores how preserving and learning from history is so critical to the continuation of civil society. Pasulka, for example, tells me that she has “uncovered primary sources that enrich our understanding of not only European history, but also data that helps contemporary industries, such as the space industry and others.” “The digitization of these materials,” Pasulka continued “is one of the most important endeavors that has been undertaken to preserve knowledge of historical records that are fragile and in danger of being lost forever.”

Most importantly, the digitization of the Vatican Library and Archives means it is joining the ranks of other prominent institutions who have digitized their archives, such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cambridge University, and the Library of Congress.

--Bill Lucey

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February 28, 2021