Abstract
This study examines how the Swedish press responded to and portrayed the Holocaust immediately after the war. The liberation of the camps, the role and guilt of ordinary Germans, the Nuremberg trials and the ongoing problem of Jewish DPs in Europe were the most important issues on the basis of which the Swedish press had shaped the early post-war view of the Holocaust. Moreover, the fate of the Jews under Nazi Germany formed an important element of such reporting. The author argues that, contrary to the dominant Anglo-American historiography, which holds that the first post-war decades were marked by silence surrounding the German genocide, the Swedish press wrote about the Holocaust often and in a more nuanced way than dominant scholarly knowledge would have it.
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Notes
- 1.
Allan Bell, ‘News Stories as Narratives’, in The Discourse Reader, eds. Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 236.
- 2.
This chapter is a revised and updated version of research done and published in Antero Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011).
- 3.
Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times. The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 296. For earlier American and British studies with similar views, see Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief. The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (New York: Free Press, 1986); Robert, Moses Shapiro, (ed.), Why Didn’t the Press Shout? American and International Journalism During the Holocaust (Jersey City, NJ: Yeshiva University Press, 2003); Julian Scott, The British Press and the Holocaust 1942–1943 (PhD Diss., University of Leicester, 1994); Tony Kushner, ‘Different Worlds. British Perceptions of the Final Solution during the Second World War’, in The Final Solution. Origins and Implementation, ed. David Cesarani (London: Routledge, 1994).
- 4.
Yosef Gorny, The Jewish Press and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 269. On Tony Kushner’s ‘liberal imagination’, see Antero Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 21–22.
- 5.
For example, see: Pontus Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017); Harald Rundblom, ‘Sweden and the Holocaust from an International Perspective,’ in Sweden’s Relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, eds. Stig Ekman and Klas Åmark (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 213–221, esp. 217–218; Ingmar Svanberg and Mattias Tydén, Sverige och förintelsen. Debatt och Dokument om Europas Judar 1933–1945 (Stockholm: Arena, 1997); Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism. Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (Uppsala: Studia Historica Uppsaliensia, 1998), 120–133; Malin Thor Tureby, ‘Svenska änglar och hyenor möter tacksamma flyktingar. Mottagningen av befriade koncentrationslägerfångar i skånsk press under året 1945’, Historisk tidskrift 135, no. 2 (2015): 266–300.
- 6.
Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige och förintelsen, 249.
- 7.
Thor Tureby, ‘Svenska änglar och hyenor möter tacksamma flyktingar’, 297.
- 8.
The popular contemporary terminology used in the Swedish press to describe the Holocaust included especially the terms ‘utrotning’ (extermination) and ‘förföljelser’ (persecution).
- 9.
The papers included: Dagens Nyheter (DN, liberal centrist), Expressen (liberal-left), Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (GHT, liberal-left), Stockholms-Tidningen (StT, conservative-right) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD, conservative).
- 10.
Steven Koblik, The Stones Cry Out. Sweden’s Response to the Persecution of Jews, 1933–1945 (New York: Holocaust Library, 1988), 134–135.
- 11.
For example, SvD, 15, 18 and 19 April 1945; DN, 19, 20 and 21 April 1945.
- 12.
Expressen, 23 April 1945.
- 13.
For the polemics of the Swedish rescue mission to Germany, the literature is abundant—and contentious. See, for example, Ingrid Lomfors, Blind fläck. Minne och glömska kring Svenska röda korsets hjälpinsats i Nazityskland 1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005); Koblik, The Stones Cry Out, chapter 4; Sune Persson, ‘Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses’, in Bystanders to the Holocaust. A Re-evaluation, eds. David Cesarani and Paul A. Levine (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 237–271; Ulf Zander, ‘To Rescue or be Rescued: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen and White Buses in British and Swedish Historical Culture’, in The Holocaust on Post-War Battlefields. Genocide as Historical Culture, eds. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Malmö: Sekel, 2006), 343–383; Folke Bernadotte, Slutet. Mina humanitära förhandlingar i Tyskland våren 1945 och deras politiska följder (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1945); Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 1940–1945, with an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper (London: Hutchinson, 1956); Norbert Masur, En Jude talar med Himmler (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1945).
