Archive | January 2021

Męczeństwo braci Rosińskich. Kto zrobił przerażające zdjęcie, na którym bolszewicy bestialsko mordują polskiego żołnierza?

Jan26

Makabryczną fotografię zamieścił w lipcu 1920 r. francuski tygodnik ‘L’Illustration’ z opisem: ‘Żołnierze Armii Czerwonej wokół udręczonego ciała polskiego kapitana Rosińskiego straconego w Orszy w 1918 r. na rozkaz sowieckiego komisarza. Zdjęcie skonfiskowane i zidentyfikowane przez polskie służby informacyjne’ Fot. domena publiczna

Męczeństwo braci Rosińskich. Kto zrobił przerażające zdjęcie, na którym bolszewicy bestialsko mordują polskiego żołnierza?

Piotr Głuchowski

Wykastrowany mężczyzna powieszony za nogę na drzewie z kijem wepchniętym w odbyt. Pod jego głową płonie ognisko. Wierzga, a im bardziej się rzuca, tym głębiej żerdź rani jego wnętrzności. Czerwonoarmiści wokół wyglądają na spokojnych.

Jeńcy bolszewiccy (Biblioteka Narodowa)

Po raz pierwszy zobaczyłem to makabryczne zdjęcie dziesięć lat temu w niszowym magazynie teatralnym. Artykuł dotyczył relacji między widzem a sceną. Fotografię podpisano zdawkowo: „Polski kapitan schwytany przez Rosjan w 1918 r.”.

Ledwo widoczna notka zdradziła, że rycina została zreprodukowana z wydanej w Polsce w 1999 r. „Czarnej księgi komunizmu” (praca zbiorowa). Wydawca tejże prawdopodobnie pobrał fotografię z kart starszego o 20 lat tomu Erica Bascheta „Russie 1904-1924. La révolution est là” (wyd. 1978 r.).

Baschet oparł się z kolei na przedwojennym francuskim tygodniku „L’Illustration” (nr 4039 z 31 lipca 1920 r.), w którym makabryczną fotografię podpisano słowami: „Żołnierze Armii Czerwonej wokół udręczonego ciała polskiego kapitana Rosińskiego straconego w Orszy w 1918 r. na rozkaz sowieckiego komisarza. Zdjęcie skonfiskowane i zidentyfikowane przez polskie służby informacyjne”.

Towarzyszący rycinie artykuł podpisany przez Alfreda Savoira ma tytuł „Naród oszalał… Wkład w wiedzę o bolszewizmie”. W odredakcyjnym wstępie wydawca „L’Illustration” uznał za stosowne wytłumaczyć się przed ewentualnie oburzonymi drastycznością obrazu: „Nasi Czytelnicy zrozumieją, że reprodukujemy to ohydne zdjęcie nie dla satysfakcji opublikowania sensacyjnego dokumentu. Wielokrotnie przedstawialiśmy inne, które pokazywały długie szeregi lub stosy ciał obdartych ze skóry, okaleczonych, zamęczonych na różne sposoby. (…) W czasie, gdy jak się zdaje, w niektórych krajach Ententy pojawia się pewna pobłażliwość wobec reżimu sowieckiego, chyba właściwe będzie zamieszczenie tutaj świadectwa, ilustrowanego uderzającym dokumentem fotograficznym, które pan Alfred Savoir, paryski pisarz mający związki z Polską, przywiózł z niedawnej podróży do Warszawy”.

“Bestyalstwo czerwonej dziczy”

Alfred Savoir nazywał się wcześniej Poznański, był wnukiem łódzkiego króla bawełny Izraela Poznańskiego. Mieszkał w Paryżu, gdzie pod pseudonimem Savoir pisał komedie (kilka zostało nawet zekranizowanych w Hollywood). Utrzymywał związki z odrodzoną Polską i – jak się mogę domyślać – nie przepadał za Sowietami. Być może miał nawet jakieś tajne kontakty z „polskimi służbami informacyjnymi”, które latem 1920 r. szukały dojść do zachodnich redakcji, aby alarmować świat w związku z bolszewicką ofensywą Tuchaczewskiego na Warszawę.

