Construction of National Identity Through Communication

A Framework: Background of Post-Holocaust Communication

Communication is one of the most powerful components of a nation’s identity. It fosters the relationship between the people and their country, creating a shared common identity among citizens. When viewed internationally, communication reflects the image of a nation; it influences the perceptions of its local inhabitants, while also projecting an image to the outside world. Failures in this communication system can often occur and result in grave impacts on the people and the nation as a whole. This paper intends to explore how history and identity are constructed through communication. In this case, we focus primarily on the communication issues within Germany and we identify how the country’s biggest and most historical event, the Holocaust, is communicated today. Our main focal points in Germany’s communication system will be German media and national education.  First, we will illustrate the background of this subject, how the Holocaust became a common topic of discourse in Germany and how it was initially perceived, as well as the responses and perceptions German citizens today still feel about the Holocaust and how it has distorted the national image. We will then explore the responses and distortions of the media and broadcasting system and how German and international media have depicted the Holocaust and influenced public opinion. Next, it is important to look at the challenges to the country’s educational system and how education is responsible for teaching and shaping history and national identity. Lastly, we develop implications for these communication issues, and apply them to an international context for future recommendations. We will primarily analyze this study through Silvio Waisbord with supplementary analysis from Karim H. Karim, and Manuel Castells.

Background and History of Post-Holocaust Communication

Post World War II Holocaust communication was primarily a political issue and there was little discourse about it in the public sphere. In the early post-war years, Germans did not confront individual guilt and collective wrongdoing; instead, they repressed it. The main controversy with post-Holocaust communication in Germany during this time was the issue of responsibility, guilt, and the nation having to “come to terms” with their Nazi past. The controversial phrase “coming to terms” became popular within the Federal Republic of Germany in the beginning of the 1950’s and was used to address Germany’s responsibility to deal with its Nationalist Socialist Dictatorship and its crimes (Mayerhofer, 2009). However, the term was extremely controversial and raised various questions, such as, “Can the past be ‘come to terms with?’” and “Should it be come to terms with?” It is arguably more reasonable for a new democracy to leave the past alone (Mayerhofer, 2009). The President responded to these questions in a speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of the German capitulation. He stated, “It is not a question of coming to terms with the past. That cannot be done. The past cannot be retroactively changed or made undone. But whoever shuts his eyes to the past will be blind in the present” (Mayerhofer, 2009). In order for Germany to have proper communication about the Holocaust through media, education, or simply public discourse, the nation must first openly recognize its past and use communication as a way to reshape its nation’s identity instead of evading it. 

Much of the German narrative about the subject of the Holocaust was very limited throughout the country. For decades, the nation remained in a conspiracy of silence. It wasn’t until the broadcast of the TV series “Holocaust” in 1979 that public discourse began to emerge. This TV series sparked a transformation throughout the nation, changing the way in which Holocaust memory would be preserved and initiating the first step to Holocaust remembrance and incorporation into the historical and national German identity. One of the primary aftermaths of the TV series was the conversation of “remembering and forgetting” and “learning from the past.” These key concepts inspired much national debate and were responsible for citizens to have a radical and direct confrontation with their country’s past (Markovits, 2006). Public rejections of responsibility, liability, and other forms of mitigating German guilt were now in the forefront of public discourse, and the negative portrayal of Germany was projected globally.

The rise in Holocaust communication became more and more prevalent as the country began to construct memorials and museums in commemoration. It additionally led to the inclusion of Holocaust remembrance in the German educational system, one that was previously ignored and neglected in the textbooks and curriculum. Public discourse on the Nazi past further intensified after the German unification in 1990. German’s reactions towards their nation’s history became more public and it was evident that many citizens still harbored conflicting views regarding the emerging attention of Holocaust remembrance. Right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism have steadily increased since 1990. One survey found that 23 percent of the population are openly anti-Semitic and about 30-40 percent harbor hidden anti-Semitism (Urban, 2008). In 2005, 48 percent of Germans said Jews still “talk too much” about the “Shoah” and 65 percent would like to stop dealing with the years 1933-1945 altogether (Urban, 2008).