- 14.
Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism, 140.
- 15.
DN, 25 April 1945.
- 16.
StT, 25 April 1945.
- 17.
Alf W. Johansson, Den nazistiska utmaningen. Aspekter på andra världskriget (Stockholm: Prisma, 2000), 256.
- 18.
StT, 26 April 1945.
- 19.
For Sweden and the Winter War, see especially Alf Johansson, Finlands sak. Svensk politik och opinion under vinterkriget 1939–1940 (Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1973). For the ’Finnish question’ in Swedish politics, see Krister Wahlbäck, Finlandsfrågan i Svensk politik 1937–1940 (Stockholm: Nordstedt, 1964).
- 20.
Svanbeg and Tyden, Sverige och förintelsen, 251.
- 21.
Mikael Byström, En broder, gäst och parasit. Uppfattningar och föreställningar om utlänningar, flyktingar och flyktingspolitik i svensk offentlig debatt 1942–1947 (PhD Diss., Stockholm University, 2006), 104–105 and 112–116; Svanberg and Tyden, Sverige och förintelsen, 312–325.
- 22.
For Nordic Jews and the concept of broderfolk, see Mikael Byström, ‘En talade tystnad? Ett antisemitik bakgrundsbrus i riksdagsdebatterna 1942–1947’, in En Problematisk Relation? Flyktingpolitik och judiska flyktingar i Sverige 1920–1950, eds. Lars M. Anderson and Karin Kvist Geverts (Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 2008), 129–130; Levine, From Indifference to Activism, 140.
- 23.
For a similar assessment, see also Zander, ‘To Rescue or be Rescued’, 357.
- 24.
DN, 3 May 1945. Emphasis added. See also SvD, 27 April 1945.
- 25.
Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, 255; see also Holmila, Framing Genocide.
- 26.
Dagsposten, 2 May 1945. Dagsposten was the main Swedish paper supporting German Nazism and the Swedish National Socialist Party, SNF (Sveriges Nationella Förbund). See, for example, Stephane Bruchfeld, ‘Grusade drömmar. Svenska ’nationella’ och det tyska nederlaget 1945’, in Bilder i kontrast : interkulturella processer Sverige/Tyskland i skuggan av nazismen 1933–1945, eds. Charlotta Brylla, Birgitta Almgren and Frank-Michael Kirsch (Aalborg: Univ. Aalborg, 2005)
- 27.
DN, 3 May 1945. Emphasis in original.
- 28.
For example, see SvD, 2 May 1945; DN, 3 May 1945.
- 29.
Expressen, 5 May 1945.
- 30.
For example, DN headline on 3 May 1945 reads ‘New clothes for 16,000 prisoners.’
- 31.
DN, 4 May 1945.
- 32.
Gunnar Gunnarsson, ‘Där är ett under att jag är här’, DN, 5 May 1945.
- 33.
The exact phrase in Swedish that Gunnarsson used: ‘de kommer alla från Auschwitz (Oswiecim) och visar med stolthet upp sina på vänstra underarmen tattuerade nummer’.
- 34.
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (London: Michael Joseph, 1988), 53.
- 35.
Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust, 49–53.
- 36.
DN, 21 April 1945.
- 37.
StT, 14 April 1945.
- 38.
StT, 27 April 1945.
- 39.
Expressen, 28 April 1945.
- 40.
SvD, 28 April 1945.
- 41.
DN, 18 April 1945.
- 42.
DN, 27 April 1945.
- 43.
DN, 4 May 1945.
- 44.
Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust, 53.
- 45.
DN, 27 April 1945.
- 46.
DN, 5 May 1945.
- 47.
Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgement. Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 11; Michael Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945–46. A Documentary History (New York: Bedford/St.Martin’s Press, 1997), 242.
- 48.
Bradley Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 103.
- 49.
For the debates about the trial’s legitimacy and victors’ justice, see esp. StT, 3 Februay 1946 and Expressen, 6 February 1946.
