The Holocaust and Public Discourse

World War II in general and Holocaust in particular are important topics of the debate in the Lithuanian public discourse. Due to that the Lithuanian and Russian press is seen by the author not just as a significant source of information, but also as a peculiar tool for structuring knowledge about Lithuania’s historical past. The article reveals that the perception of Holocaust history is changing in the Lithuanian and Russian press in recent years by rethinking of the dominant Lithuanian historical narrative and representing diverse approaches to the role of Lithuanians in collaboration with the Nazi regime. The Holocaust Discourse is constructed as important experience in considering and strengthening the human rights protection discourse in Lithuania as well. The article is based on selected texts published in 2016 by online daily DELFI and printed newspapers in the Lithuanian and Russian languages (150 publications in total).

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Introduction

10.5406/illinois/9780252036941.003.0016 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Susan Rubin Suleiman

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Personal Interest ◽

Left Wing ◽

Jewish State ◽

Daily Newspaper ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The World ◽

Jewish Intellectuals ◽

Short Essays

These four short essays, written over a twenty-year period, are pièces de circonstance, each one linked to a specific occasion: the publication of a book by a young author, an op-ed piece for a daily newspaper, a symposium on Israel organized by left-wing Jewish intellectuals, the appearance of a film that would become revered around the world. Beauvoir’s essays here are modest efforts, in two cases simply brief prefaces to a much longer work; but read consecutively, they offer an excellent glimpse into the evolution of French public discourse about the Holocaust and about Israel. They also show Beauvoir’s own unwavering commitment to thinking about the implications and consequences of the major atrocity of the twentieth century, as well as her personal interest in the Jewish state....

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“Stealing the Holocaust from the Jews”? The Holocaust as Metaphor in Public Discourse

Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust ◽

10.1007/978-3-319-48866-0_12 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 279-304

Author(s):

Esther Webman

Keyword(s):

Public Discourse ◽

The Holocaust

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Formation and Development of the Policy of “Overcoming the Past” in the National Memory of the FRG

Problems of World History ◽

10.46869/2707-6776-2018-5-5 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 96-121

Author(s):

A. Kudryachenko

Keyword(s):

Public Discourse ◽

Third Reich ◽

Western Society ◽

Historical Event ◽

The Third ◽

The Past ◽

National Memory ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Third Reich ◽

Nazi Past

The article analyzes the processes of postwar development of Germany from the point of view of implementing measures to denazify and disqualify persons who have tarnished themselves under theHitler regime, the specifics of the formation and stages of the formation of the policy of “overcoming the past” in the national memory of postwar Germany. The author, singling out four different stagesand depths of understanding, clarifies the problems of the formation and development of this policy from posing the “problem of guilt”, the differentiation of its types with respect to the common andexcellent policies of the two German states, the role of the international political context and the reconstruction of the historical truth regarding the Third Reich and conditions for the formation ofculture of memory in modern Germany. The strengths and weaknesses of West Germany’s ambivalent policy with regard to its identity are analyzed through clear disassociation from the Nazi past and, on the other hand, the broad integration of former Nazis into new public institutions as an option to win democracy in Germany despite the post-war moods of most of its citizens. The immediate significance of the succession of generations in the political arena, the public study of the Nazi past and the establishment of a new political culture in public discourse are underlined. Its main elements were the memory and responsibility of generations for the Holocaust and the strengthening of the national identity of the Germans through “constitutional patriotism”. In the united Germany, the comprehension of the totalitarian past, which took place quite intensively and resulted not only in public discussions, but also contributed to the memorialization and commemoration of historical memory, the reparation to victims of Nazism and forced workers of the Third Reich from different countries and the restoration of justice to all those affected by the so-called policy “Arization” and measures to return property and cultural values to their heirs, is fairly effective. The policy of “overcoming the past” contributed to the achievement of a public consensus of the national memory of the modern FRG regarding the recognition of the crimes of the Nazi period and the making of lessons from the past. As in any other Western society, in Germany the attitude towards the Holocaust is the cornerstone of the memory of the Second World War and the symbol of the crimes of Nazism, as well as the central historical event of the XX century.

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"This Is Your Life": Telling a Holocaust Survivor's Life Story on Early American Television

Journal of Narrative and Life History ◽

10.1075/jnlh.4.1-2.04thi ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 4 (1-2) ◽

pp. 41-68 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jeffrey Shandler

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Life Story ◽

Personal History ◽

World War ◽

Early American ◽

American Television ◽

The Social ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Insight Into

Abstract The appearance of Hanna Bloch Kohner on a 1953 episode of the series This Is Your Life is among the earliest presentations of a Holocaust survivor's personal history on American television. Analysis of the program explores how television—a collaborative, corporate medium—shapes the telling of an individual's life story, and how the program relates the story of the Holocaust in terms of personal history. The article also examines how the program's producers employed television's distinctive characteristics to enable, limit, or otherwise shape the presentation of the Holocaust, and how the episode indicates that its creators understood its subject as being somehow singular, even as the conceptualization of the Holocaust was emerging, before the term Holocaust entered American public discourse. The article also considers how the program reflects the social and political context of post-World War II America in general and postwar American Jewish life in particular. Finally, the article considers how analysis of this program offers insight into other, later presentations of the Holocaust on American television, especially those dealing with the life story of an individual survivor. (Yiddish Studies/Jewish ethnology)

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