The publishers of Baedeker travel guides have agreed to revise the text of “Baedeker’s Israel,” based on complaints of errors and a tainted portrayal of the Jewish state.
Dr. Peter Baumgarten, editorial director of Baedeker, said from Stuttgart, Germany, on Wednesday that an errata leaflet will be inserted into copies of the current edition of the book “as soon as possible,” and that the next edition of “Baedeker’s Israel,” due out in late 1992 or early 1993, will be revised to correct numerous errors.
The errors were discovered by Morton Klein, an economist formerly with the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations, who enumerated some of his objections in an op-ed piece in The Jerusalem Post on July 2.
Klein said the history section of the book contained numerous factual errors and errors of omission. The rest of the book, he said, “tends to make Israel seem much more a Moslem or Christian country than a Jewish country.”
Klein accepted Baumgarten’s invitation to meet with him Oct. 9 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where they discussed revisions to the book.
Among Klein’s many objections was the lack of a single photograph of any of Israel’s more than 1,000 synagogues, despite its status as a Jewish state. This compares with 39 photographs of Christian churches and 17 of Islamic mosques.
Klein also took issue with what he called the “conspicuous absence” of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount — “the two holiest sites in Judaism” — from a list of major sites highlighted on street maps of Jerusalem.
He cited a “startling distortion” in the description of Yad Vashem as a monument to the victims of World War II and a “memorial to the millions of victims of National Socialism,” not as a memorial to Jews Killed by the Nazis.
A ‘STARTLING DISTORTION’
Klein also took issue with the “twisted description” of the Haganah as “Jewish underground terrorist,” noting that terrorism was neither the Haganah’s policy nor its practice.
He also objected to the portrayal of Israel as the instigator in descriptions of events that led to the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1982.
Baumgarten said he was surprised by Klein’s criticism. He said Baedeker had no anti-Israel or anti-Semitic sentiment and had not intended to convey any derogatory images.
Klein brought his complaints to the American Jewish Congress international travel program, which had included “Baedeker’s Israel” on its list of recommended guidebooks.
The travel program removed “Baedeker’s Israel” from its book list after informing Prentice Hall, which distributes the guide in North America, that parts of the book were “inaccurate” and “misleading.”
Weill sent a copy of Klein’s article to Prentice Hall, which forwarded the information to the publisher, along with a request that Baedeker quickly “make any editorial changes necessary to present an accurate and objective history of Israel.”
Weill said that once he reviews the errata, the travel program may reinstate the guide on its list of recommended books.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
