Childhood in Nazi Germany informed ‘Post’ editor’s coverage of Watergate
Harry Rosenfeld barely escaped the Holocaust as a child in Nazi Germany and became a key Washington Post editor during its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate break-in and resulting scandal.
A burly, brusque and demanding editor, Rosenfeld, who has died aged 91, became fascinated by world affairs and journalism as a schoolboy in New York. He saw in journalism a way to keep oppressive forces at bay, ‘‘holding to account the accountable, the more powerful the better’’, he wrote in his 2013 memoir, From Kristallnacht to Watergate.
Rosenfeld worked in the newspaper industry for 50 years, beginning at the nowdefunct New
York Herald
Tribune, then at
The Post and finally as the top editor of two newspapers in Albany, New York.
His most enduring legacy stemmed from his years as The Post’s assistant managing editor for metropolitan news. In that role, he was the direct supervisor of two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as they doggedly reported on the unfolding Watergate saga that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.
Rosenfeld was a colourful and energetic figure. ‘‘He was like a football coach,’’ Woodward and Bernstein wrote in their 1974 book about Watergate, All the President’s Men. ‘‘He prods his players, pleading, yelling, cajoling.’’
Rosenfeld acknowledged in his memoir that he could be ‘‘a pain in the ass’’ to work with. He clashed with executive editor Benjamin Bradlee over Bradlee’s ‘‘compulsion to see the world in personal terms’’, Rosenfeld wrote, and over what he saw as Bradlee’s privileged upbringing and aura of elitism. ‘‘When he was a young kid, he learned to play’’ tennis, Rosenfeld noted in his book. ‘‘When I was a young kid, I dodged Nazis.’’
Rosenfeld’s relationship with Post publisher Katharine Graham was far sunnier. In her autobiography, Graham described Rosenfeld as a ‘‘real hero of Watergate for us’’.
In the early days of the scandal, Rosenfeld passionately defended Woodward and Bernstein when Bradlee wanted to replace them on the Watergate story with more seasoned staff writers. ‘‘They’re hungry,’’ he is said to have told Bradlee. ‘‘You remember when you were hungry?’’
In 1973, The Post won a Pulitzer for public service for its Watergate coverage. Rosenfeld was rewarded with a promotion to assistant managing editor in charge of The Post’s starstudded national staff. He lasted only a few months in that job.
Sensing a limited future at the paper, he decamped in 1978 to become editor of the Albany (New York) Times Union and the afternoon Knickerbocker News, both properties in the Hearst media empire. He retired in 1996, but remained an editor-atlarge, contributing regular editorial page columns, until his death.
Hirsch Moritz Rosenfeld was born in Berlin in 1929. His father was a furrier. In 1934, the family filed an application to immigrate to the US, but the request was delayed by the American immigration quota system then in place.
On November 9, 1938, Nazi storm troopers and their sympathisers smashed the front windows of dozens of Jewish-owned businesses in Berlin. The store that Rosenfeld’s father owned was somehow spared in the assaults that became known as Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass. A few days later, Harry Rosenfeld watched as his family’s synagogue was razed.
By sheer luck, the family were approved for immigration in March 1939. They arrived in New York on May 16 aboard the Cunard ocean liner Aquitania. Rosenfeld kept his US immigration card – No. 6064 – in a prominent place in his home for the rest of his life.
The family settled in the Bronx. Rosenfeld graduated from Syracuse University in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in American literature. In 1953, he married Anne Hahn. She and three daughters survive him.
Just before entering Syracuse, Rosenfeld got a summer job with the Herald Tribune’s
syndicate, eventually becoming managing editor for the news service and then foreign editor before the Herald Tribune and its partner newspapers folded in 1966.
Rosenfeld joined The Post as an editor on the foreign desk and had little experience with local news – and none with Washington-area news – when Bradlee promoted him to head the Metro staff, The Post’s largest, in 1970.
‘‘Harry was always the great, aggressive, hard-charging editor,’’ Woodward said. ‘‘But his message to his reporters was that we gather hard facts, listen to all and listen some more. Careful, patient listening was the key.’’
Rosenfeld’s collaboration with Woodward and Bernstein very nearly did not happen.
Soon after Rosenfeld took over as Metro editor, he gave Woodward, then a thoroughly green wannabe, a tryout. Not liking the results, he advised him to get some experience elsewhere and reapply.
Woodward continued to pester Rosenfeld with phone calls. One day in September 1971, Woodward called Rosenfeld at his home.
‘‘He came to the phone, found out it was only me and . . . angrily slammed down the phone.’’ But according to Woodward, Anne Rosenfeld said to her husband: ‘‘You always complain that your reporters are not aggressive enough.’’
‘‘Harry listened to her,’’ Woodward recalled. ‘‘Within several days, he hired me.’’ The Watergate break-in took place less than nine months later.