The Late Blooming
Of A.M. Rosenthal

journalism in the form of the so-called New Jour- sors fretted about the appearance of Jewish "clan-
nalism, which sought to supplant traditional ob- nishness."
Yet, there were almost always Jews on the upper
jectivity with more personal reportage.
rungs
of the paper's management. Abe Rosenthal
Editor Rosenthal fought all efforts to dilute the
just
turned
out to be the most successful of them.
Times' objectivity. "As other institutions were wa-
In
1963,
back
in New York after a successful string
vering," he said, "I kept the paper centrist. I kept it
of
assignments
as a foreign correspondent, Mr.
S fitting down with Abe Rosenthal is like sit- straight. It remained a paper whose purpose was
Rosenthal
was
appointed
the Times' metropolitan
ting down with a talk machine. Turn him to give people information from which they could
editor.
In
1967,
he
became
assistant managing ed-
on and he's hard to turn off. Ask him a make their own conclusions." As top editor, Mr.
itor.
In
1969,
he
was
managing
editor.
question — and, most of the time, he'll an- Rosenthal also oversaw the re-design of the Times
And
in
1977,
he
ascended
to
the newly created
swer it directly. Even if he obfuscates, you that essentially turned its third section into a dai-
position
of
executive
editor,
where
he not only as-
can be sure he'll devote more than enough ly magazine with a different theme each day: Sports
signed
more
Jews
to
the
paper's
top
echelons but
on Monday, Science on Tuesday, Food on Wednes-
time to it.
also
broke
the
paper's
implicit
policy
against send-
"I talk too much," admitted the bow-tied ex-edi- day, Home on Thursday, and Arts and Entertain-
ing
a
Jew
to
report
from
Israel.
In
1984,
he appointed
tor in his office furnished with Japanese prints, sev- ment on Friday.
Thomas
Friedman
as
head
of
the
paper's
Jerusalem
"We swallowed New York [magazine]," Rosenthal
eral small cactus plants, and photos of his three sons
bureau.
Mr.
Friedman
had
already
won
a Pulitzer
and his second wife. "And sometimes, I'm just too later said. "I'll steal an idea from anybody if it's
for
his
reporting
on
the
war
in
Lebanon
and,
specif-
not nailed down."
facetious."
ically,
for
the
massacre
in
the
Sabra
and
Shatilla
But he is open about his life and career: "I'm a
refugee camps.
man of many faults, but concealment is not one of
Told during our interview that the head of one
them." And he admitted that his reputation for be-
pro-Israel
press watchdog had said "A.M. Rosen-
ing highly emotional has some truth: "I am emo-
thal
has
a
lot
to atone for — Tom Friedman," Mr.
or decades, the Times feared being per-
tional, but not professionally emotional. I ran a
Rosenthal
barked,
"Tell him to stuff it in his ear. I
ceived as a "Jewish newspaper." It had
kind of conservative paper. In my epitaph, I want
hear
something
like
that all the time. Tom Fried-
been owned by Jews since 1896 when pur-
them to say, 'He kept the paper straight.' "
man
was
a
first-rate
foreign correspondent and
chased by Adolph Ochs (whose wife was
The years that Abe Rosenthal headed the Times
everyone
thought
so.
He
won two Pulitzer prizes in
the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Mayer, one of
coincided with sit-ins, campus takeovers, anti-war
about
four
years.
He
was
warm-hearted and had
the founders of the Reform movement).
demonstrations, Watergate and the Pentagon Pa-
a
sense
of
history.
Both
Arabs
and Jews trusted him
pers. Some of this liberal/radicalism seeped into But Ochs and the next two generations of succes-

an 'iconoclast.' You can be an iconoclast without be-
ing anti-Semitic."

Keeping 'Straight'

The Rise Of Abe

F

Whatever Happened To A.M. Shipiatski?

