I’m looking for books specifically that address the world’s awareness of the Holocaust in the 15 year period immediately after WW2. I want to know how survivors proceeded with their lives immediately afterward, how Germany felt about the topic of the Holocaust during that 15 year period, and general world awareness of the Holocaust.
By this 15 year period, I specifically mean directly after the liberation of the camps until before the Eichmann trial in 1960 (which obviously was the turning point in the world's awareness of the Holocaust) .
This article, (Allan Gould: The Eichmann effect), addresses what I’m looking for somewhat, “At the time of the trial, 50 years ago, some people had a vague awareness of the mass killing of Jews under Hitler. But the world’s consciousness had not yet been raised, in any general sense, about genocide. Anne Frank’s diary had been translated into English only a few years earlier.”
This one also talks about Holocaust survivor’s experience, Shaping an Awareness of the Holocaust in Israeli and World Public Opinion, “Holocaust survivors … had hesitated prior to the trial, to tell their personal stories, owing to a reluctance and an absence of openness among many native-born Israelis.”
But I would like more details than just a paragraph about this. Could anyone give some recommendations for books / articles etc. that specifically talk about
World awareness of the Holocaust (1945 - 1960)
Germany's acknowledgement of the Holocaust immediately post WW2 until 1960
Lives of the Holocaust survivors immediately afterwards and whether they acknowledged what happened to them or not (1945 - 1960)
I would disagree with Gould on a couple points, namely the depiction Americans had only a vague awareness of the murder of the Jews and that the Eichmann trial was a watershed moment. In the case of the former, I would suggest that they thought about it differently than we do now. Because our current engagement with the memory of the Holocaust is so ubiquitous and because it dominates our understanding of the Nazi regime, we expect those in the past to have engaged similarly. They did not. Instead, they engaged with it whenever they considered the dangers of totalitarianism. They engaged with the murder of the Jews not as the assault on a particular people, but as the largest of a number of assaults on peoples that occurred due to the loss of rights that accompanied the totalitarian rule of the Nazis. Thus, when they spoke of maintaining democracy against totalitarian pressures and attacks on rights, they were in some ways thinking of, among other things, what we now call the Holocaust.
As an analogy, this might be something akin to someone saying that Americans had only a vague awareness of Mogadishu. While Americans may not mention it by name, discussions of peace and aid missions to “Third World” countries especially African ones, most certainly bring about thoughts of and are riddled with considerations of Mogadishu. The analogy can certainly break down, but the idea remains that you can be considering something, but until you have a term by which to reference it, it will remain unspoken.
The latter critique is that while the Eichmann trial stimulated new considerations of the murder of the Jews among Jews, and the article does a good job of looking at how victims felt about the trial, it didn’t really bring a change in non-Jewish Americans engagement. It was on the news, but it didn’t seem to have affected behavior or discourse. It wasn’t really until The Holocaust miniseries that Americans changed the way that they perceived their own relationship to that event. Although we can trace some changes prior, that was the real turning point.
All that said, try these books out:
Germany:
The focus of Facing the Nazi Past by Bill Niven is German engagement with the Holocaust in the 90s(ish), he does give good information on the early years.
Jacob Eder speaks of West Germany struggling with growing American engagement with Holocaust memory in his great work Holocaust Angst.
America:
The seminal work on the topic is The Holocaust in American Life by Peter Novick. He traces the growth of American Holocaust consciousness, though really he focuses primarily on American Jews rather than Americans as a whole (a failure true of most in this list). He has also been criticized by a number of historians. Nevertheless, his work is important and not a bad jumping off point.
Hasia Diner is one critical of Novick. She wrote We Remember with Reverence and Love, in which she argued thatAmerican Jews immediately after the postwar DID memorialize the Holocaust (some had implied that they had not), albeit differently than later generations. This one deals in detail with how survivors memorialized the Holocaust immediately after the war.
Another overview of American Holocaust memory is Deborah Lipstadt’s Holocaust: An American Understanding. An overview like Novick’s work, but written in quite a different style and with a much more positive outlook on Holocaust memorialization and American Jewish organizations in general.
If you have further questions, just let me know. I love talking about this topic, so if you are patient, I will answer.
You might start with Dan Stone's The Liberation of the Camps, from the AskHistorians booklist.
Do you read German?
There are more sources in response to "How did the Allies care for Holocaust survivors?", by /u/commiespaceinvader. This answer may also shed some light,
EDIT:See what /u/Kugelfang52 says in response to this question about the Holocaust being "rediscovered", even though it discusses events beyond 1960. /u/estherke provides more sources about the Holocaust's aftermath.. More related answers can be found on her AH profile page..