Abstract
Long after 1945, the memory of World War II in Britain was not linked to the Holocaust despite an intimate connection: best known is the liberation of Belsen. More marginalized were the 1400 British prisoners of war (POWs) in Auschwitz. This chapter explores how these British liberators and POWs wrote and rewrote their experiences from 1945 through to the twenty-first century, juxtaposing Britishness, Jewishness, universality and particularism through the autobiographical process.
This chapter first appeared in Susanne Plietzsch and Armin Eidherr, eds., Durchblicke Horizonte jüdischer Kulturgeschichte (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 2017), 147–170. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed overview of its evolution, see Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain (New York: Routledge, 2014), 108–132; for a critique of its lack of wider historiographical engagement see Tom Lawson, “Ideology in a Museum of Memory: A Review of the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 4, 2 (2003): 173–183.
- 2.
For critical engagement with this notion, see David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine, eds., ‘Bystanders’ to the Holocaust: A Re-evaluation (London: Cass, 2002).
- 3.
Mark Connelly, We Can Take It! Britain and the Memory of the Second World War (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004).
- 4.
A. J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich 1933–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- 5.
London, Whitehall and the Jews, ix, 284.
- 6.
Britain’s Promise to Remember: The Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission Report (London: Cabinet Office, 2015), 9, 23.
- 7.
Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010).
- 8.
Marcus Dysch, “Syria vote ignored lesson of Holocaust, says Cameron,” The Jewish Chronicle, September 20, 2013, 1.
- 9.
Elmer Luchterhand put forward the term ‘co-present’ in relation to those Germans who lived close to the concentration camps, elaborating on p. 271 note 6 that, in his case, ‘less awkward terms such as witness and bystander do not really apply’. Elmer Luchterhand, “Knowing and Not Knowing: Involvement in Nazi Genocide,” in Our Common History: The Transformation of Europe, eds. Paul Thompson and Natasha Burchadt (London: Pluto, 1982). From a very different perspective it will be argued here that these two words, especially the latter, do not fully encapsulate the position of the men to be studied here.
- 10.
Joanne Reilly, Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp (London: Routledge, 1998).
- 11.
Connelly, We Can Take It!, 1, 3, 5.
- 12.
Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (London: Verso, 1985), 25, 245.
- 13.
Rainer Baum, “Holocaust: Moral Indifference as the Form of Modern Evil,” in Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time, eds. Alan Rosenberg and Gerald Myers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 53–79. Emphasis in italics added by authors.
- 14.
Britain’s Promise to Remember, 9.
- 15.
Contrast Theodore Hamerow, Why We Watched: Europe, America, and the Holocaust (London: Norton, 2008) with William Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (London: Routledge, 1997).
- 16.
Caroline Sharples, “The Kindertransport in British Historical Memory,” in The Kindertransport to Britain 1938/39: New Perspectives, eds. Andrea Hammel and Bea Lewkowicz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), 15–28.
- 17.
Robyn Rosen, “British Schindlers on Brown’s List,” The Jewish Chronicle, March 12, 2010, 10.
- 18.
Joseph White, ‘“Even in Auschwitz … Humanity Could Prevail’: British POWs and Jewish Concentration-Camp Inmates at IG Auschwitz, 1943–1945,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, 2 (2001), 270.
- 19.
Denis Avey and Rob Broomby, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011).
- 20.
Imperial War Museum oral history interview, July 16, 2001, catalogue no. 22065, and more generally Tony Kushner, “Oral History at the Extremes of Human Experience: Holocaust Testimony in a Museum Setting,” Oral History 29, 2 (2001): 83–94.
- 21.
See Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness, parts I and II.
- 22.
Affidavit and Testimony of Eric J. Doyle in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Vol. 8: The I. G. Farben Case (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1952), 617.
- 23.
Duncan Little, Allies in Auschwitz: The Untold Story of British POWs Held Captive in the Nazis’ Most Infamous Death Camp (Forest Row: Clairview, 2011), 67.
