Steinhouse, Herbert, 1922-1996 : Herbert Steinhouse, journalist, novelist and CBC producer and executive, was born 15 April 1922 in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Charles Mayer Steinhouse and Ray Diamond. He married the artist Tobie Thelma Davis in 1947 and they had two children: Stephan and Adam. Herbert Steinhouse died 21 September 1996 in Montreal.
Steinhouse was raised in Montreal where his father was a prominent local merchant who owned two retail furniture stores. He entered McGill University at the age of sixteen and graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He had learned to speak French (fluently) and German (passably) and was active on campus with the "McGill Daily". He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in late 1942 and was trained as a navigator, serving with an RAF squadron in Ferry Command as a Flying Officer for the remainder of the war. After demobilization he joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration where he worked until July 1946 as a Publicity specialist in France, Germany and Scandinavia. Steinhouse left the UNRRA to study at the New School for Social Research in New York City with Professor Max Ascoli, receiving his Master of Arts degree in International Affairs in 1948 for his thesis on "The French Communist Party under the Third Republic".
Steinhouse returned to Europe in 1948 as a foreign correspondent for the New York-based Overseas News Agency. Later that year, he joined the American Joint Distribution Committee in Paris as a writer in the Public Relations Department. In this position he travelled widely in western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East publicizing the JDC's efforts on behalf of Jewish refugees. During this period he met and interviewed Oskar Schindler and Itzhak Stern but was unable to sell the story in the North American market. He left the JDC in late 1949 to return to journalism with Reuters in London but, dissatisfied with the work there, left the news agency in early 1950 to establish himself as a freelance correspondent in Paris. CBC retained him as its western European broadcast correspondent and he was also the Paris correspondent for the magazines "Public Opinion" (London) and "Common Sense" (South Africa). He also wrote regularly for North American magazines like "Star Weekly", "New Liberty", and "Maclean's", among others. In late 1951, the United Nations engaged him as the radio and television newsreel member of a three-man special mission led by the British journalist Ritchie Calder, and also including the photographer Eric Schwab, to tour Southeast Asia and publicize its social and economic problems. The tour took him from Afghanistan to Indonesia over several months and on his return he scripted and produced radio and television documentaries for the UN using the mission's recordings and footage. During the mission, Steinhouse had also made recordings in different countries for broadcast on the CBC's "News Roundup" and other programmes.
After working closely with the United Nations, Unesco, the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization during the Southeast Asia mission, in June 1952 the Unesco Radio Division in Paris hired him to be the editor of its "World Review" weekly radio programme. Under his guiding hand it grew and eventually was translated into four languages and distributed to over 120 countries worldwide. Steinhouse gradually fell afoul of the senior management of Unesco, however, for his work with the Staff Association on behalf of American employees who were being released because of suspected communist sympathies. Matters came to a head at the end of 1955 when Unesco did not renew his contract. He used this break to write a semi-autobiographical political novel, "Ten Years After", based loosely on his experiences with the McCarthy purges at Unesco and the tense political situation between France and its Algerian colony. "Ten Years After" was published in 1958 in Great Britain by Bodley Head and in the United States by William Morrow (as "The Time of the Juggernaut"). It was translated into Spanish and Portuguese but was not published in France because of its political sensitivity. "Ten Years After" won the 1960 Quebec Literary Prize for best novel.
Steinhouse returned to Canada with his family in the spring of 1957 to become a Senior Producer with the CBC's Talks and Public Affairs Division in Montreal. He produced a wide range of radio and television programmes including documentaries, current affairs, music, drama and literary programmes. In this capacity, and as a fluently bilingual anglophone, he acted as a liaison between the two solitudes in the CBC in Montreal. In late 1961, he received a Canada Council grant and went to Europe for a year to research and write. During this period he produced three radio documentaries, "Spain: the Struggle for Progress", "France Looks Ahead", and "Morocco: Poverty and Hopes" that aired on the CBC in the autumn of 1962. In addition he began work on a second novel (never finished) and completed a manuscript of a non-fiction book on Spain, "Spain Looks Ahead", that was never published.
He left the creative side of broadcasting in 1964 to become an executive with CBC, holding the new post of Director of English Programming for the Quebec Division and French Networks, making him the senior English-language manager in this department. In 1966, he was promoted to Assistant Director of Divisional Affairs and Integrated Programme Services in the Quebec Division and French Networks. As a result of a reorganization in 1970, he became the Director of Divisional Affairs, CBC French Services Division with additional responsibilities for public relations. The political climate in Quebec in the early 1970s forced him to move to the CBC's English Services Division; it was no longer politically acceptable to have an anglophone in such a senior position in the French Services Division. His new post in 1973 was Director of Public Relations and Publicity, English Services, Quebec, and he also had responsibilities for coverage planning. He accepted the position of Director of Coverage Planning, English Services, Quebec in 1979 and retired from the CBC in 1985 at a time of budget cutbacks.
During his retirement he wrote a second novel, "Free of All Future", not yet published, although a chapter from it won third prize for short story in the CBC "Anthology" literary contest in 1988 and was published as "The Cool Bool Machine" in "On Spec" magazine (1991). The appearance of Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List" in 1993 convinced him to submit his old manuscript "The German Who Saved a Thousand Lives", written half a century earlier, to "Saturday Night" magazine. Its publication as "The Real Oskar Schindler" brought Steinhouse belated recognition as the journalist who had first discovered the Schindler story and whose hard research backed up the claims of the "fictional" film and novel. The article was translated and reprinted throughout the world. As a result, he joined with Thomas Fensch in the production of a book, "Oskar Schindler and His List" (Forest Dale, Vermont: Eriksson Press, 1995), writing the introduction and contributing his Schindler article and interview transcript for inclusion. In addition, he continued to research and write on issues relating to the CBC and broadcasting in Canada and remained involved with the Montreal chapters of International PEN, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and other organizations.
