Edwin Black | |
|---|---|
 Edwin Black in March 2014 | |
| Born | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, historian, talk show host |
| Genre | Non Fiction |
| Notable works | Internal Combustion, The Farhud, Nazi Nexus, Banking on Baghdad, British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement, and Financing the Flames. |
| Notable awards | American Society of Journalists and Authors Best Nonfiction Investigative Book of the year for IBM and the Holocaust, 2003 |
Edwin Black (born February 27, 1950) is an American historian and author, as well as a syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, and weekly talk show host on The Edwin Black Show. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, academic fraud, corporate criminality and abuse, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.
Black is the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland. His mother, Ethel "Edjya" Katz, from Białystok, told of narrowly escaping death during the Holocaust by escaping a boxcar en route to the Treblinka extermination camp as a 13-year old in August 1943. After escaping, she was shot by militiamen and then rescued by a Polish Jewish fighter whom she later married.[1] Black's father described escaping death by fleeing to the woods from a long march to an isolated "shooting pit" and subsequently fighting the Nazis as a Betar partisan. The pair 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.[1][2]
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."[2]
In his book The Transfer Agreement Black notes that following in the beliefs of his parents, he was from his earliest days a supporter of the State of Israel.[2] As a young man he spent time on a kibbutz, visited Israel on several other occasions, and gave earnest consideration to permanent residency there.[2]
Black began working as a professional journalist while still in high school, later attending university where he further developed the craft. 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.[citation needed] In the late 1970s, he was the editor of Chicago Monthly.
In 1978, Black interviewed the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented members of the American Nazi Party, which had marched provocatively through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie.[3] In preparing himself for that interview, Black's interest was piqued by 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 first book, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.[4]
In the early 1990s Black served as the editor-in-chief for OS/2 Professional magazine and OS/2 Week[5][6] and reported on OS/2 users and technology.
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 of more than 100 researchers, translators, and assistants to work on discovery and analysis of primary source documents written in German, French, and Polish.[citation needed] 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.[7]
In the fall of 2012, it was reported that Plan B, the production company owned by actor Brad Pitt, had taken an option on a cinematic adaptation of Black's IBM and the Holocaust.[8] Marcus Hinchey, co-writer of the 2010 film All Good Things, was tapped for script-writing responsibilities.[8]
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 syndicated columnist in publications in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere.
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.[9] An aficionado of musical soundtracks, Black regularly credits specific works which have provided "musical inspiration that propelled the writing" in the introductory notes to each book.[10]
In 2010, in his book The Farhud, the author resurrected the so-called "Forgotten Pogrom," the bloody June 1–2, 1941 pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad, known as The Farhud, sometimes called the Iraqi Kristallnacht. In 2015, Black founded the annual commemoration, International Farhud Day, which he proclaimed at the United Nations in a live globally-streamed event. The remembrance has been recognized and observed in many countries and in 2021, it was reported in the media that 10,000 people in numerous countries lit candles.
The author has coined or popularized certain words and terms. These include: "petropolitical" in lectures during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo; "digital ghetto" and/or "algorithm ghetto" in 2001 during lectures on the book IBM and the Holocaust, and again at the 2018 Michigan Holocaust Day Commemoration. Black is also the originator of International Farhud Day, June 1, commemorating the 1941 massacre of Jews in Iraq, which was proclaimed at the United Nations in a live globally-streamed event in 2015. He also originated the Yom HaGirush commemoration, November 30, commemorating the expulsion of 850,000 Jews from Arab countries after the State of Israel was declared its independence, in a broadcast of the Edwin Black Show in 2021.[11][12][13][14]
He has written an article critical of Wikipedia, "Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge."[15]
From May 31 to June 3, 2016, it was widely reported, Black embarked upon a 100-hour, four-city, three-country commemoration book tour, this to observe International Farhud Day on the 75th anniversary of the Farhud. Black originated International Farhud Day the year before. The tour began May 31, in the morning in the House of Representatives in Washington, then shifted to the Edmond J. Safra Congregation in New York the evening that same day. On June 2, he led the book and commemoration ceremony in London with the Israeli Embassy at the Lauderdale Rd Synagogue. On June 3 he arrived in Israel for a series of Farhud book and commemoration events that ended with a ceremony in the Israeli Knesset.
In November and December 2014, he went on a 45-event "Human Rights Tour." In North Carolina, Black reportedly appeared nine times in three days speaking out against the persecution of Yazidis, Shia Muslims, and Christians in Iraq, racial injustice in America, and its impact on the November elections, as well as environmental injustice arising out of oil addiction, journalistic ethics in covering human rights, bias against Jews in Israel, and a health care crisis in the Middle East.[16]
In February and March 2014, Black embarked upon a "Parliamentary Tour" in which he appeared at four parliaments in a four-week period, including the House of Commons in London, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives in Washington D.C. [17]
Black's ten 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.[18]
