Nows and Forevers

Eighty years ago this afternoon, legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow delivered one of the most important broadcasts of the 20th century, a report on his visit three days earlier to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

It took Murrow, as cool a journalist as they come, that long to process the horror. This 9-minute broadcast is probably the most famous description, but nowhere near the only, of what it was like to enter a newly liberated Nazi death camp. Nor did Murrow capture the full scope of the Holocaust. That would come later.

The years haven’t dimmed the power of Murrow’s words. It’s a harrowing listen. But it’s an important listen. At a time when so much history is being shoveled into the memory hole or denied outright, we need to remember.

In high school, I became interested in Murrow after meeting through my Dad a few of the people who had worked with him at CBS. I’ve heard this and a lot of Murrow’s broadcasts, from “This Is London” pieces to the “See It Now” broadcast that’s the basis of “Good Night and Good Luck” and “Harvest of Shame.” I even held a script Murrow held while I was doing research at Yale for a high school paper on Murrow. I just listened to this again now. It still burns. Murrow was, without any training, one of the best journalists and speakers who have ever lived. That leaps out at me again.

But above all, the sheer horror of this and all that was done during the Holocaust..

“I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald,” he said. “I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.”