Background of Post-Holocaust Education

With the inclusion of the Holocaust now in the German educational system, the attitudes of the younger generations who were not around during that time were largely influenced by public discourse and felt detached from their nation’s past. Although the subject of the Holocaust is now present in the history books of the German school system, the teaching of the subject still lacks conviction. Scholars argue that the Holocaust is not accurately represented in the educational system and teachers fail to bridge a connection between the students and their nation’s past. This lack of substantial Holocaust education further leads to misunderstanding and misrepresentation about German history and responsibility in the event, best summarized by scholar Susanne Urban (2008) of the Jewish Political Studies Review: 

The mixture of a lack of knowledge, feeling fed up with the subject, and the discomfort many students experience toward it leads, together with the public discourse, to anti-Semitic stereotypes, comparisons between Israelis and Nazis and between Israel and Nazi Germany, and to the belief that Jews profit from the Holocaust.

 The deficient education and communication about the Holocaust during the decades of silence has resulted in a skewed perception of German history by its citizens overtime. Most Germans now believe there is too much talking and teaching about the Holocaust and want to set a limit. At the same time, mainstream Germany has produced a fairytale about the role of society at large during the Nazi period. In addition, the result of deeply rooted German narratives, media portrayals and myths regarding the nation’s history is that less than ten percent of Germans believe that their relatives were members of the Nazi party (Markovits, 2006). This desire to be removed from responsibility and guilt has played a major role in how the Holocaust has been communicated within the country. Decades of silence have contributed to the recent rise in discourse about the subject, but the way in which the Holocaust is communicated and taught today is still being challenged. 

Memory and Learning: The Education System’s Challenge to Create Empathy

     Germany has a unique relationship with nationalism. In “Media and Reinvention of the Nation,” Silvio Waisbord states that the concept of nationalism originated out of the disorganization born out of the political and socioeconomic factions of the post-French revolution era. “Nationalists believed that culture, rather than economics or politics, keeps societies together” (Waisbord, p. 376). After World War II and the fall of the Third Reich, Germans were taught to be wary of nationalistic views, lest they fall victim to the same ideologies of National Socialism (NS) propagated by the Nazi party. How can a country reestablish its national image and move forward from past injustices, but still operate with enough caution to make sure those injustices are never repeated, in what some scholars call a combination of “memory and learning?” This task has fallen to educators in Germany, whose primary goal is reflected in the words of Theodor W. Adorno, the co-founder of critical theory, who stated that the “very first demand on education is that there not be another Auschwitz” (Meseth and Proske, 2010). Educators in Germany are supposed to focus on a human-rights education of tolerance and democratic values. Studies show that they are failing.

As illustrated, anti-Semitism did not end with the liberation of concentration camps. Young people in Germany feel disconnected from the Holocaust, and much of that can be traced to teachings in schools. Classroom education offers a sterile approach and provides students with statistics that focus on histories of deportations and anti-Jewish legislation. The approach largely lacks pathos, or an emotional appeal; the most humanizing effect achieved, however, is a negative one. Young Germans can often only see Jewish people as victims and are left unable to empathize, identify, or relate to them as a people (Urban, 2008). “Most young Germans are able to understand what the Holocaust was, but not who it happened to. In most German schools, there is very little talk about Judaism, Jewish culture and history. Jews only appear in textbooks dealing with the Crusades and with the Holocaust” (Fleshler, 2012). One of the key issues we analyze in this paper is simple: there is a growing thy toward the Holocaust and rising anti-Semitism in Germany. The government has given the education system the responsibility to foster a moral conscience among students, but an inherent paradox exists in this framework.

Ethics in Education and the Negative Consequences of Moralization

In terms of pedagogical ethics, an educator is required to remain objective and cannot force feelings of morality and empathy in the classroom. The goal of education in Germany specifically is two-fold; one side is reflective of German culture as separate from National Socialism, and the second was created directly because of it. German students are taught to reach independent judgments, but they are also expected to find the history of National Socialism morally reprehensible. A student is supposed to be a free and autonomous being, a concept deeply rooted in German culture, which creates a contradiction one study linked to the philosophy of Immanual Kant: “How do I cultivate freedom through coercion?” (Meseth and Proske, 2010).  Essentially, education should exert emotional influence on the students without compromising their self-determination.

