Antisemitism and the Politics of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK and Italy

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Muslims in Global Societies Series book series (MGSS, volume 5)

Abstract

Since the inception of Holocaust Memorial Day, the event and its focus have come under considerable attack from a number of quarters, particularly (although by no means exclusively) from some sections of Muslim communities. This chapter analyses some of the arguments advanced and the extent to which they reflect in both the UK and Italy a growing and wider reluctance to acknowledge the centrality of antisemitism to the Holocaust. It suggests that this may be connected to a rearticulation of antisemitism in a new context which both risks silencing survivors anew and is counterproductive for thinking about the problem of genocide today.

Keywords

Jewish Identity Muslim Community Muslim Brotherhood Universal Significance Genocide Convention 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access

References

  1. Alexander, Jeffrey. 2009. Remembering the Holocaust: A debate. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Arendt, Hannah. 1965. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
  3. Arendt, Hannah. 1968. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
  4. Bernstein, Richard J. 1996. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish question. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
  5. Bloxham, Donald. 2001. Genocide on trial: The war crimes trials and the formation of Holocaust history and memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Bruck, Edith. 1999. Signora Auschwitz: Il Dono Della Parola. Venezia: Marsilio.Google Scholar
  7. Cooper, John. 2008. Raphael Lemkin and the struggle for the genocide convention. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Desbois, Patrick. 2008. The Holocaust by bullets: A Priest’s journey to uncover the truth behind the murder of 1.5 million Jews, 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
  9. Friedländer, Saul. 1994. Trauma, memory and transference. In Holocaust remembrance: The shapes of memory, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman, 259. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  10. Fritzsche, Peter. 2008. Life and death in the Third Reich. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  11. Gerwarth, Robert, and Stephan Malinowski. 2009. Hannah Arendt’s ghosts: Reflections on the disputable path from Windhoek to Auschwitz. Central European History 42(2): 279–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Helm, Toby. 2005. Holocaust day must be scrapped, say Muslim leaders. The Telegraph Online. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1498206/Holocaust-Day-must-be-scrapped-say-Muslim-leaders.html.
  13. Herf, Jeffrey. 2009. Nazi propaganda for the Arab world. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  14. Hilberg, Raul. 1993. Perpetrators victims bystanders: The Jewish catastrophe, 1933–1945. 1st Harper Perennial ed. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
  15. Küntzel, Matthias. 2007. Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11. New York: Telos Press Pub.Google Scholar
  16. Kushner, Tony. 1994. The Holocaust and the liberal imagination: A social and cultural history. Oxford/Cambridge: B. Blackwell.Google Scholar
  17. Levi, Primo. 2000. Se Questo È Un Uomo: La Tregua. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
  18. Levi, Primo. 2004. If this is a man: The truce. London: Abacus.Google Scholar
  19. Madley, Benjamin. 2005. From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa incubated ideas and methods adopted and developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe. European History Quarterly 35(3): 429–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Mannheimer, Renate. 2009. Antisemiti, in Italia Sono Il 12 Per Cento. Il Corriere Della Sera, January 26.Google Scholar
  21. Novick, Peter. 2000. The Holocaust and collective memory: The American experience. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
  22. Paul, Jonny. 2010. Brits deem anti-Israel Group Holocaust event ‘Offensive’. The Jerusalem Post, September 29.Google Scholar
  23. Poliakov, Léon. 2003. The history of anti-semitism: from the time of Christ to the court Jews. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
  24. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  25. Schenker, Hillel, and Abu Zayyad Ziad. 2006. Islamophobia and anti-semitism. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.Google Scholar
  26. Smith, Amanda. 2007. Fury as council axes Holocaust memorial service. The Bolton News, January 27.Google Scholar
  27. Spencer, Philip. 2010. The left, radical anti-semitism and the problem of genocide. Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism 2(1): 133.Google Scholar
  28. Stone, Dan. 2006. History, memory, memorial and museums. In History, memory and mass atrocity: Essays on the Holocaust and genocide, ed. Dan Stone. Portland: Vallentine Mitchell.Google Scholar
  29. Werbner, Pnina. 2009. Displaced enemies, displaced memories: Diaspora memorial politics of partition and the Holocaust. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 74(4): 441–464.Google Scholar
  30. Yablonka, Hanna. 2004. The state of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann. 1st American ed. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
  31. Zimmerer, Jürgen. 2005. The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism: A postcolonial perspective on the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination. Patterns of Prejudice 39(2): 197–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Centre National de la Recherche Scientif SociologieParisFrance
  2. 2.International Institute for Education and Research on AntisemitismLondonUK

Personalised recommendations