An unexpected feeling of guilt: conscience, trauma and the rise of Holocaust consciousness on British television in the 1960s
An unexpected feeling of guilt: conscience, trauma and the rise of Holocaust consciousness on British television in the 1960s
In the early-mid 1960s the coverage afforded to Adolf Eichmann’s capture and trial (and then the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials) is credited with bringing the extermination of European Jewry into the mainstream and galvanising what has been called Holocaust consciousness. In the process, Eichmann became representative of a certain kind of bureaucratic, seemingly banal, perpetrator, a consequence in part of both his physical appearance and demeanour in the courtroom and just as significantly Hannah Arendt’s influential Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. This chapter argues that the trial’s influence was also evident in a number of programmes broadcast on British television in the first half of the decade, programmes which considered the fate of the Jews of Europe as part of broader questions of guilt and responsibility.
Holocaust, Television broadcasting, BBC, ITV, Holocaust representation
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
Steinert, Johannes Dieter
Jordan, James
b4bf9915-44c8-45da-823b-7f2627f33e55
Steinert, Johannes Dieter
Jordan, James
(2025)
An unexpected feeling of guilt: conscience, trauma and the rise of Holocaust consciousness on British television in the 1960s.
In,
Stone, Dan and Steinert, Johannes Dieter
(eds.)
Holocaust Consciousness in Britain in the 1960s.
Bloomsbury Publishing.
(In Press)
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Book Section
Abstract
In the early-mid 1960s the coverage afforded to Adolf Eichmann’s capture and trial (and then the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials) is credited with bringing the extermination of European Jewry into the mainstream and galvanising what has been called Holocaust consciousness. In the process, Eichmann became representative of a certain kind of bureaucratic, seemingly banal, perpetrator, a consequence in part of both his physical appearance and demeanour in the courtroom and just as significantly Hannah Arendt’s influential Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. This chapter argues that the trial’s influence was also evident in a number of programmes broadcast on British television in the first half of the decade, programmes which considered the fate of the Jews of Europe as part of broader questions of guilt and responsibility.
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An Unexpected Feeling of Guilt: Conscience, Trauma and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness on British Television in the 1960s
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Accepted/In Press date: 2025
Keywords:
Holocaust, Television broadcasting, BBC, ITV, Holocaust representation
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 500624
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/500624
PURE UUID: 5fb62dce-d85b-4ee7-809f-f84fcce347d8
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Date deposited: 07 May 2025 16:38
Last modified: 07 May 2025 16:38
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Contributors
Editor:
Dan Stone
Editor:
Johannes Dieter Steinert
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