Tony Kushner

Meaning nothing but good: ethics, history and asylum-seeker phobia in Britain

The current hostility of the media, politicians, state and public against asylum-seekers in Britain is unprecedented in its intensity. Rarely in modern British history have those campaigning for refugee rights been so isolated, marginalized and silenced. Kushner explores how it has been possible to couch the campaign against asylum-seekers in a discourse of morality: the need to protect ‘our’ people and culture against the diseased and dangerous alien, as well as the distinction drawn between helping the genuine refugee and exposing the bogus asylum-seeker. History has been instrumentalized to prove, through alleged generosity in the past, the moral righteousness of Britains treatment of refugees. He attempts to expose the dangers of misplaced ethics and distorted history. To begin the process of change, he argues, historians and moral philosophers, because of the abuse of their areas of expertise, must confront the issue of refugees as being central rather than peripheral to their concerns.

Holocaust Testimony, Ethics, and the Problem of Representation

It has taken many decades after 1945 for the testimony of Holocaust victims to be taken seriously. This article charts the shift from the marginalization of survivors and the lack of interest in their accounts immediately after the war to more recent developments, whereby they have gained belated recognition and huge efforts have been made to record their experiences. Faced now with the largest collection of testimony ever gathered about one specific event in history, historians and others representing the past are faced with the dilemma of what to do with this remarkable archive of material. It is suggested that only by understanding the nature of ordinary peoples constructions of their life histories, with their internal silences and mythologies, will scholars do full justice to the complexity and richness of Holocaust testimony.

Local heroes: Belgian refugees in Britain during the first world war

The Belgians during the First World War represented the largest refugee movement in British history. Despite the size of this influx — at its peak some 250,000 were present in Britain ‐ there has been an almost total absence of reference to them. This article suggests that this neglect is unfortunate both with regard to our understanding of the First World War and the history of refugees during the twentieth century. In particular, this article stresses the importance of local responses and reactions to the refugees and the significance of place in the process of rebuilding lives and identities in Britain.

Remembering Cable Street: fascism and anti-fascism in British society

This collection presents research on the 1939 confrontation between the police, fascists and anti-fascists in Londons Jewish neighbourhood, and its impact on British society. The collection includes chapters on the political, social and cultural history of Cable Street, looking at the diversity of Jewish responses in London and Manchester, fascist perceptions and representations of Cable Street, the role of gender and the cultural memory of the Battle of Cable Street.

Alien internment in Britain during the twentieth century: An introduction

Alien internment in Britain remains unexplored and its significance at most is seen as limited, as ‘an unimpressive footnote’ in modern British history. The introduction explores how internment has been remembered (and forgotten) in a general process of marginalization. It highlights the weaknesses of existing literature and indicates how the essays in this volume confront many of the untouched or unanswered questions of this tragic, comic and often very frightening subject.

Beyond the pale? British reactions to Nazi anti‐Semitism, 1933–39

The reactions of the British people to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Europe have received scant attention. The little that has been written has stressed the sympathy generated by the atrocities at the cost of disguising the complexity of the responses that emerged before 1939. In contrast this article suggests that anti‐Semitism of a liberal and conservative variety helped to shape reactions in Britain. Moreover it argues that liberal attitudes towards Jews determined both refugee policy and the treatment of refugees in Britain and ultimately caused government and public alike to misinterpret the full horror and significance of the holocaust.

Anti-Semitism in Britain: continuity and the absence of a resurgence?

Abstract It has become the orthodoxy in recent years to assume that anti-Semitism globally is not only rising but also taking a new form – it is a ‘new anti-Semitism’ or even a new phenomenon: Judeophobia. This article takes a different perspective. It initially covers approaches to anti-Semitism and how, especially in the light of the Holocaust, it has been viewed academically as no longer the fault of the Jews but as a natural and constant feature of history since antiquity. A critique is provided of the idea of a continuous history of anti-Semitism and of the metaphors used to describe it. There then follows a case study of anti-Semitism in Britain. The British case is valuable as it is seen as a key example of the ‘new anti-Semitism’, and one that is more striking given the alleged absence of previous hostility towards Jews in that country. By employing a comparative approach – both temporal and in relation to responses to other groups – change and continuity are charted through a study of racial violence. Such comparisons, it is argued, allow a more nuanced and balanced analysis of this issue, which has created much alarm and little sober reflection.

Loose connections? Britain and the "Final Solution"

Howards End, E.M. Forster’s classic Edwardian novel, may seem an unlikely starting point for a commentary on post-war Britain and its confrontation with the Holocaust. But as Oliver Stallybrass noted, ‘Only connect...’... is the epigraph of a novel much concerned with the relationships, and the possibility of reconciliation, between certain pairs of opposite s : the prose and the passion, the seen and the unseen, the practical mind and the intellectual, the outer life and the inner.1

Britain, the United States and the Holocaust: In Search of a Historiography

Hugo Gryn was a teenage Auschwitz survivor who came to Britain in a scheme to help young victims of the Nazi camps recuperate after the war. Subsequently, he became a reform rabbi working in the United States and India, before becoming a much loved religious leader inside and outside the Jewish community in Britain.1 In his last speech, proclaiming that ‘asylum issues are an index of our spiritual and moral civilization’, Hugo Gryn stated: How you are with the one to whom you owe nothing, that is a grave test and not only as an index of our tragic past. I always think that the real offenders at the half-way mark of the century were the bystanders, all those people who let things happen because it didn’t really affect them directly.2 Hugo Gryn particularly had in mind the historical example of the SS St Louis, the German cruise ship, which set off from Hamburg in the summer of 1939 carrying over 1,000 German Jews. The story has subsequently become infamous. Those on board held Cuban visas but when arriving there all but a tiny fraction were refused entry. The captain of the ship deliberately sailed close to the coast of Miami, but the US authorities refused to give the passengers permission to land, as did several South American countries. The ship returned to Europe. Britain, Holland, Belgium and France took the majority of the St Louis refugees, but only a handful outside Britain survived the war, caught up in the whirlwind that was the Holocaust.

Antisemitism in the 1990s: A Symposium

We recently addressed the following statement and questions on the strength and nature of anti-Semitism in the 1990s to a number of Jews and non-Jews throughout the world: Talk of a ‘revival’ or ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism is now commonplace. This seems to be the result of developments in the former USSR and in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989, but also of increasing reports of anti-Semitic incidents taking place throughout Western Europe and similar problems emerging in North America, South America, Australia and South Africa. 1) How serious is the recent ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism? Is this in any sense a global phenomenon? Is talk of a ‘revival of antisemitism’ justified? 2) What are in your view the most important contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism? Should anti-Semitism still mainly be seen as a phenomenon of extreme right- and left-wing politics and ideology, or is contemporary anti-Semitism more seriously present in popular culture, within political and social elites, in the school playground? 3) What role, if any, do you think the conflict between Israel and the Arab world is playing in fostering anti-Jewish sentiment? How important is the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism in this context? To what extent is anti-Semitism today taking the guise of anti-Zionism? 4) Finally, if there is indeed an upsurge in antiswemitism, what do you think are its major causes? What part is nationalism, particularly in the Commonwealth of Independent States and in Eastern and Central Europe, playing in causing or exacerbating contemporary anti-Semitism? Do you agree that there was until recently a post-Holocaust taboo on anti-Semitism that has now been lifted?