- 24.
Reilly, Belsen, passim.
- 25.
John Castle, The Password is Courage (London: Souvenir Press, 1954).
- 26.
White, “Even in Auschwitz …,” 281.
- 27.
More generally on how they viewed the Jewish inmates see Little, Allies in Auschwitz; Colin Rushton, Spectator in Hell: A British Soldier’s Story of Imprisonment in Auschwitz [1998] (Chichester: Summersdale, 2007).
- 28.
Ron Jones and Joe Lovejoy, The Auschwitz Goalkeeper: A Prisoner of War’s True Story (Llandysul: Gomer, 2013), 180.
- 29.
Broadcast on BBC television, 24 October 1960. See The Jewish Chronicle, October 28, 1960, 31; AJR Information 15, 12 (1960), 3 for comment.
- 30.
The Password is Courage, Dir. Andrew L. Stone (UK: Andrew L. Stone Productions, 1962).
- 31.
Geoff Hurd ed., National Fictions: World War Two in British Films and Television (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1984). See also Nicholas Cull, ‘“Great Escape’s: ‘Englishness’ and the Prisoner of War Genre,” Film History 14, 3–4 (2002): 282–295.
- 32.
The television version of the film ends before the transfer to the Auschwitz complex but in some of the cinema versions, drawings and a voice over provide limited details about the concentration camp. Information on the film’s various endings is provided in the Wollheim Memorial website, accessed October 9, 2018, http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/die_geschichte_des_romans_the_password_is_courage_von_john_castle.
- 33.
John Castle, The Password is Courage (London: Corgi, 1962 edition), back cover.
- 34.
John Castle, The Password is Courage (London: Corgi, 1975 edition), back cover, quoting the Yorkshire Evening Press.
- 35.
John Castle, The Password is Courage (London: Souvenir Press, 2001 [reprinted in 2011]), back cover.
- 36.
Martin Gilbert, “Preface” in Avey and Broomby, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz, vi.
- 37.
Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments: Memories of a Childhood, 1939–1948 (London: Picador, 1996).
- 38.
See Donald Bloxham and Tony Kushner, The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 38–40.
- 39.
Donald Watt, Stoker: The Story of an Australian Soldier Who Survived Auschwitz-Birkenau (East Roseville: Simon & Schuster, 1995). On Avey’s borrowings, see Guy Walters, “Did this British PoW really smuggle himself into Auschwitz to expose the Holocaust... or is his account pure fantasy and an insult to millions who died there?,” Daily Mail, September 4, 2011. Available online at The Daily Mail, accessed 08 October 2018, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375018/Denis-Avey-broke-Auschwitz-expose-Holocaust-account-insult.html. More generally on this phenomenon, Sue Vice, Translating the Self: False Holocaust Testimonies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). For a detailed analysis of the falsifications of Coward and Avey at different stages of their storytelling, see Russell Wallis, British POWs and the Holocaust: Witnessing the Nazi Atrocities (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), chapter 6 “The Limits of POW Testimony.”
- 40.
White, “Even in Auschwitz …,” 267.
- 41.
Leon Greenman, An Englishman in Auschwitz (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2001), 75.
- 42.
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Collier, 1961), 90–91. See also ‘Henri’s’ own memoir: Paul Steinberg, Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning, transl. from the French by Linda Coverdale with Bill Ford (London: Penguin, 2001).
- 43.
Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, 123.
- 44.
Jo Reilly, David Cesarani, Tony Kushner and Colin Richmond, eds., Belsen in History and Memory (London: Cass, 1997).
- 45.
Alan Moorehead, “Belsen” in The Golden Horizon, ed. Cyril Connolly (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), 106.
- 46.
Richard Dimbleby, “The Cesspit Beneath,” Belsen, 19 April 1945. Reproduced in: Leonard Miall, ed. Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster—By His Colleagues (London: BBC, 1966), 44.
