Spotlight
Tales Of The Tapes
Kissinger apologizes, says gas chamber remark should be considered in context.
Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Washington
I
t should have been ancient, if unsavory,
news: A cavalier reference to gassing
Jews, an aside in a conversation nearly
40 years old.
But the aside was pronounced by Henry
Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi
horrors as a child and who has been honored
by multiple Jewish organizations as one of
Israel's saviors during its darkest days, when
he was secretary of state for President Nixon.
"If they put Jews into gas chambers in the
Soviet Union, it is not an American concern':
Kissinger is heard saying on the latest batch
of Nixon-era Oval Office tapes released by
the Nixon Library.
Following its publication Dec. 11 —
buried deep in a New York Times story
that focused more on Nixon's well-known
bigotries — a shock shuddered through the
Jewish community and led to calls to shun
Kissinger, and then to calls to forgive him.
Finally, Kissinger issued an apology in an
op-ed piece in the Washington Post Dec. 26.
The recently released remarks, recorded
in the Oval Office, were taken out of context,
Kissinger wrote.
"For someone who lost in the Holocaust
many members of my immediate family
and a large proportion of those with whom I
grew up, it is hurtful to see an out-of-context
remark being taken so contrary to its inten-
tions and to my convictions, which were
profoundly shaped by these events," he wrote.
"References to gas chambers have no
place in political discourse, and I am sorry I
made that remark 37 years ago"
Kissinger made the remarks after a meet-
ing he and Nixon had with Israeli Prime
Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, where
Meir pleaded for the U.S. to put pressure on
the Soviet Union to release its Jews. Nixon
and Kissinger, who was then the secretary of
state, dismissed the plea after Meir left.
"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet
Union is not an objective of American for-
eign policy' Kissinger said on the tapes. "And
if they put Jews into gas chambers in the
Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.
Maybe a humanitarian concern;'
Initial Response
Kissinger, in an earlier e-mail to JTA,
would brook no request for an apology
and did not even directly address his gas
chambers remark. He appeared to insist
44
December 30 • 2010
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
on context: His frustration at the time
with the insistence of the Jewish com-
munity and U.S. senators such as Jacob
Javits, R-N.Y., and Henry "Scoop" Jackson,
D-Wash., on attaching human rights rid-
ers to dealings with the Soviets.
"The quotations ascribed to me in the
transcript of the conversation with President
Nixon must be viewed in the context of the
time Kissinger wrote to JTA.
He and Nixon pursued the issue of Soviet
Jewish emigration as a humanitarian mat-
ter separate from foreign policy issues in
order to avoid questions of sovereignty and
because normal diplomatic channels were
closed, Kissinger wrote.
"By this method and the persistent pri-
vate representation at the highest level we
managed to raise emigration from 700 per
year to close to 40,000 in 1972',' Kissinger
wrote. "We disagreed with the Jackson
Amendment, which made Jewish emigra-
tion a foreign policy issue. We feared that
the Amendment would reduce emigration,
which is exactly what happened.
"Jewish emigration never reached the
level of 40,000 again until the Soviet Union
collapsed. The conversation between Nixon
and me must be seen in the context of that
dispute and of our distinction between a for-
eign policy and a humanitarian approach:'
In Context
In fact, the historical consensus is that
while it was true that what became known
as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment —
named for Jackson and Rep. Charlie Vanik,
D-Ohio — at first inhibited emigration, it
formed the basis for the late-20th century
politics of making human rights a sine
qua non of statecraft. That resulted not
only in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews
15 years later, but also in contemporary
efforts to end internal massacres in coun-
tries such as Sudan.
Kissinger, however, was dedicated to
realpolitik — the art of securing the
grand deal, even at the expense of the
moral and ethical considerations of the
moment — and his disdain for human
rights activists knew few bounds.
Gal Beckerman, a historian of the Soviet
Jewry movement, told Tablet magazine
this even led Kissinger to suppress a let-
ter that might have helped salvage a deal
with the Soviets to release Jews under the
Jackson-Vanik stipulations.
Similar considerations led Kissinger to
press Nixon during the 1973 Yom Kippur
War to delay delivering arms to Israel by a
few weeks. Their conversations at the time
show Kissinger arguing that Anwar Sadat,
Egypt's president, needed an unadulterated
victory to make peace concessions.
Nixon argued — correctly, as it turned
out — that Sadat was already able to daim
a victory, and that it was more important
to stanch an ally's casualties in a war that
would claim 3,000 Israeli lives.
In a 2009 review of the period in the Jewish
Press, Nixon aides Alexander Haig, the chief
of staff, Leonard Garment, the White House
counsel; and Vernon Walters, the deputy CIA
chief, recall the same dynamic: The time for
hanging Israel out to dry had ended.
"Both Kissinger and Nixon wanted to
do [the airlift]," the Press quoted Walters as
saying. "But Nixon gave it the greater sense
of urgency. He said, 'You get the stuff to
Israel. Now Now."
Harsh Reaction
Although Kissinger's apology came two
weeks after the first report, reaction from
others came swiftly.
"In the past, Kissinger has defended his
role as enabler to Nixon's psychopathic
bigotry, saying that he acted as a restrain-
ing influence on his boss by playing along
and making soothing remarks:' said
Christopher Hitchens, a harsh critic who
has said Kissinger should be tried as a
war criminal for his role in ordering the
bombing of Cambodia and for enabling
Latin American autocrats.
"Obsessed as he was with the Jews, Nixon
never came dose to saying that he'd be
indifferent to a replay of Auschwitz. For this,
Kissinger deserves sole recognition:'
Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of
the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust
Survivors and Their Descendants, reached a
similar conclusion after reading accounts of
the Nixon tapes. "Now that Kissinger's true
nature has been exposed, the Jewish corn-
munity and Jewish institutions must draw
the appropriate consequences," he wrote in
an Op-Ed in the New York Jewish Week.
"We now come to the realization that as
far as he was concerned, human rights in
general were an irrelevancy' Rosensaft said
in an interview with JTA. "He needs to know
that when he is in the company of Jews, we
will know precisely who he is and we hold
him in contempt:'
Abraham Foxman, the national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, said that
approach goes too far. The ADL issued a
statement saying that Kissinger's comments
show a "disturbing and even callous insen-
sitivity toward the fate of Soviet Jews" and
are a reminder that "even great individuals
are flawed:' But, it noted,"Dr. Kissinger's con-
tributions to the safety and security of the
U.S. and Israel have solidly established his
legacy as a champion of democracy and as a
committed advocate for preserving the well-
being of the Jewish state of Israel:'
Foxman later told JTA: "He worked in an
atmosphere that was intimidatingly anti-
Semitic toward Jews. We need to understand
the intimidation under which it occurred:'
In September 1972, when Kissinger was
national security adviser, he and his rival,
Secretary of State William Rogers, had a
bitter exchange over whether they should
lower flags for the 11 Israeli athletes mur-
dered at the Munich Olympics. Nixon took
Kissinger's advice and lowered the flags.
❑
For a transcript of the tapes, visit JTA.org.