Sowieci już od pół roku prowadzili akcję propagandową „Ręce precz od Rosji!”. Mocarstwa ententy, z wyjątkiem Francji, odmawiały Polsce pomocy wojskowej. Dlatego Oddział II Sztabu Generalnego Wojska Polskiego zaczął pilnie zbierać i kolportować zdjęcia dokumentujące bolszewickie zbrodnie w Polsce. To samo robiły krajowa Liga Antybolszewicka i Biuro Prasowe Naczelnego Dowództwa pod kierownictwem Juliusza Kadena-Bandrowskiego. Alfred Savoir/Poznański dostał od którejś z tych instytucji więcej podobnych zdjęć, ponieważ w tekście „Naród oszalał…” pisze: „Mam przed sobą autentyczne, niepodważalne dokumenty, fotografie wykonane przez samych bolszewików. To potworność, niewypowiedziany koszmar: odarte ze skóry kobiety, pocięte tułowia, oderwane kończyny.

Nie znieślibyście tego widoku; miałbym skrupuły, żeby je zaprezentować w ich wstrętnej ohydzie.

(…) Ludzie, których widzicie [na zdjęciu z Rosińskim], przed bolszewizmem byli prawdopodobnie dobrymi ludźmi. (…) Chłopi, robotnicy lub drobnomieszczanie, zanim zostali zwerbowani do Armii Czerwonej, mieli jakieś wykształcenie, religię, moralność, skrupuły i sumienie. Wszystko to zniknęło. W ciągu dwóch lat naród zmienił się gwałtownie pod względem natury, myśli, wrażliwości, psychologii. Bolszewizm zawiera siłę niszczenia większą, bardziej przerażającą niż wojna. Niszczy, zabija dusze”.

Dwa tygodnie po publikacji w Paryżu, 14 sierpnia 1920 r., fotografia pojawiła się w krakowskich „Nowościach Illustrowanych” jako obraz towarzyszący felietonowi pt. „Bestyalstwo czerwonej dziczy”. Gdy gazeciarze rozdawali ten numer gazety, Armia Czerwona wychodziła na południowo-wschodnie przedmieścia Warszawy. Autor „Bestyalstwa…” ostrzegał więc czytelników: „Czytając o okrucieństwach, jakich dopuszczają się bolszewicy na jeńcach wojennych i spokojnej ludności, nieraz może niejednemu (…) nasuwały się myśli, że to chyba przesada, że ludzie nie mogą dojść do takiego stopnia zezwierzęcenia, niestety, fakty stwierdzają, że to smutna prawda, nie wymysł. Dowodem tego ilustracya, którą zamieszczamy za pismami francuskiemi. Przedstawia ona egzekucyę, dokonaną na osobie kapitana wojsk polskich, Rosińskiego, na rozkaz komisarza sowieckiego”.

Co się działo w Orszy?

3 marca 1918 r. – dwa i pół roku przed sowieckim atakiem na Warszawę – wojujące państwa centralne podpisały w Brześciu nad Bugiem traktat pokojowy z czerwoną Rosją. Niespełna stutysięczna naddnieprzańska Orsza, niegdyś twierdza chroniąca Rzeczpospolitą od wschodu, znalazła się na linii rozgraniczającej wojska niemiecko-austriacko-bułgarsko-tureckie od bolszewickich. W tym czasie (dokładnie od sierpnia roku poprzedniego) pod miastem stacjonował pułk inżynieryjny I Korpusu Polskiego generała lejtnanta Józefa Dowbora-Muśnickiego. Korpus powołany decyzją Naczpolu (Naczelnego Polskiego Komitetu Wojskowego w Rosji) gromadził carskich – dotychczas – żołnierzy o polskich korzeniach. Poza Orszą dowborczycy stacjonowali m.in. w Mińsku Litewskim, w podsmoleńskiej Jelni, a nawet w Zubcewie pod Rżewem (100 km od Moskwy).

