Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
39,1 (2011) 213-243
Keywords:
Toronto daily star
;
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Jews Periodicals
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
National socialism
Abstract:
Argues that in 1933-45 Canada's leading newspaper, "Toronto Daily Star", exposed Canadians to a high level of detailed information on the persecution and genocide of Jews in Europe in real time. The Nazi anti-Jewish policies of 1933-39 received extensive coverage on its pages, to a great extent due to its correspondent in Berlin, Pierre van Paassen, who was not only a staunch anti-Nazi, but also sympathetic to Jews. While reporting on the persecution of Jews in Germany, the newspaper also warned its readers of the danger of antisemitism within Canada. The first references to the genocide appeared on the "Star"'s pages only in 1942, like in the other North American newspapers. Among the shortcomings in the "Star"'s coverage of the Holocaust was its inconsistency: e.g. in 1941 the paper, distrusting greatly (just as the rest of the North American press) the Polish and Soviet sources of information, failed to report on Babii Yar and other Nazi mass murders in the USSR, and did not note the Warsaw ghetto uprising. However, in 1942-45 it provided readers with details on the main aspects of the Holocaust, such as ghettoization, forced labor, deportations, and extermination camps. In 1933-45 no other individual group received as much attention in the pages of the "Toronto Daily Star" as the Jews. The case of the "Star" helps dismiss frequent accusations that the North American press was anti-Jewish while covering the Holocaust. The distrust of East European sources and the assignment of an article on the Holocaust to the back section of the paper does not testify to the paper's antisemitism.
Note:
English and Hebrew.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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