Britain And The Holocaust

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.

This handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date single volume on the history and memory of the Holocaust in Britain. It traces the complex relationship between Britain and the destruction of Europe’s Jews, from societal and political responses to persecution in the 1930s, through formal reactions to war and genocide, to works of representation and remembrance in post-war Britain. Through this process the handbook not only updates existing historiography of Britain and the Holocaust; it also adds new dimensions to our understanding by exploring the constant interface and interplay of history and memory. The chapters bring together internationally renowned academics and talented younger scholars. Collectively, they examine a raft of themes and issues concerning the actions of contemporaries to the Holocaust, and the responses of those who came ‘after’. At a time when the Holocaust-related activity in Britain proceeds apace, the contributors to this handbook highlight the importance of rooting what we know and understand about Britain and the Holocaust in historical actuality. This, the volume suggests, is the only way to respond meaningfully to the challenges posed by the Holocaust and ensure that the memory of it has purpose.

Intended for use in Holocaust education. Surveys the British involvement with the Jewish people during the Nazi period. Notes that the British government had to respond to Nazi policy, and that there were both opponents to and sympathizers with the Nazis within British society. Relates that thousands of Jews sought and found refuge in Britain. Britain fought Nazi Germany for six years, liberated Nazi camps and thus saved thousands of Jews from death. It helped with the rehabilitation of many Holocaust survivors. During the Nazi period Britain held the stewardship of Palestine, which could have been used as a refuge for Jews fleeing Nazism. Dwells, also, on reactions of British Jewry to the Holocaust. Includes photographs.

The Holocaust is a pervasive presence in British culture and society. Schools have been legally required to deliver Holocaust education, the government helps to fund student visits to Auschwitz, the Imperial War Museum's permanent Holocaust Exhibition has attracted millions of visitors, and Britain has an annually commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. What has prompted this development, how has it unfolded, and why has it happened now? How does it relate to Britain's post-war history, its contemporary concerns, and the wider "globalisation" of Holocaust memory? What are the multiple shapes that British Holocaust consciousness assumes and the consequences of their rapid emergence? Why have the so-called "lessons" of the Holocaust enjoyed such popularity in Britain? Through analysis of changing engagements with the Holocaust in political, cultural and memorial landscapes over the past generation, this book addresses these questions, demonstrating the complexities of Holocaust consciousness and reflecting on the contrasting ways that history is used in Britain today.

Whitehall and the Jews is the most comprehensive study to date of the British response to the plight of European Jewry under Nazism. It contains the definitive account of immigration controls on the admission of refugee Jews, and reveals the doubts and dissent that lay behind British policy. British self-interest consistently limited humanitarian aid to Jews. Refuge was severely restricted during the Holocaust, and little attempt made to save lives, although individual intervention did prompt some admissions on a purely humanitarian basis. After the war, the British government delayed announcing whether refugees would obtain permanent residence, reflecting the government's aim of avoiding long-term responsibility for large numbers of homeless Jews. The balance of state self-interest against humanitarian concern in refugee policy is an abiding theme of Whitehall and the Jews, one of the most important contributions to the understanding of the Holocaust and Britain yet published.

An account of British bureaucratic blindness to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe shows that Churchill's efforts in behalf of the Jews were continually thwarted by subordinates.

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.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: sehr gut, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut für England- und Amerikastudien), course: Memory of the Camps: The Holocaust in British Literature and Culture, language: English, abstract: The insular character of Great Britain has always played a role in its relations with other European countries. The political idea of 'splendid isolation' could have only originated in that country. The British mentality, which is specific in many respects, means that the perception of events taking place on the other side of the English Channel is inevitably distinct from the perception of other European nations. A particular way of viewing and reacting to political developments in Europe from a distance was given expression in many periods of history. One example is at the beginning of the Second World War. It did not affect Great Britain directly, but the country was obliged due to the Anglo-Polish military alliance to assist the Polish in defending their country. The result was a situation, which is known today as Phoney War. Britain declared war on Germany but did not fulfil the terms of the agreement. This attitude was a manifestation of the appeasement policy pursued by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The result was that Britain (as well as France) only started major military actions in May 1940, when German troops had marched into the Benelux countries, and as it had become clear that there might be a serious threat to the British in a short period of time. The neutral approach towards a catastrophe taking place far away on the continent is particularly disturbing in the case of what is known today as the Holocaust: the mass extermination of European Jews in the years 1941-1945. One must say that the British approach to this event was and is inexorably different than the German or Polish one. The genocide took place in Poland, in a country which suffered se