Wcześniej (tuż po bolszewickim puczu w listopadzie 1917) nowo powstała Rada Komisarzy Ludowych wydała dekret o demobilizacji starej armii, w tym korpusu Dowbora-Muśnickiego. Generał lejtnant odmówił zdania broni i sprzętu, w efekcie czego jego oddziały zostały zaatakowane przez Czerwoną Gwardię – bojówki Socjaldemokratycznej Partii Robotniczej Rosji (bolszewików). Dowborczycy cofali się na zachód, walcząc z czerwonymi m.in. w Rżewie, pod Mińskiem oraz pod Bobrujskiem na Polesiu, a ich szlak bitewny zakończył się w maju 1918 r. rozbrojeniem przez Niemców. Większość żołnierzy i oficerów przewieziono do Warszawy – i do cywila. Wydawałoby się zatem, że fotografia ilustrująca kaźń „polskiego kapitana Rosińskiego” musiała powstać między początkiem lutego (pierwsze ataki bolszewickich gwardzistów na korpus Dowbora) a kwietniem, gdy w Orszy, Zubcewie i Jelni nie było już żadnych polskich oficerów. Ale drzewo na zdjęciu ma liście, zaś krasnoarmiejcy nie mają płaszczy, tylko lekkie koszule.

Kim był kapitan Rosiński?

Kapitan Rosiński i jego brat byli oficerami korpusu i synami ziemianina z Wileńszczyzny, co czyniło ich – w oczach bolszewickich – podwójnymi wrogami komunizmu (bo białopolacy i do tego obszarnicy). W trakcie cofania się dowborczyków na zachód przynajmniej jeden Rosiński strzelał do czerwonych gwardzistów. W wydanych w 1935 r. „Moich wspomnieniach” Dowbora-Muśnickiego czytamy: „Dwaj bracia śp. kapitan i porucznik Rosińscy (…) zostali skazani w Orszy przez [sowieckiego komisarza] Bersona za przynależność do Korpusu. Wyrok wykonano, wieszając skazańców żywcem za nogi na drzewie i paląc ich nad ogniskami od głowy. Posiadam fotografie tego wyrafinowanego morderstwa”.

Kaźń oficerów opisała także w 1935 r. gazeta byłych dowborczyków „Placówka”: „W Orszy bolszewicy urządzili prawdziwą pułapkę-katownię (…), wyłapywano oficerów i na miejscu ich zabijano, często po mniej lub więcej wyrafinowanych torturach. Komitet Historyczny I Korpusu posiada fotografie męki braci śp. kapitana i porucznika Rosińskich, zamęczonych w Orszy między 1 a 5 czerwca. Skazani zostali za przynależność do I Korpusu przez warszawskiego Żyda Bersona. Byli oni powieszeni żywcem za nogi na drzewie i paleni od głowy. Redakcja »Placówki«, z uwagi na okropne wrażenie, jakie robią te fotografie, nie reprodukuje je, aby nie zrażać czytelników”.

A zatem czerwiec 1918 r. Jakim cudem dwaj oficerowie z rozformowanego już przez Niemców korpusu znaleźli się w tym czasie na „starych śmieciach” w Orszy? Wyjaśnienie znajdujemy w pismach słynnego (później) dowborczyka Melchiora Wańkowicza. W tomie „Strzępy epopei” autor opisuje skutki majowej decyzji Niemców o rozformowaniu korpusu. Pisze, że grupa oficerów z konspiracyjnych komórek Polskiej Organizacji Wojskowej i Związku Broni wszczęła antyniemiecki bunt, nie godząc się na rozbrojenie.

Po spacyfikowaniu spisku jedni zostali uwięzieni w Bobrujsku, inni musieli uciekać, jeden z Polaków popełnił samobójstwo.

Wańkowicz trafił do ancla, z którego został uwolniony „z rozkazu kapitana Rosińskiego”. Wspominając to uwolnienie, pisze w „Strzępach”, że kapitan-dobrodziej „pojechał w parę dni potem z bratem na Murman, mówiono później, że zostali w Orszy schwytani i powieszeni”.

Dlaczego bracia Rosińscy jechali „na Murman”, czyli do Murmańska? Dlatego że były dowborczyk, pułkownik Lucjan Żeligowski (późniejszy zdobywca Wilna), który na rozkaz generała Józefa Hallera tworzył właśnie Wojsko Polskie na Wschodzie, wybrał ten port jako miejsce, z którego nasi mieli odpłynąć do Francji i tam zasilić szeregi „błękitnej” Armii Polskiej. Droga z okupowanego przez Niemców Bobrujska nad Morze Barentsa prowadziła przez graniczną Orszę i dalej przez Witebsk, Psków, Piotrogród. Rosińscy musieli wpaść w łapy podwładnych komisarza Bersona podczas przekraczania linii demarkacyjnej wyznaczonej traktatem brzeskim.

