Pierre van Paassen

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Pierre van Paassen (born February 7, 1895 in Gorinchem , † January 8, 1968 ) was born as Pieter Anthonie Laurusse Van Paassen. He was a journalist, writer and Unitarian pastor.

Live and act

In 1914 van Paassen emigrated to Canada with his parents. After beginning the seminary, he served as a missionary for Ruthenian immigrants in the Alberta suburbs , where he helped out with medical care. In 1917 he left theological school to serve as a grenadier and pioneer in the Canadian Army during World War I in France.

In 1921 he became a journalist for the Toronto Globe newspaper ; a year later he moved to the United States and freelanced for the Atlanta Journal Constitution . From 1924 to 1931 Van Paassen worked as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the New York Evening World in Paris. After this newspaper was discontinued, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star '.

Van Paassen spoke Dutch, French, English and Ruthenian (a language related to Ukrainian and allowed him to communicate with many Russians). He later learned Hebrew.

He became known for his reports on the conflicts between Arabs, British, Jews and French in the Middle East , as well as on the continued African slave trade and the colonial problems in North Africa and the Horn of Africa . He reported on Benito Mussolini's Abyssinian War , the Spanish Civil War and other European and colonial conflicts.

Van Paassen became a US citizen in 1947.

Journalistic career

Van Paassen was hired by the American tabloids mainly for his sensation-oriented reports on the European crises in the period between the world wars. During his first trip to Palestine in 1925, he developed a respect for the work of early Jewish settlers who improved agriculture and industry in the region. He later became one of the first non-Jews in America to report positively on the struggle for a Jewish nation in Palestine. He later remained a supporter of Zionism . Basically, however, Van Paassen was a Christian Democratic socialist who, as he put it in his autobiography " Days of Our Years ", was concerned with the ongoing struggle of the common man for justice. He was a staunch opponent of fascism in Italy, Germany and France since the 1920s. In March 1933 he spent 10 days as a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp , which heightened his aversion to the fascists.

However, the veracity of "Days of Our Years" is now controversial. Upon closer inspection, some details of the narrative do not match geographical or historical circumstances. The story about a black ghost dog, which he published in his autobiography, earned him particular ridicule. It must therefore be assumed that Van Paassen embellished some of his reports with imagination, if not entirely made up.

The veracity of his second autobiography, "To Number Our Days", has also been questioned. In the Internet Archive , "To Number Our Days" is described as a collection of cocky lies, fantastic memories, and embellished stories. In this book, he describes, among other things, how, through simple research, he found evidence that the Jewish factory director Leo Frank , who was convicted of murder and later lynched , was innocent. However, the evidence he allegedly found on closer inspection is obvious fabrication, and the details of the story do not match the facts. Despite these obvious inconsistencies, Van Paassen's stories have even been cited as a source in academic papers such as: B. in the dissertation on the Leo Frank case by Leonard Dinnerstein (1966).

Books

  • Nazism: An Assault on Civilization (1934; co-editor and contributor)
  • Days of our Years (1939; autobiography)
  • Afraid of Victory (c. 1939–41)
  • The Battle for Jerusalem (1941; with Wladimir Zeev Jabotinsky , John Henry Patterson and Josiah Wedgwood IV )
  • The time is now! (1941)
  • That Day Alone (1941)
  • The Forgotten Ally (1943)
  • Earth Could Be Fair (1946)
  • The Tower of Terzel (1948; novel)
  • Palestine: Land of Israel (1948)
  • Why Jesus Died (1949)
  • Jerusalem Calling! (1950)
  • Visions Rise and Change (1955)
  • A Pilgrim's Vow (1956)
  • A Crown of Fire: The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola (1960)
  • To Number Of Our Days (1964)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adirondack Daily Enterprise , (February 7, 1957 Page Six). ISSN  1097-2811
  2. ↑ International Celebrity Register, Volume 1 , 1959, page 790
  3. ^ Pierre Van Paassen: To Number Our Days , 1st. Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons , New York 1964, S. dust jacket, LCCN  64-013633 .
  4. ^ Mike Dash: A multi-witness, indoor, child-centered black dog case featuring animal death ... from France. In: CFI Blogs. May 13, 2010, archived from the original on August 9, 2011 ; accessed on July 24, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Description - To Number Our Days By Pierre van Paassen (1964). In: Internet Archive. Retrieved July 24, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Leo Frank: Who Really solved the Mary Phagan murder case? July 24, 2012, accessed August 13, 2013 .
  7. ^ Pierre Van Paassen: To Number Our Days , 1st. Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons , New York 1964, pp. I, LCCN  64-013633 .
  8. ^ To Number Our Days

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Paassen, Pierre van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Journalist, writer and Unitarian pastor
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Gorinchem
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1968