A Moral Reckoning - Legal Controversy

Legal Controversy

In 2002, the book's German publisher—Siedler Verlag, a sister company of Random House—was sued by the archdiocese of Munich as a result of the misidentification of a photograph, falsely asserting the presence of Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, whom Rabbi David G. Dalin calls "a famous opponent of the Nazis", at a Nazi rally. The picture actually depicted Apostolic Nuncio to Germany Cesare Orsenigo participating in a May Day labor parade in Munich — not a Nazi rally in Berlin.

In October 2002, the district court of Munich required the publisher to withdraw the book or correct the copies, but in spite of the disclosure of the error in Germany, the book was released in English by Knopf with the error intact. A representative of the archdiocese said with regards to the mislabeled photograph that "The implication is that Cardinal Faulhaber was an associate of the Nazis. When one writes about these things, one should be more precise about the truth".

Goldhagen, who acknowledged that the photo wrongly identified the figure and location, described the lawsuit as a crude diversionary tactic to displace focus from the real issues. Goldhagen stated that the photograph was misidentified by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, from which the picture was obtained. Religious commentator and former priest Paul Collins characterized the mislabeling of the photograph as inexcusable, while The New York Times reported that most historians agreed that "a single mislabeled photo in a 346-page book is a minor error".