Kto zrobił straszne zdjęcie?

W aktach Departamentu Wojny USA znajduje się raport z 15 maja 1919 r. zatytułowany „Trip to Vilna and Warsaw”. Załącznikiem do dokumentu jest koperta z dwiema fotografiami. Pierwszą już znamy. Druga przedstawia tego samego wisielca z innej strony (choć może to być również drugi z braci Rosińskich na tym samym drzewie). Na rewersach podpisy – jeden po polsku, drugi po angielsku. „Skazani obaj z rozporządzenia komisarza Bersona na ten rodzaj śmierci”. „Captein and lieutenant Rosinski condemned in Orsha”.

Autor raportu to William Godson, amerykański attaché wojskowy rezydujący w Bernie, który przybył do Wilna 5 maja 1919 r., wkrótce po wkroczeniu tam wojsk Józefa Piłsudskiego i antyżydowskich rozruchach. Pogrom – według napisanego w tym samym tygodniu listu Marszałka do Ignacego Paderewskiego – miał być efektem agresywnej postawy wileńskich Żydów, którzy rzekomo strzelali z okien do wkraczających Polaków. Godson prawdopodobnie dostał od amerykańskiego wywiadu wojskowego zadanie, by wybadać, jak było naprawdę.

Niecały rok po śmierci Rosińskich spotkał się m.in. z hrabiną Jowitą Wielhorską, wdową po właścicielu majątku pod Witebskiem, posiadaczką nieruchomości w Wilnie. Polska arystokratka opowiedziała gościowi o mordowaniu i okaleczaniu przez czerwonych jej dobrze urodzonych znajomych i krewnych. Jedna z opowieści dotyczyła synów imć Rosińskiego zamęczonych w Orszy.

Najprawdopodobniej to hrabina dała Godsonowi obie fotografie. Tylko skąd je miała?

Kim był “warszawski Żyd Berson”?

Po kapitulacji Niemiec przed ententą w listopadzie 1918 r. Sowieci uznali traktat brzeski za nieistniejący i ruszyli na zachód, by po trupie białej Polski zanieść komunizm niemieckim i francuskim robotnikom. Armia Czerwona wkroczyła do Wilna 5 stycznia 1919 r.

Tomasz Stempowski, historyk IPN i autor bloga Fototekst.pl, pisze, że po zdobyciu miasta czerwony komisarz Berson zakwaterował się w kamienicy hrabiny Wielhorskiej. A zatem – przypuszczalnie – albo jej te zdjęcia dał, albo też nieopatrznie zostawił w miejscu, z którego gospodyni mogła je wziąć, aby zlecić wykonanie odbitek. Po ucieczce Bersona i reszty komunistów przed nacierającymi wojskami Piłsudskiego (kwiecień 1919 r.) obie fotografie – lub kolejne odbitki z odbitek – znalazły się w posiadaniu attaché Godsona.

Dostał je do rąk także inny Amerykanin, Cameron MacKenzie, który opisał kaźń Polaków w korespondencji dla „Buffalo Courier” (15 czerwca 1919 r.): „W Wilnie można było wielokrotnie usłyszeć jedną historię, i jest ona eposem (…). Jeden z młodych ludzi był kapitanem w polskiej armii, a drugi porucznikiem. W marcu obaj zostali schwytani i po torturach w końcu straceni w sposób tak odrażający, że podanie szczegółów jest niemożliwością. W moim posiadaniu są fotografie tego, co pozostało z ich okaleczonych ciał, i jest nie do wyobrażenia, żeby nawet w najmroczniejszych czasach mogło zostać popełnione bardziej odrażające okrucieństwo”.

MacKenzie oglądał więcej tego typu zdjęć. W korespondencji z Wilna pisał tak: „…leży przede mną mała galeria fotografii. Jedno zdjęcie przedstawia młodego człowieka, którego oczy zostały wydłubane, drugie – człowieka – a pewne szczegóły sugerują, że była to bardzo miła osoba – którego górna część czaszki została odrąbana, kolejna – człowieka, którego nogi spalono tak, że zostały kikuty, i jeszcze jedna – ciała, które nie zostało pozbawione głowy, ale od którego odcięto jedną rękę i obie nogi. Są w tej kolekcji jeszcze inne zdjęcia, zbyt makabryczne, żeby je choćby trochę opisać. Wszyscy są ofiarami bolszewickimi”.

