Framing Genocide: Early Interpretations of the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press 1945-1950

• Main Author: Holmila, Matti Lauri Antero
• Published: Royal Holloway, University of London 2008
• Subjects: 940.5318
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504815

This doctoral dissertation sets out to examine how the press in Great Britain, Sweden and Finland responded to the Holocaust in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The aim of this study is not only to understand what type of meanings the press constructed about the Holocaust as a result of reporting; how the horror of the Holocaust in general, and the role of Jewish suffering in particular was mediated to bystanders in Britain, Sweden and Finland, but importantly, why certain types of representations gained dominance. This thesis will examine to what extent the immediate postwar response to the Holocaust was shaped by universal attitudes towards the victims of Nazi Germany, arising from the sheer horror of what had happened. Second, the study will analyse the extent to which different nations 'domesticated' the Holocaust by framing the story along the lines which suited their own national experiences of the Holocaust and the Second World War. This dissertation attempts to explain how these different views occurred, what they reveal about the wider conceptualisation of the Holocaust within Western cuIture(s), and importantly, how the unprecedented fate of European Jews was seen within the press discourse. . It is believed that interdisciplinary study of this topic, with interdisciplinary research methodologies, brings together the resources necessary for dealing with the problems that the Holocaust and its early representation in the press raises, not least the wider context of news in which the Holocaust was embedded.