Roundtable:
Umberto Gentiloni (University of Rome and author of Bombardare Auschwitz?, 2015), Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University). Moderator: Yasmine Ergas (Columbia University). With the participation of Fabienne Servan-Schreiber (producer).
The circulation of the photos taken by liberating forces in the Nazi death camps were received across the world as if they were the first evidence of the mass murder of European Jews. Research however, has determined that information about the mass killings began to circulate as early as 1941, and that - by 1942 - leaders of the democratic world, as well as the Vatican, had knowledge of the extermination project.
In England and the U.S., the media had been reporting for years on the mounting attack on Jewish rights, culture, property, and individuals. Political leaders and the press kept the events under the radar, but made a clear distinction between the dangerous development of Fascist and Nazi politics and the plight of the Jewish minority.
When the flow of refugees from Europe caused nations to question the international order and immigration policies, some relief was sought through the Evian conference; but this established only that very little could be done. The countries that could potentially receive the Jews who were being expelled from Europe were primarily concerned about their own economies and social unrest.
Jewish refugees became pawns in each European country where they managed to arrive, as well as in the farther lands where the luckiest ones were permitted to enter. These refugees (who were bereft of everything, and whose only ambition was to survival) often became assets to exploit militarily, politically, and economically. Those who did not succeed in leaving Europe were - in many cases - destined for death.
The long story of international indifference over the persecution and - later - the extermination of the Jews depended not on lack of information but on a broader set of factors including the fact that people - both leaders and the public at large - had never experienced totalitarianism and its radical alteration in the relationship between government and its citizens.
Our attempt to understand the experience of persecution during World War II resonates in part with current political situations. Today, citizens at all levels of society hear of world events as they happen. Violence, refugee crises, and war unfold before everybody's eyes.
Yet the challenges of intervention remain, or are at least similarly divorced from the knowledge of facts. A panel of historians, media experts, and human-rights scholars will discuss the question of intervention in support of Jewish refugees and against the extermination project, as well as the ways in which that experience informed - or failed to inform - democratic societies in the post-war era.
