Antisemitism and Holocaust Remembrance
Juliane Wetzel examines the relationship between antisemitism and Holocaust remembrance. She offers an explanation for the persistence of antisemitism after 1945. Wetzel discusses that despite a taboo against open antisemitism, precisely because of Auschwitz, feelings of guilt led to the phenomenon of antisemitism – so called secondary antisemitism – exposing a failure to come to terms with the past and resulting in Holocaust denial and the minimisation of the Holocaust. The trivialisation of the Holocaust by comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and antisemitic tropes such as “Jews talk too much about the Holocaust”, as well as the reversal of perpetrators and victims in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become a widespread phenomenon across Europe. The Middle East conflict has become a backdrop for the projection of antisemitic sentiments, often related to the Holocaust. These feelings can be expressed even by those who present themselves as anti-antisemites and anti-racists. This leads to challenges in Holocaust education, even more so in classrooms with a significant number of students with migrant backgrounds whose parents came to Europe after 1945. Myths about the Holocaust are prominent not only in Arab media but also in the Internet. Wetzel highlights the difficulty of respecting the singularity of the Holocaust with regard to other atrocities and totalitarian regimes.
Fear : anti-semitism in Poland after Auschwitz : an essay in historical interpretation
The fate of Jews in post-war Europe is a subject which has been neglected by historians both in the West and in areas previously under Soviet control. Clearly this is not a subject which has neutral connotations, raising questions about the way pre-war political elites subscribed to the belief that the fate of Jews was not an important element in the history of a given nation/state, the degree of complicity between the occupation administration and the local community, and, finally, how post-war reconciliation seemingly made it necessary to avoid the debate of the Jewish war-time tragedies. Poland is not unique in the way that the subject has been avoided. France, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland have only belatedly faced the uncomfortable truths relating to governments' and individuals' actions during the Nazi period. There is presently a willingness to admit that local co-operation and complicity in the Nazis' extermination policies were factors of considerable importance in the history of the Holocaust.
Same Same But Different - also in Europe! A New Methodological Approach in Cross-Country Analysis of Communication Structuresapplied to five EU member states
The EU still lacks a truly European public sphere. On this level, there is still a clear lack of integration between individual member states. This means that national public spheres and cultures are still of great importance for European communication and media professionals. Comparative research into the similarities and differences between different nations is therefore valuable for cross-border PR communication activities. This paper lays out the methodological foundation for such research, discussing possible approaches and difficulties associated with comparative research. The author then introduces a potential heuristic framework for comparative analysis: the International Corporate Communication Compass. This framework is applied to five case-study EU countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Poland and the UK), showing the differences and similarities in a range of different contexts that affect public communication in all its forms. The conclusion examines how the results of such studies could be used in order to compare communication identities of different countries. This can potentially help in the development of a European public identity on the long run and in a first step can led towards a better, more adapted communication structure about European citizenship. Ultimately, communication structures within the EU might become more Europeanized than they