How British television inserted the Holocaust into Britain's war memory in 1995

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 255-272

  Petersen, Judith ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149348017     PISSN: 01439685     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01439680120069407     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. It has been said that television is 'the central medium for the production and mediation of knowledge in advanced late-modern democracies'. See Jostein Gripsrud's introduction to Jostein Gripsrud (ed), Television and Common Knowledge (London, 1999), p. 1.
2. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London, 1994), p. 13.
3. Taylor Downing, History on television: the making of 'Cold War', 1998, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 18 (1998), p. 331.
4. Alan Rosenthal, Documentary and history: introduction, in Alan Rosenthal (ed. ), New Challenges for Documentary (Berkeley, 1988), p. 426.
5. Quoted in Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: a social and cultural history (Oxford, 1994), p. 256.
6. In the year under scrutiny, 1995, terrestrial television accounted for 91. 4% of the audience share. This was in spite of increased cable and satellite television viewing compared with the previous year. According to Screen Digest and the Broadcaster's Audience Research Board (BARB), even in households with access to cable or satellite television, terrestrial television viewing accounted for 65. 6% of all their television viewing time in 1995. This suggests that cable and satellite television did little to undermine the hegemonic grip of terrestrial television on the viewing public in Britain.
7. For a detailed explanation of the requirements as laid out in the Agreement of the Royal Charter and the Television Act, see Stuart Hood and Thalia Tabary-Peterssen, On Television (London, 1997), pp. 48-53.
8. See Paddy Scannell, Public service broadcasting: the history of a concept, in Andrew Goodwin and Garry Whannel (eds), Understanding Television (London, 1990), p. 17.
9. Robert Mann (ed. ), The Blue Book of British Broadcasting 2000 (26th ed. ; London 2000).
10. This is in keeping with the BBC's own characterization of its channels. See BBC Annual Report & Accounts, 95/96.
11. Quoted from bfi Collections: a user's guide (London, 2000).
12. Lucy Noakes (London, 1998), pp. 45-46. The view that the Second World War represents an era during which Britain is perceived to have been 'Great' is also expressed in K. O. Morgan, The People's Peace (Oxford, 1994), p. 4.
13. This phrase was used by Winston Churchill in his victory speech.
14. See Noakes, 1998, pp. 2-4, and David Cesarani, Lacking in convictions: British war crimes policy and national memory of the Second World War, in Martin Evans and Ken Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1997), pp. 27-42.
15. David Cesarani, Great Britain, in David Wyman (ed. ), The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore, 1996), p. 634.
16. Cesarani, War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, p. 28.
17. William D. Rubenstein charts the evolution of the 'historiography of rescue' in his book The Myth of Rescue (London, 2000), pp. 1-14, first published in 1997.
18. See, for example, David Cesarani's article 'Holocaust and its heritage', The Guardian, 29 December 1994, p. 18. Here he argues for a Holocaust museum that should provide a corrective to the dominant version of Britain's war memory, suggesting that 'an honest appraisal of Britain's wartime record' is needed. He explains: 'This will mean looking critically at the willingness of British politicians to tolerate Nazi racism; Britain's ambiguous record on immigration and refugees; the reasons for the official scepticism towards news of the "Final Solution" in 1942, and the inadequate response . . . '
19. See Kushner, The Holocaust, pp. 48, 50. The Austrian Anschluss with Germany, the Nazis' annexation of Austria, in March 1938 precipitated a mass exodus of Jews fleeing from Nazi brutality and anti-Semitic statutes. Even before the 'Final Solution' had been conceived of, it was clear that Jews were being subject to extreme and unacceptable levels of brutality at the hands of the Nazis.
20. Cesarani, The Guardian, p. 18;
21. Michael R. Marrus's chapter on 'Bystanders' in his The Holocaust in History (London, 1993), pp. 156-83;
22. and Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: an investigation into the suppression of information about Hitler's 'Final Solution' (London, 1980).
23. The Radio Times, editions 7-13, 14-20, 21-27 May, 28 May-3 June, 4-10 June 1995.
24. This view is taken by Tony Kushner in 'Approaching Belsen: an introduction', in Jo Reilly et al. (eds), Belsen in History and Memory (London, 1997), p. 4.
25. BBC Annual Report and Accounts 95/96, pp. 17-18.
26. Lawrence L. Langer, Admitting the Holocaust (Oxford, 1995) p. 158.
27. The draft of the statement drawn up by the British on 8 December 1942 became the joint Allied declaration. This was the first official denunciation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews. See Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: what the Nazis planned, what the British and Americans knew (London, 1998), p. 153.
28. Cesarani, 'Great Britain', p. 635.
29. Tony Kushner, The impact of the Holocaust on British society and culture, Contemporary Record, 5 (Autumn 1991), p. 349.