She spoke out against Hitler. For that, they made her a hero. She spoke up for Palestine. For that, they silenced her. For three decades, amid the sweeping events of the first half of the twentieth century, no journalist was more controversial, more iconoclastic, or more quoted than Dorothy Thompson. At the pinnacle of her career, Thompson’s syndicated news column, “On the Record”—one of the longest-running columns ever—reached millions of people around the globe. She was heard by millions more in her regular NBC radio broadcasts, and her stories appeared in The New York Tribune, Ladies Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post. Her persona was honored by Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 movie Woman of the Year, and in 1939, in a Time magazine cover story, was named the most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt. ----------------------
She spoke out against Hitler. For that, they made her a hero. She spoke up for Palestine. For that, they silenced her.
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An icon of her time
For three decades, amid the sweeping events of the first half of the twentieth century, no journalist was more controversial, more iconoclastic, or more quoted than Dorothy Thompson. At the pinnacle of her career, Thompson’s syndicated news column, “On the Record”—one of the longest-running columns ever—reached millions of people around the globe. She was heard by millions more in her regular NBC radio broadcasts, and her stories appeared in The New York Tribune, Ladies Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post. Her persona was honored by Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 movie Woman of the Year, and in 1939, in a Time magazine cover story, was named the most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt.
During a transatlantic voyage in 1920, young journalist Dorothy Thompson struck up an acquaintance with a group of leading Zionists, including Chaim Weizmann. Although she would later part company with Zionism, she always referred to Weizmann respectfully
Erased from history
A few years later, newspaper columns were being cancelled and speaking engagements began disappearing. Dorothy Thompson was being silenced—all for the crime of saying what she believed. Today, only a handful of people even know her name. Right now, you have the opportunity to change that.
An International Journalist
By 1926, Thompson was the first woman to head a foreign news bureau, with the post-war chaos of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Turkey and Greece as her beat. She studied German language and culture, becoming an expert in both, and was known for her intellectual curiosity, the endless lengths she’d go to get a story and the quality of her writing.
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"I was in Palestine... and I assure you… that the situation there is not the way it has been presented by many of the Zionists. It is one of the most complicated and difficult problems on earth today."
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