In March 1942, Bertrand Jacobson (for two years the JDCΓÇÖs main agent in its relief efforts in Eastern Europe) held a press conference that provided information for newspapers around the world. Jacobson estimated that the Nazis had already murdered 240,000 Jews in the Ukraine alone and asserted that the killings in Eastern Europe were continuing in full fury.
One of the most horrifying disclosures made in the United States to that point was an account by a Hungarian soldier who had observed a large mass grave near Kiev. Seven thousand Jews, some dead but others wounded and alive, had been thrown into the shallow grave and covered with a thin layer of soil. The spectacle of this field, "heaving like a living sea," was etched into the soldierΓÇÖs memory.
Although we know today that these figures underestimated the extent of the NazisΓÇÖ genocide among the Jews through March 1942, the press coverage had the important effect of revealing the reports on the murders to the free world.