Both the conceptual structure and the tactics employed in the classroom are deeply flawed; when moral empathy is created in the classroom, however, the effect is no less troubling. Instances in which students achieve “appropriate” moral reactions to their history lessons do not suggest Germany has effectively communicated its history. For those students who have been emotionally affected by classroom teaching on the Holocaust, a new form of trauma has been created, called “NS-Traumatik.” The word “trauma” is applied to events that leave psychological scarring, in which the pain of the past shapes the present experiences of one’s life. “Trauma embeds the past into the present as an involuntary memory that appears over and over again; it cannot be forgotten” (Meseth and Proske, 2010). Discussions of trauma and the Holocaust are naturally appropriated to the experiences of the victims. But experts have discovered that the term can also be applied to the German conscience, and a “collective trauma” has now become a part of German’s national identity, encompassing the guilt and shame of the perpetrators and their descendants instead of the suffering of the victims.

As a result of this “NS-Traumatik,” studies are showing that while ignorance about the Holocaust is a growing problem in German youth, focusing on the Holocaust too much is contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. “Education about the Nazis often imposes ‘exaggerated moral expectations’ on students, who respond with an anti-Semitism that is typified by ‘guilt denial’…they feel accused of acts they had nothing to do with. Some hate the Jews for putting them in this situation” (Fleshler, 2012). This over-education on the subject is leading to what is known as “Holocaust fatigue.” Sixty-seven percent of Germans find it “annoying that Germans are still held responsible for crimes against the Jews” (Fleshler, 2012).

Questions of Identity: Individual and National

German youth are determined to develop a personal identity that is separate from the Holocaust, and adults are weary of not having had the option themselves. They are searching for a more normative German national identity. Many German adolescents feel that the Holocaust is too much of a burden and that it has been over-represented in public discussion. Moreover, those who seek to return to a traditional German identity of nationalism attempt to rationalize the Holocaust as a comparable crime of human history, similar to the American treatment of Native Americans and African Americans. These individuals have a predisposition to reject the notion that the Holocaust was unique and set apart from other crimes against humanity. One study argued that German youth need to understand the Holocaust as a part of the German collective identity, “because you can neither rewrite history nor escape the fact that you are shaped by your social and cultural background” (Meseth and Proske, 2010).

            The creation and maintenance of a national identity is central to discussions about communication in German, but some scholars argue that focusing on national identity is also a key to reducing anti-Semitism. Holocaust education focuses too much on the concentration camps through which Jews were forced to suffer and not enough on their culture and identities outside of the Holocaust.   “Of course they need to know about Dachau and the Kristallnacht. The problem is that, especially for young people, teenagers, the atrocities are hard to imagine, they seem unreal. But they can easily learn about those who lived down the street, around the corner” (Fleshler, 2012). If education stopped portraying Jews as an “other” and as victims of German cruelty, then students would be able to understand Jewish culture, especially in Germany, as a shared national identity.

While there are many debates on how to improve holocaust education in Germany, some countries believe it should be stopped altogether. In Britain, Lord Baker of Dorking, who spent three years as Margaret Thatcher’s education secretary, has argued that the teaching of Holocaust should be banned in British schools, arguing that it causes British students to think “less favorably” of modern Germans (Rowley, 2011). He argues that British students should learn British history, not German. But experts from the Holocaust Centre argued that the Holocaust was a European-wide crime, suggesting that the Germans alone cannot be held responsible. Despite this argument, the Holocaust still remains central to German national identity. 

Case Studies in Education

Case Study 1, Ineffective:

Teachers used the contemporary or modern communication means to teach students about the issue and its moralities. Teachers used recorded an episode called “Eyewitness” displayed in history lessons discussing the topic entitled “(Everyday) Life in Nazi.” Each video brings a witness who was involved in Holocaust during the Holocaust to tell the story from his or her perspective. The pedagogical aim of these videos was “to expose student to authentic and multi-perspective approaches to NS as personally remembered history” ( Meseth and Proske, 2010, p. 209).  Educators hoped that this narrative-style teaching approach would succeed in transmitting the aspired knowledge and values of the holocaust. This case shows the following:

1.      The video did not add to moral implications, as it did not provide symbolic information of the lessons.

2.      Students’ unpredictable reactions to the videos have not been dealt with and have not been connected to the moral side of the testimonials.

3.      The students focused more on the details of the narrative itself, from their perspective, while the teacher concentrated on his overall plan that preceded the lesson.

