To the Editors:
In “Mencken vs. Mencken” (May 1990) Terry Teachout says that Mencken was, “at worst, a rather mild social anti-Semite.”
In the 1930s an atmosphere of socially accepted anti-Semitism made many otherwise intelligent people indifferent to the oppression of European Jewry. The Nazis would not have proceeded to exterminate the Jews had they not been assured of the indifference of the Western powers.
Mr. Teachout says that Mencken must have been “shaken” by the Germans’ use of science for the purpose of mass murder. How can we know that he was shaken? Because he said nothing—he was silent. It is hard to accept this as an argument for his compassion.
Mr. Teachout urges those who are “untroubled by the endless scruples of ‘sensitivity’” to read Mencken. Those are certainly the people Mencken appeals to. Others who are too “sensitive,” especially Jews, will find much in his writing to offend them.
Louis Simpson
Setauket, NY
Terry Teachout replies:
Louis Simpson is certainly entitled to differ with my interpretation of H. L. Mencken’s postwar silence on the Holocaust, but it is wrong of him to assume that Mencken was “indifferent to the oppression of European Jewry” in the Thirties. I did not discuss this question in detail in “Mencken vs. Mencken” because I knew that many other writers would do so in the wake of the publication of the diaries. In fact, Mencken publicly urged early in 1939 that the U.S. “give refuge to the
