Britain and Holocaust Consciousness in the 1960s

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Liberation of the Camps to The Holocaust: An Unfinished History (2023).Johannes-Dieter Steinert is Emeritus Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies at University of Wolverhampton, UK. He is the author of Przemyslowa Concentration Camp: The Camp, the Children, the Trials (with Katarzyna Person; 2022).

This collection offers a fascinating insight into the 1960s that has been seen as a pivotal, transitional decade in the emergence of 'Holocaust consciousness' in Britain. The essays evoke the rich complexities of how the Holocaust featured in British life, moving beyond London to reflect on experiences across the British nations. The strength of this collection is not only its geographical range, but also the way it considers diverse genres: archives, theatre, court cases, press reporting, book publishing, television and film, theology and activism to name just a few.

• 1. Murder for the Masses: The Holocaust in Paperback in the Long Sixties, Mark Donnelly2. Kitty Hart-Moxon’s I Am Alive (1961) and British Holocaust Consciousness, Sue Vice3. ‘Every time they start singing about “up the chimney”, that’s my parents they’re talking about’: British Antifascism and Holocaust Memory in the 1960s, Joshua Cohen4. Refugees, Survivors, Archives: The Wiener Library in 1960s’ Britain, Christine Schmidt5. ‘It will be no bad thing to have the memory refreshed’: The Eichmann Trial, the Press and Frameworks of Understanding, Andy Pearce6. Auschwitz, Mr Brown and James Bond: The British Press, Holocaust Trials in the Early 1960s, and the Role of Holocaust Survivors as Witnesses, Johannes-Dieter Steinert7. Female Inmate-Physicians of Block 10 at Auschwitz as Witnesses at the Dering v. Uris Libel Trial: The Testimony of Survival, Dan Stone8. ‘A Worthy Monument to the Memory of the Six Million’: David Astor and the Psychological Understanding of the Holocaust in the 1960s, Danae Karydaki9. Idyll and Industry in Wales and Beyond: A Portrait of the Life and Work of Refugee Artist Heinz Koppel and His Family, Andrea Hammel10. Echoes of the Holocaust in 1960s’ Scotland: Commemoration and Continuity in Glasgow’s Jewish Echo, Mia Spiro and Cian Pappenheim11. The Shared Lives and Art of Alice Berger Hammerschlag and Helen Lewis in Pre-Troubles Northern Ireland, Pamela Linden Aveyard12. ‘Where are the Gypsies? Gone.’ The Development of Roma Genocide Consciousness in 1960s’ Britain, Becky Taylor and Roxy Moore13. An Unexpected Feeling of Guilt: Conscience, Trauma and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness on British Television in the 1960s, James Jordan14. Not Five Million Years to Warsaw: Encountering the ‘Alien’ Holocaust in 1960s’ British SF-Horror Cinema, Barry Langford15. A Theology of Auschwitz: British Christians Confront the Holocaust in the Long 1960s, Andrew Chandler16. Holocaust Memory and British Jews in the 1960s, David Feldman