A.M. Rosenthal almost had a different'
byline. En route to Canada from
Byelorussia in the late 1890s, the
journalist's father dropped the original
family name in favor of "Rosenthal,"
which he had picked up from a
maternal unde in London. If he hadn't,
there would now be a column in the
Times written by "A.M. Shipiatski."
In the New World, Harry Rosenthal
laid railroad tracks, worked on sever-
al utopian farms, and traded furs that
he had caught in the Hudson Bay area
as he rode about on a sled pulled by a
team of dogs. He also had four daugh-
ters and a son, born in Sault St. Marie,
Ontario, on May 2, 1922.
When the fur business declined dur-
ing the Depression, the Rosenthal fam-
ily moved to New York, where Harry
worked as a house painter. Rebelling
against the Orthodox religious train-
ing he had received from his father in
Russia, Harry Rosenthal gave none of
his children any religious education.
Abe Rosenthal was later "troubled"
about not being able to read Hebrew.
A few years ago, he remembered, he
"went to a Passover seder at the home
of Jim Wolfensen [the head of Carnegie

30

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1992

Hall]. After, I wrote him a letter in of a people person. If you sit down next
which I explained to myself why I to Russell Baker in the Times cafete-
hadn't gone to more seders. I realized ria, you have a wonderful time. I can't
that I didn't want to be angry with my always say that about Abe."
This reporter remembered that for
father. I had loved him very much.
Sometimes, when I went to synagogue, years, "Abe was terribly rumpled look-
I felt angry toward him. I didn't like ing. His shirt tail was always out."
(His haberdashery finally changed
that."
in
the mid-1980's when he separated
One day while attending New York's
City College, Abe Rosenthal ran into from his wife and later married Shirley.
Richard Cohen, a friend with whom Lord, a Vogue editor and author of sev-
he had attended elementary and high eral steamy novels.)
Mr. Rosenthal joined the Times staff
schools in the Bronx. Young Cohen was
the editor of the college newspaper and in 1944. From 1946 to 1954, he covered
said Abe should try out for it. Abe did, the nascent United Nations. A few
times, while covering UN debates about
and made the cut.
"He was very, very good from the be- Palestine, his by-line — which the Times
ginning," said Mr. Cohen, whose New had truncated to A.M. Rosenthal — was
York firm handles public relations for eliminated entirely from a story.
"It was taken off by Jews," says Mr.
several major national Jewish orga-
Rosenthal
now. "I would go to non-Jews
nizations.
Young Rosenthal soon became the to protest and they would fight for me."
For the next nine years, Mr. Rosen-
Herald Tribune's CCNY correspondent,
thal reported from India, Warsaw,
then the New York Times'.
"He was an incredible, demon re- Geneva, Vienna, the Congo, Central
porter," remembered a Times' reporter Africa, and Tokyo. One of his prouder
who knew Mr. Rosenthal in his days as dispatches as a foreign correspondent
a campus correspondent. "He was al- was from Auschwitz 14 years after the
ways fiercely competitive. I never felt end of the Second World War:
"...There is no news to report from
he was a team player. Nor was he much

Auschwitz," he wrote in barren, skele-
tal prose. "There is merely the com-
pulsion to write something about it, a
compulsion that grows out of a restless
feeling that to have visited Auschwitz
and then turned away without hav-
ing said or written anything would
somehow be a most grievous act of dis-
courtesy to those who died here."
Visitors "gaze blankly at the gas
chambers and the furnaces because
their minds simply cannot encompass

them"; in a suffocation dungeon, one
visitor "felt himself strangling";
another went in, stumbled out, and
crossed herself, although there was
"no place to pray" in this worst of hells.

"There is nothing new to report from
Auschwitz," concluded Mr. Rosenthal.
"It was a sunny day and the trees were
green and at the gates the children
played."
"If you want to get on Abe's good
side," advised one journalist, "ask him
for a copy of his piece on Auschwitz. It's
one of his crowning moments as a jour-
nalist."

A.J.M.