These findings indicate that this approach did not help to foster mutual dialogue between the students and the teacher about the moralities and values of the Holocaust. Therefore this approach could be classified as an “under-morality approach.”

Case Study 2, Ineffective:

Students were given excerpts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf  in the hopes that they would underline the immoralities and hate speech used by Hitler. However, the communication between the teacher and the students was disconnected” (Meseth and Proske , 2010, pp.210-113). This case shows the following:

1.      The teacher did not appreciate the moral evaluation of the students regarding the excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and considered the way they expressed their view of the text as under-moral.

2.      The teacher did not respect the students’ freedom to portray the moral side of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

3.      He went on over- moralization of the topic in order to make them grasp the content.

The over-moralization of the Holocaust without positive interaction between both sides of the education process is counter-productive. This approach is top-down, which does not allow full participation and expression of opinion from the students’ side. This led to limiting the freedom of expression of the students, leading to frustration and loss of interest in the topic.

 Case Study 3, Moderately Effective:

Students dealt with material and literature in addition to slideshows on the concentration camps. The teacher delved deeper into the students’ spontaneous and side comments, while the students expressed their opinion more freely (Meseth and Proske, 2010). In this case, the teacher responded to under-moralization without over-moralization. Instead of going through a long lesson on the subject, he asked the students to visit the concentration camps memorial.

Case Study 4, Effective:

 Documentary films were introduced to the classroom, leading a wide discussion and debate among students that even touched the unresolved problems and did not need any direct instruction. This method proved to be the most successful way of teaching the Holocaust in class, as it allowed both teacher and students to play an equal role. There was no superiority in this model from the teacher’s side and both the teacher and students reached a natural conclusion. The discussion was open and teacher did not put any restrictions or limitation for the provided materials on the topic.

Both education and communication can help educate young Germans about the Holocaust and shape their point of view if both are used strategically. Out of the understandings that communication has the ability to reach society if the power relationships are managed well by other power components, like the education institution, as Manuel Castells (2009) illustrates: “Power relationships can be altered by social actors aiming for social change by influencing the public mind and building consent. Power relationships are constructed in a complex interaction between multiple spheres of social practices” (p 3). 

Using different means of communication like videos, documentaries, materials and literature in addition to slideshows on the concentration camps that reflect the understanding of the importance of culture can make real change to the societal attitude regarding the Holocaust (Waisbord, 2004).  The problem was created by the political elite; however, it necessitates a cultural solution that builds new national and cultural identity. This requires multi-institutional involvement in the process, especially ones that can reach vast masses, like education and mass media. Media, however, have contributed to negative feelings toward the Holocausr. “There are a reasonable number of students who are against Holocaust remembrance, which exceed those from the previous generations” (Driel, 2010, pp.127-128). They perceived the Holocaust as a burden, that prevents "normal" German national identity, and the media pay too much attention to the issue.

Waisbord concludes that “ putting the media in the service of the nation-building did not always result in the cultural unification “This has been emphasized by Urban (2005) “Some Germans think the idea that Jews are still receiving money from Europe and Germany as a compensation of the Holocaust till now is inappropriate.”

Waisbord offers a comprehensive discussion on the creation of a national identity. He asks how a people come to share the same national culture and identity, and he says that there are two basic answers to this question. The first is that political centralization is crucial in developing a national identity; in this process, nations aim to eliminate differences and impose one culture. The second argues that centralization is not necessary in forming national identity and suggests that nationalism preceded political centralization (Waisbord 376). Ultimately, regardless of which view one adopts in determining what creates nationalism or national identity, Waisbord argues that the mass media have a prominent effect on creating culture. In the case of Holocaust remembrance and education in Germany, this is exactly what has happened. 

Media and National Identity: Reinvention of the Nation

The concept of reinvention of the nation and its history through the media is crucial for understanding the representation of the Holocaust in today’s Germany. Waisbord covers some important aspects of this concept. The author states that “the power of the media lies in making national feelings normal on an everyday basis” (Waisbord, 2004, p. 386). He points out that “in devoting attention to historical events, selecting news frames, or producing content to represent national sentiments, the media shape the cultural repertoire used to define nationhood”  (Waisbord, 2004, p. 386). Thus, media have a significant influence on constructing public discourse on the cultural and historical issues. Media and education are the ways to store the past and reconstruct or reinvent it.

