People Remembered: Dan Kurzman

Dan Kurzman

Dan Kurzman, 88, who reported from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, and who won two OPC awards for his books, died December 12 at Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City of pneumonia following cancer treatment. He lived in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Kurzman, an OPC member, dedicated each of his 17 books to Florence, his wife of 32 years and the editor of his books. She died in 2009. Kurzman’s books dealt with little-known incidents in World War II and Isreal. In Rome, he presented Pope Benedict XVI with a signed copy of his book A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII. Kurzman did research for that book in the Vatican archives.

Subjects of his other books included Allied efforts in World War II to destroy a plant in Nazi-occupied Norway that could create heavy water and enable the Nazis to build a nuclear bomb, sinking of the USS Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine a few days after the cruiser delivered parts to Tinian island for the Hiroshima atom bomb, the first Arab-Israeli War, and biographies of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, and Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

Kurzman won the Cornelius Ryan Award in 1963 for Subversion of the Innocents and in 1980 for Miracle of November.

Before becoming a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, Kurzman was Jerusalem correspondent for NBC News and Asian bureau chief for McGraw-Hill News Service.