Some 2,000 years ago, the great Ancient Library in Alexandria,
Egypt burnt to the ground, taking with it a vast reservoir of
irreplaceable information, subsequently reduced to ashes, lost to
history, and leaving the rest of us groping in ignorance at many
questions we’ve ever since scrambled in vain to piece back
together.
I know this over-dramatizes the point, but there truly are
certain individuals so incredibly knowledgeable in their areas of
expertise — possessing a vast reservoir of information within
the invisible shelves of their minds — that when they leave this
world, that information turns to ashes with them. They are,
really, national treasures — irreplaceable.
When it comes to the history of arguably the most
fascinating of centuries — the 20th century — and specifically
the long battle against militant Soviet communism, which
stretched from 1917-91 as the predominant, defining ideological
conflict of the last 100 years, few figures knew as much as
Arnold Beichman. (The other who comes to mind, among the living,
is Herb Romerstein.) Arnold passed away on February 17 at the age
of 96, gleefully outliving the miserable Soviet Union and its
seedy cast of butchers and tormentors, and taking with him not
only body and soul but mind — a mind overflowing with valuable
information. That which Arnold was unable to record on paper, or
transfer to others who recorded it on paper, has gone with him,
now irretrievable.
I didn’t know Arnold well, certainly not as well as friends
of Arnold’s like John Podhoretz, who wrote a beautiful
tribute to the man in Commentary, but I did know him
well enough to place a call or an email when I found myself in a
corner on some research task, unable to find answers even with
all the power of the Internet. Inevitably, I’d get to the point
where I’d say to myself: “I need to call Arnold.” Arnold was a
walking, talking, human search engine — and a very lively (and
very short) one at that.
The first time I met him in person was when we hosted him
at Grove City College a few years ago for a lecture at our Pew
Fine Arts Center. Before Arnold held forth, sharing with students
a quarter of his age, we sat with him at dinner and picked his
fertile brain. He supplied answers easily, happily, scattered
with his colorful expressions: “That son-of-a-bitch!” he
exclaimed to polite company, taken aback as Arnold described a
source who — by his estimation — had sold out his country
during the Cold War.
I saw him again more recently at a Hoover Institution
function in Washington, D.C. “What do you need to know?” he asked
me with a grin, primed to pump out details. My response: “Tell me
about Henry Wallace and Eleanor Roosevelt….” “Oh, my,” Arnold
began with a laugh.
I wish I had brought a tape recorder.
(For the record, Henry Wallace was one of the more in-depth
research efforts to which Arnold devoted a lot of time. I don’t
know if ever pulled all of that information together.)
The last time I tapped Arnold’s brain was last spring. I
had a question about a certain New York Times writer
from the 1940s, a well-known liberal. An extremely popular web
source — Wikipedia no less, which is hardly conservative —
described the writer as a “Stalinist.” Of course, this was no
small charge. I knew Arnold would address it carefully. Despite
the left’s caricature of Arnold as a recalcitrant Cold Warrior,
he was always exceedingly cautious in drawing necessary lines of
distinction, treating every individual fairly, relentlessly
pursuing the truth, and never mislabeling or smearing
anyone.
“No,” Arnold started. “I don’t know of any evidence that he
was a Stalinist, or even a communist. He was very much on the
left, but not that far on the left.”
“By the way,” he continued, as I perked up in anticipation
for whatever gem might come next. “Did you know there was a
communist cell at the New York Times in the 1930s?
Congress looked into it. Did an investigation and a
report….”
No, I did not know that. That’s another of those
inconvenient things that liberal historians and journalists have
studiously forgotten about. When I responded to Arnold’s tip by
scouring the web, I found nothing. I soon discovered, however,
via old-fashioned research — meaning a stroll to some old
library shelves — that Arnold was (of course) right. Such a cell
did exist at the Times.
The details on that are better delayed for another article
at another time. For now, however, this gets back to my main
point: I would’ve never known this if not for Arnold. Once again,
the Beichman Library had been open for business.
Alas, the tragedy of the Beichman Library was that its
stock was immaterial. With its namesake’s passing, it is now
closed. I — we — can’t go there anymore. If only we
could have downloaded its owner’s brain.
It’s a great loss, of course. But such is an even greater
testimony of a life well spent, of vigorously using — in service
of good, and against evil — the talent God had bestowed. May
Arnold Beichman (1913-2010) rest in peace.
