Federal Judge Roy K. Altman, a Venezuelan-American lawyer and jurist who currently serves as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, published a terrific analysis of Kristof's latest in Substack's The Free Press. A Miscarriage of Journalism at ‘The New York Times’. I would strongly urge everyone to read his analysis of Kristof's lack of journalistic integrity. In it, Altman writes:
Today, this whole system is being undermined by the proliferation of false information—especially on the internet. But it’s one thing to have our geopolitical and ideological enemies—whether China, Russia, or the Muslim Brotherhood—pushing unverified claims about our closest allies into our cell phones. It’s another thing entirely for The New York Times, a supposed “paper of record,” and one of its Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to offer a story that—in its disregard of basic evidence-gathering norms, its unwillingness to investigate the opposing side’s position, and its inversion of common sense—violates the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.But we entrust our fellow Americans with the power to make these choices because we believe that a virtuous people will be equipped to make the right choices—principally because we assume that our citizens will be prepared to discern truth from fiction. And we feel comfortable in that assumption because we’ve devised a system of laws—based on evidence, burdens of proof, and a time-tested set of rules—to help us assess the veracity of contested claims. In this way, the jury system isn’t simply a means of ensuring fair trials. Rather, it’s a way of training free citizens to make difficult decisions for themselves.
In digging into Kristof's background, I discovered something that is overlooked, even though he actually wrote about it in his first memoir. His father, after immigrating to the US, became a respected academic. His name, Wladyslaw Krzysztofowicz, was changed to Ladis Kristof, and while he has written about his father as a refugee and mentions his father served in the Romanian army during the war, he glosses over what his dad actually did.
Larry Tauber writes about that period in an article on Substack: What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?
According to Kristof’s 2024 memoir, Chasing Hope, “when I was growing up and other kids talked about their dads heroically battling the Nazis, I kept quiet. I did not want to admit that my father had actually for a year been on the same side as the Nazis.”
That may sound like Kristof is making a heartfelt confession. But that’s only if you believe his father, who was of conscription age, served in the Romanian military for one year.
The historical record strongly suggests otherwise.
The facts surrounding Ladis Kristof — born Ladislas Kristofovici — are murky, contradictory, and seem to be shaped by deliberate obfuscation. Even the most basic details of his identity shift from document to document. In his naturalization petition, he listed his birth year as 1918. Yet immigration records from 1952 indicate he claimed to be thirty-two years old, suggesting a birth year of 1919 or perhaps 1920. His birthplace likewise fluctuates across records: “USSR” in one document; “Cernauti, Northern Bucovina, Russia” in another.
These inconsistencies, standing alone, might be dismissed as common immigration-era confusion. But they become more significant in light of Kristof’s conspicuous unwillingness to examine his father’s wartime role with any seriousness or precision, despite repeatedly writing about him and even featuring him prominently in a 2017 New York Times video.
Romanian conscription practices during World War II make Kristof’s sanitized version of events highly implausible. Military service was generally mandatory at the beginning of the year a man turned twenty-one. Depending on which birth year Ladis Kristof actually used, he would likely have been conscripted in 1939, 1940, or at the latest 1941 — not 1942, as Nicholas Kristof suggests in his memoir. If born in 1918, he almost certainly would have served at least four years in the Romanian military. Even under the most charitable reading of the documents, he would have entered service no later than early 1941.
In June 1941, the Romanian army under Marshal Ion Antonescu participated in some of the most savage massacres of Jews during the Holocaust. Romanian forces, often working alongside German Einsatzgruppen and aided by local collaborators, slaughtered between 100,000 and 120,000 Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Romanian soldiers and civilians also carried out the Iași pogrom, murdering approximately 15,000 Jews, while further atrocities followed in Odessa and throughout occupied territories.
If Ladis Kristof was indeed serving in the Romanian military throughout 1941 — as the documentary evidence strongly suggests — then it becomes nearly impossible to believe he was untouched by, unaware of, or wholly disconnected from these events.
