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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Problem of Displaced Jews and the Holocaust

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So far we have discussed how the Holocaust was portrayed as part of the discourse on the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trial. The last part of this book takes on a theme that runs parallel to, sometimes converging with, the ‘Nuremberg interregnum’. As Suomen Kuvalehti pointed out in 1945: ‘The Nazi war of extermination against the Jews did not resolve the Jewish question. On the contrary, the persecution has made the agenda more complicated than ever before.’1 Therefore, an examination of the press discourse on Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs), the creation of Israel and the emergence of the Cold War is necessary. However, it makes sense to deal with these topics separately in order to gain contextual clarity. Further, as the quote above indicates, rather than looking back to the Nazi genocide (as the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trial did), the discussions on Jewish DPs, Palestine and the Cold War were far more future-oriented in outlook. In an increasingly pessimistic world outlook, the Holocaust was invoked as a historical reference point, despite the fact that its repercussions were still sharply being felt. This, in turn, gave it a peculiar kind of presence; it was a presence that was used for various contemporary purposes, while at the same time it was being ignored in its own terms — as ‘the Holocaust’, as inconceivable suffering in history.