Edwin Black
Encyclopedia
Edwin Black is an American Jewish syndicated columnist
, and journalist
specializing in the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East
, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany
, among other topics. Black's eight works of non-fiction
have been translated into an array of non-English languages, including French
, Polish
, Hungarian
, Dutch
, German
, Spanish
, Japanese
, Portuguese
, and Hebrew
.
from Poland
who were survivors of the campaign of genocide
against the Jewish people by the fascist
government of Germany
and its allies. His mother Edjya, from Białystok, had only managed to survive the Holocaust when as a 12-year old in August 1943 she was pushed to safety by her mother and other prisoners through the vent of a boxcar
en route to the Treblinka extermination camp
. His father as a young man had escaped his murder by successfully fleeing to the woods from a long march to an isolated "shooting pit" and had subsequently fought the fascists as a Betar
partisan
. The pair had survived World War II
by hiding in the forests of Poland for two years, emerging only after the end of the conflict and emigrating to the United States.
Of his own origins, Black has written: "I was born in Chicago, raised in Jewish neighborhoods, and my parents never tried to speak of their experience again."
Following in the beliefs of his parents, Black was from his earliest days an adherent of the Jewish national state of Israel
. As a young man he spent time on a kibbutz
, visited Israel on several other occasions, and gave earnest consideration to permanent residency there.
while still in high school, later attending university where he further developed the craft. In the late 1970s he was a founder of the investigative magazine, The Chicago Monthly. He also was a frequent freelance contributor to the four major Chicago newspapers of the day, the Tribune
, the Daily News
, the Sun-Times
, and Chicago Today, as well as such weeklies as Chicago Reader and Chicago Magazine.
In 1978 Black interviewed the American Civil Liberties Union
lawyer who represented members of the American Nazi Party
who, intending provocation, marched through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie
. In preparing himself for that interview, Black's interest was piqued in the hidden history of relations between the government of Adolf Hitler
and German-Jewish Zionists during the first years of the Nazi regime. Five years of research followed, ending in the 1984 publication of his controversial first book, The Transfer Agreement
: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.
Black's books have typically made use of networks of volunteer and professional researchers assembled for each project. Three years before completion of his 2001 book, IBM and the Holocaust, Black began to put together what would ultimately become a team more than 100 researchers, translators, and assistants to work on discovery and analysis of primary source
documents written in German, French, and Polish. In all, more than 20,000 documents from some 50 different libraries, archives, museums, and other collections were assembled and analyzed in the writing of the book.
Black has written on topics beyond that of 1933-1945 German history, including books on the issue of oil dependence, the history of Iraq
, and alternative energy
. He is presently a contributor to the online magazine, The Cutting Edge.
Black has also occasionally written on the subject of film and television music
, contributing opinion pieces and composer interviews to various print and online publications.
Black lives today in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
, and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
specializing in the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, among other topics. Black's eight works of non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
have been translated into an array of non-English languages, including French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
.
Early years
Black is the son of ethnic JewsJews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
from Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
who were survivors of the campaign of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
against the Jewish people by the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
government of Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and its allies. His mother Edjya, from Białystok, had only managed to survive the Holocaust when as a 12-year old in August 1943 she was pushed to safety by her mother and other prisoners through the vent of a boxcar
Boxcar
A boxcar is a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry general freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is probably the most versatile, since it can carry most loads...
en route to the Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
. His father as a young man had escaped his murder by successfully fleeing to the woods from a long march to an isolated "shooting pit" and had subsequently fought the fascists as a Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...
partisan
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
. The pair had survived World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
by hiding in the forests of Poland for two years, emerging only after the end of the conflict and emigrating to the United States.
Of his own origins, Black has written: "I was born in Chicago, raised in Jewish neighborhoods, and my parents never tried to speak of their experience again."
Following in the beliefs of his parents, Black was from his earliest days an adherent of the Jewish national state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. As a young man he spent time on a kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
, visited Israel on several other occasions, and gave earnest consideration to permanent residency there.
Career
Black began working as a professional journalistJournalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
while still in high school, later attending university where he further developed the craft. In the late 1970s he was a founder of the investigative magazine, The Chicago Monthly. He also was a frequent freelance contributor to the four major Chicago newspapers of the day, the Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, the Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
, the Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
, and Chicago Today, as well as such weeklies as Chicago Reader and Chicago Magazine.
In 1978 Black interviewed the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
lawyer who represented members of the American Nazi Party
National Socialist Party of America
The National Socialist Party of America was a Chicago-based organization founded in 1970 by Frank Collin shortly after he left the National Socialist White People's Party. The NSWPP had been the American Nazi Party until shortly after the assassination of leader George Lincoln Rockwell in 1967...
who, intending provocation, marched through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie
Skokie, Illinois
Skokie is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Its name comes from a Native American word for "fire". A Chicago suburb, for many years Skokie promoted itself as "The World's Largest Village". Its population, per the 2000 census, was 63,348...
. In preparing himself for that interview, Black's interest was piqued in the hidden history of relations between the government of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and German-Jewish Zionists during the first years of the Nazi regime. Five years of research followed, ending in the 1984 publication of his controversial first book, The Transfer Agreement
The Transfer Agreement
The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine is a non-fiction book written by author Edwin Black, documenting the agreement between Zionist Jews and Adolf Hitler to help create a Jewish state in Palestine, in return for an end of a global...
: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.
