Nashville Reports on the Holocaust
Wed, December 18, 1:30 to 3:00pm EST (1:30 to 3:00pm EST), Virtual Zoom Room 08Abstract
After the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camps in 1945 the full extent of the horrors of the Holocaust were exposed via film and photographs. The world was appalled by what it saw. The mixture of horror, shock, and disbelief helped to fuel the development of a myth centered around the lack of knowledge that the allied nations had about the events as they occurred. It was easy to believe that America did not know what was occurring in the camps once images and reports of the death and devastation came to light. Over the years the story that America knew nothing became part of the national historical cannon. Surely, the land of the free could not have known about mass murders and systematic violence, if it did would it not have done something? Unfortunately, this idea is a myth. Knowledge of the laws removing rights away from specific groups, deportations, ghettoization, mass executions, and other pieces of the Holocaust widely covered in American newspapers. Key events in 1942 and 1943 solidified the Holocaust as an American news story, and yet the stories were often buried deep inside the paper. Through the Karski report and the Riegner telegram the American government confirmed that the stories of mass murder and violence against the Jews of Europe were true. In some cases, this confirmation changed how the news was reported and how the public responded.
This paper is a case study that will reveal what information newspaper readers in Nashville had access to as the Holocaust unfolded. My source base comes from three Nashville publications, The Nashville Banner, The Nashville Tennessean, and The Jewish Observer. The Banner and The Tennessean are mainstream publications and The Observer is a newspaper for the Jewish community. This case study dispels the myth of American lack of knowledge through demonstrating that readers of Nashville newspapers could easily learn about the atrocities transpiring in Europe and even with this knowledge most elected to do nothing but passively view the reports.