Examining how the press in Britain, Sweden and Finland responded to the Holocaust immediately after the Second World War, Holmila offers new insights into the challenge posed by the Holocaust for liberal democracies by looking at the reporting of the liberation of the camps, the Nuremberg trial and the Jewish immigration to Palestine.
This book investigates the memory of the Holocaust in Sweden and concentrates on early initiatives to document and disseminate information about the genocide during the late 1940s until the early 1960s. As the first collection of testimonies and efforts to acknowledge the Holocaust contributed to historical research, judicial processes, public discussion, and commemorations in the universalistic Swedish welfare state, the chapters analyse how and in what ways the memory of the Holocaust began to take shape, showing the challenges and opportunities that were faced in addressing the traumatic experiences of a minority. In Sweden, the Jewish trauma could be linked to positive rescue actions instead of disturbing politics of collaboration, suggesting that the Holocaust memory was less controversial than in several European nations following the war. This book seeks to understand how and in what ways the memory of the Holocaust began to take shape in the developing Swedish welfare state and emphasises the role of transnational Jewish networks for the developing Holocaust memory in Sweden.
Finland's Holocaust considers antisemitism and the figure of the Holocaust in today's Finland. Taking up a range of issues - from cultural history, folklore, and sports, to the interpretation of military and national history - this collection examines how the writing of history has engaged and evaded the figure of the Holocaust.
War is often described as an extension of politics by violent means. With contributions from twenty-eight eminent historians, Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War examines the relationship between ideology and politics in the war's origins, dynamics and consequences. Part I examines the ideologies of the combatants and shows how the war can be understood as a struggle of words, ideas and values with the rival powers expressing divergent claims to justice and controlling news from the front in order to sustain moral and influence international opinion. Part II looks at politics from the perspective of pre-war and wartime diplomacy as well as examining the way in which neutrals were treated and behaved. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of states, politics and ideology on the fate of individuals as occupied and liberated peoples, collaborators and resistors, and as British and French colonial subjects.
Drawing on innovative scholarship on Finland in World War II, this volume offers a comprehensive narrative of politics and combat, well-argued analyses of the ideological, social and cultural aspects of a society at war, and novel interpretations of the memory of war.
The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews in Budapest between 1944 and 1945. He is recognised by the Israeli state as one of the Righteous among the Nations. This book examines both Wallenberg’s activities during the Holocaust and the ways posterity has remembered him. It explores secret Swedish diplomacy and how Wallenberg was transformed over time into a Swedish brand. It considers the political aspects of Wallenberg’s Americanisation and analyses his portrayals in music, film and television. Representations of Wallenberg as a monument are discussed with special reference to Swedish and Hungarian examples. The question of how Wallenberg’s memory can and should be kept alive in future is an essential issue related to the politics of memory.
Paris was home to one of the key European initiatives to document and commemorate the Holocaust, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine . By analysing the earliest Holocaust narratives and their reception in France, this study provides a new understanding of the institutional development of Holocaust remembrance in France after the War.
"We will be judged in our own time and in the future by measuring the aid that we, inhabitants of a free and fortunate country, gave to our brethren in this time of greatest disaster." This declaration, made shortly after the pogroms of November 1938 by the Jewish communities in Sweden, was truer than anyone could have forecast at the time. Pontus Rudberg focuses on this sensitive issue – Jewish responses to the Nazi persecutions and mass murder of Jews. What actions did Swedish Jews take to aid the Jews in Europe during the years 1933–45 and what determined their policies and actions? Specific attention is given to the aid efforts of the Jewish Community of Stockholm, including the range of activities in which the community engaged and the challenges and opportunities presented by official refugee policy in Sweden.
How has Britain understood the Holocaust? This interdisciplinary volume explores popular narratives of the Second World War and cultural representations of the Holocaust from the Nuremberg trials of 1945-6, to the establishment of a national memorial day by the start of the twenty-first century.