Black's books have typically made use of networks of volunteer and professional researchers assembled for each project. Three years before completion of his 2001 book, IBM and the Holocaust, Black began to put together what would ultimately become a team more than 100 researchers, translators, and assistants to work on discovery and analysis of primary source
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....
documents written in German, French, and Polish. In all, more than 20,000 documents from some 50 different libraries, archives, museums, and other collections were assembled and analyzed in the writing of the book.
Black has written on topics beyond that of 1933-1945 German history, including books on the issue of oil dependence, the history of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, and alternative energy
Alternative energy
Alternative energy is an umbrella term that refers to any source of usable energy intended to replace fuel sources without the undesired consequences of the replaced fuels....
. He is presently a contributor to the online magazine, The Cutting Edge.
Black has also occasionally written on the subject of film and television music
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
, contributing opinion pieces and composer interviews to various print and online publications.
Black lives today in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
Selected literary awards
- 1985 Carl Sandburg Award of the Friends of the Chicago Public LibraryChicago Public LibraryThe Chicago Public Library is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in Illinois. It consists of 79 branches, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the city....
for best non-fiction book of 1984 for the book The Transfer Agreement. - 2003 Outstanding Book Award: General Nonfiction from the American Society of Journalists and AuthorsAmerican Society of Journalists and AuthorsThe American Society of Journalists and Authors was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is an organization of independent nonfiction writers in the United States...
(ASJA) for the book IBM and the Holocaust. - 2003 Donald Robinson Award for Investigative Journalism from the ASJA for the article "Final Solutions: How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland," published in The Village Voice.
- 2005 Best World Affairs Book Award from the Great Lakes chapter of the World Affairs CouncilWorld Affairs CouncilWorld Affairs Council may refer to:* World Affairs Councils of America, a non-profit, non-partisan umbrella organization for world affairs councils throughout the United States...
for Banking on Baghdad. - 2007 Honorable Mention for General Non-Fiction Books from the ASJA for the book Internal Combustion.
Books
- The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. New York: Macmillan, 1984.
- Format C: (novel) Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 1999.
- IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.IBM and the HolocaustIBM and the Holocaust is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation International Business Machines and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and the...
New York: Crown Publishers, 2001. - War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
- Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
- Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.
- The Plan: How to Rescue Society When the Oil Stops — or the Day Before. (cover title) Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2008.
- Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust. Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2009.
- The Farhud: The Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust. Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2010.
- British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement. Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2011.
Anthology contributions
- Götz AlyGötz AlyGötz Aly is a German journalist, historian and social scientist.-Biography:After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin...
and Karl Heinz Roth, The Nazi Census: Identification and Control in the Third Reich. Introduction and translation by Edwin Black. Additional translation by Assenka Oksiloff. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. - John Friedman (ed.), The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World. New York: Picador Books, 2005.
- Eric Katz (ed.), Death By Design: Science, Technology, and Engineering in Nazi Germany. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.
- Alan DershowitzAlan DershowitzAlan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history...
(ed.), What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. - Michael T. Wilson (ed.), Democracy: Opposing Viewpoints. Farmington Hills, MI : Greenhaven Press/Thomson Gale, 2006.
- Tobias Daniel Wabbel (ed.), Das Heilige Nichts: Gott nach dem Holocaust (The Holy Nothingness: God after the Holocaust), Düsseldorf, Germany: Patmos Publishers, 2007.
Selected articles
- "Final Solutions: How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland," Village Voice.com, March 26, 2002.
- "Does Jonathan Pollard Deserve a Life Sentence?" History News Network, June 20, 2002.
- "The IBM Link to Auschwitz," Village Voice.com, October 8, 2002.
- "Ethnic Cleansing in Connecticut – Nazi Eugenics in the State," Hartford Advocate, September 11, 2003.
- "Funding Hate — How the Ford Foundation Funds Hate Groups," In 4 parts. JTA News Service, October 2003.
- "Eugenics and the Nazis — the California Connection," San Francisco Chronicle, SF Gate.com, November 9, 2003.
- "When the Seeds of the Middle East Mess Were Laid — in 1920," History News Network, December 12, 2004.
- "GM and the Nazis," In 4 Parts. JTA News Service, November 29, 2006.
- "Wikipedia — The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge," The Cutting Edge.com, April 12, 2010.
Selected contributions to video documentaries
- IBM's Role and the Holocaust, GNN, 2001.
- The King of Capitalism, BBC, 2002.
- The Corporation, Big Picture Media Corporation/Hello Cool World.com, 2002.
- Saddam and the Third Reich, History Channel, 2007.
- Racism — A History, BBC, 2007.
- War Against the Weak—The Movie, 2009.
- One Mainframe to Rule Them All, Faull Brothers, 2010.
External links
- Edwin Black official website, Edwin Black.com. Retrieved May 8, 2010.
- "Secret Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archive—a trove of Revelations about Holocaust Insurance, Corporate Complicity and IBM involvement."
- Edwin Black interviewed by Stuart Weinblatt, The Transfer Agreement. (video) Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Rockville, Maryland, October 30, 2009. C-SPANC-SPANC-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
Book TV. Air date: January 17, 2010. Retrieved May 8, 2010. - Edwin Black presentation, Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust. (video) East Park Synagogue, New York City. C-SPAN Book TV. Air date: May 16, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2010.
- Edwin Black presentation, The Plan: How to Rescue Society When the Oil Stops — or on the Day Before. (video) Temple Beth Tikvah, Fullerton, California. C-SPAN Book TV. Air date: January 3, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2010.