How Henry Kissinger Betrayed Bangladesh
The former U.S. Secretary of State fled Nazi Germany as a child. Decades later, he would condone the Pakistani genocide of millions of Bengalis.
Henry Kissinger, whose family escaped Nazi Germany to New York City in 1938 as Jewish refugees, never imagined he would be a global diplomat, nor that a Gallup poll would declare him the most admired person in the U.S. from 1973 to 1975. President Gerald Ford called him a “superior person” and awarded him America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977. Hillary Clinton called him a “friend” and said she relied on his counsel as U.S. Secretary of State.
But those who lived through the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War don’t have many positive things to say about Kissinger. Instead, what they remember is horror.