- 50.
Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust, 91–93.
- 51.
StT, 13 December 1945; see also StT, 18 December 1945; GHT, 4 January 1946; Expressen 20 January 1946.
- 52.
StT, 22 November 1945.
- 53.
Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 13.
- 54.
SvD, 14 December 1945.
- 55.
StT, 14 December 1945.
- 56.
Victor Vinde’s books included Revolution i Paris. Tre kapitel om en kris (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1935); Det franska sammanbrottet (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1940); En stormakts fall (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1941); Frankrike efter nederlaget (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska institutet, 1941); Amerika slår till (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1943); Det fria Frankrike (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska institutet, 1944); Nürnberg i blixtljus (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1946); Det nya Frankrike (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska institutet, 1947); Revolution i Algeriet (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1958); De Gaulle och Frankrike (Uppsala: Verdandi, 1962); Vietnam. Det smutsiga kriget (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1966).
- 57.
Vinde, Nürnberg, 185. Emphasis added. Vinde had earlier discussed the destruction of the ghetto, arguing that the killing of innocent men, women and children by the troops which were armed to teeth, and then making it into a heroic tale represented ‘the deepest depravity to which any nation or tribe had ever sunken…’, Vinde, Nürnberg, 57.
- 58.
Douglas, The Memory of Judgement, 69.
- 59.
‘Slaughtering resulted in the death of 5 million Jews’, SvD, 4 March 1946.
- 60.
‘Execution groups followed the German Army’, StT, 4.1.1946.
- 61.
StT, 14 April 1946.
- 62.
StT, 4 January 1946.
- 63.
The death toll of the murdered Jews in Auschwitz has been estimated at 1,250,000. See, for example, Ronnie S. Landau, The Nazi Holocaust (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992), 177.
- 64.
For example, see ‘Auschwitz boss confesses the murder of 2 million Jews’, DN, 16 April 1946.
- 65.
SvD, 16 April 1946.
- 66.
StT, 2 October 1946.
- 67.
For more detailed examinations, see Holmila Reporting the Holocaust, 125–172; Antero Holmila, ‘The Holocaust and the Birth of Israel in British, Swedish and Finnish Press discourse, 1947–1948’, European Review of History. Revue européenne d’histoire 16, no. 2 (2009): 183–200.
- 68.
Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes. The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989), 45.
- 69.
Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics. Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 89; Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust. Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10–15. For a current synthesis of the liberation, see Dan Stone, The Liberation of the Camps. The End of the Holocaust and (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).
- 70.
Zorach Warhaftig, Uprooted. Jewish Refugees and Displaced Persons after Liberation (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1946).
- 71.
Warhaftig, Uprooted, 39.
- 72.
Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 89.
- 73.
Cited in Mark Wyman, DP: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–51 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 136. For the full report see for example, Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), appendix B, 291–305.
- 74.
DN, 30 September 1945; Wyman, DP, 135.
- 75.
GHT, 1 October 1945.
- 76.
StT, 1 October 1945.
- 77.
GHT, 1 October 1945.
- 78.
GHT, 1 October 1945.
- 79.
Leon Uris, Exodus (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1958).
- 80.
For example, Ruth Gruber, Exodus 1947. The Ship That Launched a Nation (New York: Times Books, 1999).
- 81.
Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44–45.
- 82.
SvD, 19 July 1947.
- 83.
SvD, 21 July 1947.
- 84.
SvD, 30 July 1947.
- 85.
Cited in Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle. The Struggle between the British, the Jews and the Arabs 1935–48 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1979), 336.
- 86.
GHT, 2 August 1947.
- 87.
See Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust. The British decision marked a new phase in their Palestine policy and was taken in the middle of the rising Jewish terrorism in Palestine.
- 88.
GHT, 10 September 1947.
- 89.
Expressen, 8 September 1947.
- 90.
Expressen, 8 September 1947.
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Holmila, A. (2021). ‘A Hellish Nightmare’: The Swedish Press and the Construction of Early Holocaust Narratives, 1945–1950. In: Heuman, J., Rudberg, P. (eds) Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_7
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