Herman Bernstein was an American journalist, poet, novelist, playwright, translator, Jewish activist, and diplomat. He was the United States Ambassador to Albania and was the founder of The Day, the Jewish daily newspaper.
Biography
Herman Bernstein was born in Vladislavov, at that time on the Russo-German border. Herman's parents were David and Marie Elsohn Bernstein. His brother was a writer, Hillel, or Harry Bernstein. He also had two older sisters named Helen and Flora. When he was 6 years old, his parents moved to Mohilev, on the Dnieper river in present-day Belarus. Herman emigrated to the United States in 1893 first arriving in Chicago. His father, a Talmudic scholar, became sick with tuberculosis shortly after they arrived in the United States. This illness required Herman and his siblings to work in sweatshops to support the family. He married Sophie Friedman in 1901. They had four children together, Violet Bernstein Willheim, Hilda Bernstein Gitlin, Dorothy Bernstein Nash, and David Bernstein. In 1893, he emigrated with his family to the United States, where he completed his education. He married Sophie Friedman on December 31, 1901. They had three daughters, Hilda Bernstein Gitlin, Dorothy Bernstein Nash, Violet Bernstein Willheim; and a son David Bernstein, who became a long-time newspaper editor in Binghamton, New York. Bernstein covered the Russian Revolution in 1917 for the New York Herald, which led him to both Siberia and Japan with the American Expeditionary Forces. He covered the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 for the same newspaper. Herman Bernstein died in Sheffield, Massachusetts on August 31, 1935. He was survived by his wife Sophie, and his brother the writer Hillel Bernstein.
Legacy
Descendants include Peter Nash, a physician and poet; Joyce Gitlin Abell, a teacher and farmer; Crispin Sartwell, a philosophy professor and journalist; Boaz Nash, a physicist; and Joan Weber, a visual artist.
Journalism
Bernstein was prolific as a journalist throughout his life, with his first stories published in 1900. He contributed, among others, to the New York Evening Post, The Nation, The Independent, and Ainslee's Magazine. He was the founder and editor of The Day and an editor of The Jewish Tribune and of the Jewish Daily Bulletin. As a correspondent of the New York Times, Bernstein regularly travelled to Europe. In 1915, he went to Europe to document the situation of Jews in the war zones. Victoria Woeste writes: Bernstein later translated Beilis's Story of My Sufferings. In the 1920s Bernstein wrote for the New York American and the Brooklyn Eagle, often reporting from Europe and writing frequently about Russia.
Secret correspondence between the Kaiser and the Tsar
In 1918, Bernstein revealed a secret correspondence between Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II and published it in a book, The Willy-Nicky Correspondence, published by Knopf with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt. Bernstein summarized the contents as follows: He remarked that "the Kaiser is exposed as a master intriguer and Mephistophelian plotter for Germandomination of the world. The former Tsar is revealed as a capricious weakling, a characterless, colourless nonentity." The two, Bernstein wrote, "both talked for peace and plotted against it." In 1915, Bernstein published a book, La Rekta Gibulo, in the so-called universal language Esperanto. It is a translation of the story "The Straight Hunchback" which comes from Bernstein's In the Gates of Israel.
Bernstein translated a number of important literary works, by figures such as Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, Leo Tolstoy, and Ivan Turgenev, from Russian to English. His own plays The Mandarin and The Right to Kill, were presented on Broadway. In addition, he published poems, short stories, and a novel.
Politics and diplomacy
In the early 1910s, Bernstein advocated liberal immigration policies and was a member of the Democratic National Committee, working to elect Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Bernstein met Herbert Hoover at the Paris Peace Conference and supported his bid for the presidency in 1928. Soon thereafter, Bernstein published Herbert Hoover: The Man Who Brought America to The World. In 1930 Hoover appointed Bernstein as the United States minister to Albania, a position he held until 1933. During this appointment, he helped put into place several treaties between the U.S. and Albania, and received an award from King Zog for his service to Albania, the Grand Cordon of the Order of Skanderbeg.
Refutation of the ''Protocols'' and lawsuit against Henry Ford
In 1921, responding to Henry Ford's printing of 500,000 copies of the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as a series of anti-Semitic articles under the title The International Jew in Ford's newspaper The Dearborn Independent, Bernstein published the book History of a Lie, a demonstration of The Protocols' spurious origins. At the same time Ford was being lauded as an anti-Semite hero in Europe, he was confronted with another lawsuit in America. This one came from Herman Bernstein, the same man who had helped to expose The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a forgery. In the August 20, 1921 issue of the Independent, Bernstein had been identified as the source... who revealed to Ford the supposed worldwide Jewish conspiracy. "He told me most of the things that I have printed," Ford claimed in the article, which labeled Bernstein "the messenger boy of international Jewry." An outraged Bernstein denied the allegations and, in 1923, sued Ford for $200,000. He told the press that he was doing a public service by allowing the American people to get a "true picture" of Ford's "diseased imagination." Bernstein was represented by Samuel Untermyer. The suit languished because Bernstein and his representatives were never able to serve Ford with a subpoena; Ford had many allies among the political and law enforcement officials of Michigan and elsewhere, as well as a large private security force. Bernstein and Untermeyer did, however, succeed in getting New York state officials to agree to impound any copies of The Independent that entered the state. The extent to which this was enforced is not clear. Other libel suits against Ford were pursued by Louis Marshall and Aaron Sapiro, though there was tension among these figures over which suit was most viable. In response to the suits, as well as the fear that the negative publicity was hurting automobile sales, Ford issued an 'Apology to Jews,' the sincerity of which is a matter of controversy. These cases are significant in the history of the jurisprudence pertaining to group libel and hate speech. In 1935, the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany and revived The Protocols yet again - and requiring all German schoolchildren to read it. Bernstein published another and more elaborate refutation, The Truth About the 'Protocols of Zion' - A Complete Exposure. Bernstein died later that year.
Interviews
Bernstein interviewed many of the most eminent people of his time, including Leo Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw, Auguste Rodin, Henri Bergson, Pope Benedict XV, Peter Kropotkin, Leon Trotsky, Chaim Weizmann, Havelock Ellis, Romain Rolland, Albert Einstein, and Woodrow Wilson. These interviews were gathered in several books, including With Master Minds: Interviews by Herman Bernstein and Celebrities of Our Times.
Translations, poetry, plays, short stories
Bernstein translated a number of important literary works, by figures such as Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, Leo Tolstoy, and Ivan Turgenev, from Russian to English. His own plays The Mandarin and The Right to Kill, were presented on Broadway. In addition, he published poems, short stories, and a novel.