Nations appeal to a sense of stored memories passed from generation to generation. They are based on the idea of a historical continuity between past and present. To accomplish this, nations need institutions that permanently remind members of their commonality. Like educational systems, official calendars, and state rituals, the media store cultural elements that come to define nationhood.  (Waisbord, 2004, p. 387)

Waisbord summarizes his research on the subject by saying that “the media are one of those institutions that contribute to maintaining feelings of national membership... Media can equally act as a source of exclusion and murder in the name of the nation or as an ally of civic patriotism. Both possibilities are similarly viable, particularly in societies where patriotism is a contested, contradictory notion used to justify aggression and compassion, war and democracy.”  (Waisbord, 2004, p. 387)

Waisbord's findings suggest several key implications for our case. First, the communication power of the media to shape the culture by selecting and framing certain information may lead to the re-creation or re-construction of the history of a nation. Therefore, any regular distortion or bias in the media coverage of the Holocaust will inevitably lead to the distorted image of the nation and its history, nationally and internationally. Also, we need to take into consideration the fact that a strong national identity is only built when it is done on an everyday basis and is strongly embedded into regular public discourses.

The issue of mass media products distorting the information about the Holocaust is becoming more and more sensitive and acute. Professor Alejandro Baer explains this occurrence in “Consuming history and memory through mass media products:” “The debate on the representation of the history and memory of the Holocaust – the paradigmatic example of limitations and imperatives to representational practice – has become a contemporary battlefield regarding the legitimacy and propriety of mass media products” (Baer, 2001). The concept of representing the past through the ‘culture industry’ was introduced by the Frankfurt School.

Baer mentions several main critics and optimists of this concept. Critics (Adorno, Hartman, Jameson) are concerned with the impact of TV dramas and Hollywood films on public memory. They are worried that these films resemble advertising or are “alienated from personal and active recollection, falling prey to the effects of ‘information sickness’ in a world turned into a vast accumulation of images, which have lost their referential value” (Baer, 2001). The optimists argue that “an inevitable vulgarization was always preferable to indifference and silence, and the culture industry did awaken an interest in people who were previously ignorant of many important historical events.” He describes the ways in which Holocaust is represented in the media. The NBC television miniseries Holocaust (1979) has been fervently criticized and called “an example of obscene trivialization of the Holocaust in popular culture,” especially by survivors. Another controversial media product on the  Holocaust was Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.

“First censored as a superficial and tasteless American product, it was belatedly considered by     the audience and some critics to be even more authentic and convincing than those ‘factual’ projects which aimed to represent the suffering of the Holocaust survivors.”

Among some of the famous examples of the Holocaust representation in media, Baer mentions Roberto Benigni’s tragic-comic Holocaust fable, Life is Beautiful, and the Hollywood-style dramatization of the Jewish genocide Schindler’s List.

“Schindler’s List has also shown that the culture industry is capable of preserving (or reintroducing) the events of the Holocaust in the collective memory and historical consciousness        of globalized audiences Moreover, the film was very effective in defining the shape and dominant imagery of that memory.” (Loshitzky, 1997).

This film is an example of the new memory and symbols constructed by the media. Its original soundtrack, for instance, is used in various Holocaust commemoration ceremonies all over the world. There are also three documentary films produced by the Shoah Foundation – Survivors

of the Holocaust (1996), The Lost Children of Berlin (1997), and the Academy Award-winning film The Last Days (1998).  “All of them weave together survivor testimonies with archival footage, personal photographs and artifacts, which is a well-established documentary film practice. But montage, composition of images and choices of characters emphasize identification, drama and explicitness.”

            Baer concludes his overview by stating that, in contemporary society, “mass media, history and memory do not exist within neatly defined boundaries.”  They overlap and influence each other. Instead of debating about truth or falsehood of the history represented in the media, he recommends focusing on analyzing their “far-reaching impact on the historical knowledge and memorial imagery of an increasingly globalized public.”

Evolution of Research

When we first began this project, we wanted to study social media's role in national imaging. As research evolves, we narrowed our study to analyze post-holocaust communication in Germany, focusing on media and education, and its affect on German National Identity.

The following posts will summarize our findings.