Washington Post omits Kissinger on ‘Jews in gas chambers’
“The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality,” President Richard M. Nixon told White House aide Charles W. Colson in a 1973 conversation, The Washington Post reported (“New Nixon tapes reveal anti-Semitic, racist remarks; In casual conversation, he rails against Jews, blacks, Italians, Irish,” December 12).
The latest Nixon tapes to be made public also document, The Post noted, that “when Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was in Washington, Nixon gave instructions to [presidential secretary Rosemary] Woods about who should be invited, or not invited, to what he called ‘the Jewish dinner.’”
But the newspaper did not report that the tapes also featured Secretary of State Henry Kissinger telling Nixon, after a March 1, 1973 meeting with Meir, that “the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy.” Meir had pleaded for Washington to pressure Moscow to let Jews emigrate. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” Kissinger continued, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” Earlier, The New York Times (“In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks ”, December 10) had found Kissinger’s comment newsworthy.
Kissinger is Jewish and he escaped as a child with his family from Germany in the 1930s. The Post, like The Times, reported Nixon’s derogatory comments about Irish, Italians and blacks as well as Jews. But not the startling Kissinger-Nixon exchange about hypothetical Jewish genocide in the Soviet Union.
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