Paul R. Bartrop

The Holocaust and Australia (eBook, PDF)

Refugees, Rejection, and Memory

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Paul R. Bartrop examines the formation and execution of Australian government policy towards European Jews during the Holocaust period, revealing that Australia did not have an established refugee policy (as opposed to an immigration policy) until late 1938. He shows that, following the Evian Conference of July 1938, Interior Minister John McEwen pledged a new policy of accepting 15,000 refugees (not specifically Jewish), but the bureaucracy cynically sought to restrict Jewish entry despite McEwen's lofty ambitions. Moreover, the book considers the (largely negative) popular attitudes toward Jewish immigrants in Australia, looking at how these views were manifested in the press and in letters to the Department of the Interior.

The Holocaust and Australia grapples with how, when the Second World War broke out, questions of security were exploited as the means to further exclude Jewish refugees, a policy incongruous alongside government pronouncements condemning Nazi atrocities. The book also reflects on the double standard applied towards refugees who were Jewish and those who were not, as shown through the refusal of the government to accept 90% of Jewish applications before the war. During the war years this double standard continued, as Australia said it was not accepting foreign immigrants while taking in those it deemed to be acceptable for the war effort.

Incorporating the voices of the Holocaust refugees themselves and placing the country's response in the wider contexts of both national and international history in the decades that have followed, Paul R. Bartrop provides a peerless Australian perspective on one of the most catastrophic episodes in world history.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 296
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. Juli 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781350185159
• Artikelnr.: 64152858

Autorenporträt

Paul R. Bartrop is Professor Emeritus at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. He is the author and co-author of several books, including Resisting the Holocaust: Upstanders, Partisans, and Survivors (2016), Encountering Genocide: Personal Accounts from Victims, Perpetrators, and Witnesses (2014) and Genocide: The Basics (2014). He is also the co-editor, with Michael Dickerman, of the award-winning four-volume The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection (2017) and Resisting the Holocaust: Upstanders, Partisans, and Survivors (2016).
Professor Bartrop is a Past President of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies and in 2022 was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the United Kingdom.

Inhaltsangabe

Abbreviations Dramatis Personae Introduction 1. Australians, Jews, and a
Hostile World 2. Confronting the Refugee Challenge 3. Developing a Response
4. Australia and the Evian Conference 5. Holding the Line 6. Public Opinion
and Policy Options 7. Liberalisation? 8. Total Restriction 9. The Last Days
of Peace 10. Responses to Jewish Refugees 11. Refugees and Enemy Aliens 12.
Wartime Europe and Australia 13. News about the Holocaust 14. Australians
View the Nuremberg Trial 15. Aftermath: The Hunt for Nazi War Criminals 16.
Memory: The Holocaust and its Place in Australian History Bibliography
Index