Conceptions of the Catastrophe. Discourses on the Past before the Rise of Holocaust Memory

Analysis of early-ypost war institutinonal discourses on the recent past

Portrayals of the Holocaust in English history textbooks, 1991–2016: continuities, challenges and concerns

This study examines portrayals of the Holocaust in a sample of 21 secondary school history textbooks published in England between 1991 and 2016. Evaluated against internationally recognized criteria and guidelines, the content of most textbooks proved very problematic. Typically, textbooks failed to provide clear chronological and geographical frameworks and adopted simplistic Hitler-centric, perpetrator-oriented narratives. Furthermore, textbooks paid limited attention to pre-war Jewish life, the roots of antisemitism, the complicity of local populations and collaborationist regimes, and the impact of the Holocaust on people across Europe. Based on these critical findings, the article concludes by offering initial recommendations for textbook improvement

The dynamics of diaspora: the transformation of British Jewish identity

The classic model of diaspora constructs the process of population change as spatial, along a horizontal axis, and sequential, with one wave following another. Taking the history of the Jews in modern Britain as a case study, this article argues that we need to take account of the multi-layered character of diasporas, the possibility that vertical alignments are as important as horizontal ones, and that ideological currents may sweep through the different layers of a diaspora simultaneously. The differentiation between types of diaspora is crucial for understanding the internal dynamics of Jewish history and Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Each type engenders a different sort of identity and entails different relations with the ‘host society’

Camps de la mort, camps de concentration et camps d'internement dans la mémoire collective britannique

Death camps, concentration camps and internment camps in British collective memory, David Cesarani. In studying cases of arbitrary detentions and massive detention that occurred in Great Britain during the first and second world wars, David Cesarani shows that several times the British government was led to twisting rules of law on which it was supposed to be founding its legitimacy as well as its prestige. The ignorance of these facts since 1945 has reassured the British conscience concerning the death camps.Cesarani David. Camps de la mort, camps de concentration et camps d'internement dans la mémoire collective britannique. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°54, avril-juin 1997. Dossier : Sur les camps de concentration du 20e siècle. pp. 13-23