- 47.
Wynford Vaughn-Thomas, “Outrage,” in Richard Dimbleby, ed. Miall, 43.
- 48.
Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby: A Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), 203.
- 49.
Dimbleby, “The Cesspit Beneath,” 44.
- 50.
Quoted in Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby, 202.
- 51.
Peter Unwin, The Narrow Sea: Barrier, Bridge and Gateway to the World—The History of the English Channel (London: Review, 2003).
- 52.
Edward Frederick Langley Russell, Lord Russell of Liverpool, The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes (London: Cassell, 1954), 177, 180, 207.
- 53.
Phillip Knightley, “Introduction,” in Eclipse, by Alan Moorehead (London: Granta, 2000) [1946]. More generally see Ann Moyal, Alan Moorehead: A Rediscovery (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2005).
- 54.
Moorehead, “Belsen,” 108.
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
Ibid, 111.
- 57.
Jonathan Dimbleby, Richard Dimbleby, 200.
- 58.
Moorehead, “Belsen,” 110.
- 59.
In the dustjacket of John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: The Authorised Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004).
- 60.
Kathy Burrell and Panikos Panayi, eds., Histories and Memories: Migrants and Their History in Britain (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006).
- 61.
Robert Colls, The Identity of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 110.
- 62.
Connelly, We Can Take It!, 200.
- 63.
Michael Coveney, “Vain, waspish … and a consummate artist,” The Guardian, October 2, 2004, 15.
- 64.
John Coldstream, ed., Ever, Dirk: the Bogarde Letters (London: Phoenix, 2009).
- 65.
Lynn Barber, “Dirk Bogarde’s grouchy letters are a publication too far,” The Daily Telegraph, August 23, 2008, 23.
- 66.
John Coldstream, “Introduction,” in Ever, Dirk, 8.
- 67.
Dirk Bogarde, “Out of the shadows of Hell,” The Daily Telegraph, November 26, 1988, reproduced in: Dirk Bogarde, For the Time Being: Collected Journalism (London: Viking, 1998), 143.
- 68.
Coldstream, Ever, Dirk, passim.
- 69.
Bogarde, “Out of the shadows of Hell,” 144.
- 70.
Russell Harty, A Conversation with Dirk Bogarde. Broadcast on Yorkshire Television on 14 September 1986. It is available at the British Film Institute and online through dirkbogarde.co.uk (accessed August 24, 2004).
- 71.
Bogarde, “Out of the shadows of Hell,” 146.
- 72.
Dirk Bogarde, “How Could Such Hatred Exist?,” The Daily Telegraph, August 10, 1991, reproduced in: Bogarde, For the Time Being, 213.
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Anthony Seldon, quoted by Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde, 519.
- 77.
Dirk Bogarde, For the Time Being: Collected Journalism (London: Penguin, 1999), 221.
- 78.
Ibid.
- 79.
Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde, 122.
- 80.
Mark Celinscak, Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), chapter 4, note 113. See also “Dirk Bogarde and the Holocaust,” available online at dirkbogarde.co.uk (accessed August, 23 2015). It reproduces the sources of Celinscak’s research, including that of a fellow member of his unit who recalls him being with him. It also includes Coldstream’s acknowledgment of his earlier error and why he came to query Bogarde’s presence in Belsen in the first place.
- 81.
Ian Jack, “The Russians came after all,” The Guardian, March 15, 2014, 27.
- 82.
John Carey, “Up close and personal,” The Sunday Times, August 10, 2008, 39.
- 83.
Dirk Bogarde to Penelope Mortimer, January 21, 1972, in Coldstream, Ever, Dirk, 74.
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Bunting, A., Kushner, T. (2019). Constructing a British Holocaust Narrative: A British Reading of Co-presents to the Shoah. In: Allwork, L., Pistol, R. (eds) The Jews, the Holocaust, and the Public. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28675-0_13
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