W tekście wysłannika „Buffalo Courier” nie ma niczego o Bersonie. Za to w artykule Savoira/Poznańskiego – owszem. „Chciałbym jeszcze porozmawiać o panu B., komisarzu ludowym (…). Znałem go dawniej, był czarującym młodzieńcem, ironicznym i skorym do żartów. Otarł się o kulturę francuską, podziwiał powieści [Maurice] Barresa i chętnie cytował poetów, których zupełnie nie znałem. Był dobrym brydżystą. Często przyjeżdżał do Paryża, i bawił się. Dziś ten lubiący korzystać z przyjemności i sceptyczny mieszczanin, ten wesoły chłopiec nabija na pal ludzi. Zrozum, kto może…”.

Stanisław Berson urodził się w 1895 r. w rodzinie warszawskich bankierów. Studiował m.in. w Niemczech i w Szwajcarii. Wacław Pański, znany bardziej jako Solski, ustosunkowany komunista, a potem dysydent, pisze w wydanych w 1977 r. przez paryską „Kulturę” wspomnieniach: „Znałem go jeszcze w czasach przedrewolucyjnych (…). Prosił mnie kiedyś, żebym mu dał do przeczytania jakąś socjalistyczną literaturę. Dałem mu dwie czy trzy broszurki, które mi szybko zwrócił, bo go, jak mówił, znudziły (…). Mówił mi też, że w Szwajcarii, gdzie się przed wojną kształcił, zetknął się z kilkoma socjalistami, którzy jako ludzie niezbyt mu się podobali”.

Bolszewicki przewrót zastał przyszłego kata Rosińskich w mundurze carskiego podoficera-rezerwisty i na stanowisku armijnego kierowcy. Pisze Pański/Solski: „Odznaczał się ogromną energią i w przewrocie październikowym odegrał dużą rolę (…) jego zapał rewolucyjny przerastał ramy wszystkich ugrupowań socjalistycznych”. Z początkiem 1918 r. był już członkiem Komitetu Wojskowo-Rewolucyjnego Frontu Zachodniego i kierownikiem Komisariatu Ludowego ds. Zachodniego Okręgu i Frontu. Prawdopodobnie w tej roli przesłuchał i skazał na śmierć braci Rosińskich. Szczytem jego kariery był udział (wraz z Józefem Unszlichtem, od 1921 wiceprzewodniczącym Czeki) w wileńskim rządzie efemerycznej Litewsko-Białoruskiej Socjalistycznej Republiki Rad, czyli tzw. Lit-Biełu.

Jako komisarz (minister) kontroli państwowej wiosną 1919 r. uciekł wraz z towarzyszami przed nadciągającym Piłsudskim, ale grupa byłych dowborczyków dorwała go w pociągu zmierzającym do Moskwy.

Jak pisze Pański/Solski, Polacy spytali Bersona, co by zrobił, gdyby to oni dostali się w jego ręce. Komisarz odrzekł, że kazałby ich rozstrzelać. I sam został rozstrzelany.

Korzystałem m.in. ze źródeł: Tomasz Stempowski „Śmierć kpt. Rosińskiego”, Fototekst.pl; Szymon Rudnicki „Równi, ale niezupełnie”, Biblioteka Midrasza; Aleksy Deruga „Powstanie i pierwsze lata Białoruskiej Republiki Radzieckiej”, Mazowsze.hist.pl; Henryk Bagiński, „Wojsko Polskie na Wschodzie: 1914-1920”

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Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech

Jan26
Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech

ARMIN ROSEN

A new generation of media crusaders clamors for government control over what you see, hear, and read—and for banning their competition

Tablet Magazine

American journalism once thought of itself as being inherently and institutionally pro free speech. Visitors to the Newseum, the media industry’s temple of self-glorification on Constitution Avenue in Washington, were once greeted with the First Amendment inscribed across 74 vertical feet of lofty marble. The Newseum has been closed since late 2019, its operators having discovered the hard way that the public doesn’t share the media’s heroic level of regard for itself.

The museum was an anachronism in more ways than one: The idea that journalists themselves look upon the constitutional right to free expression with quasi-religious awe is nearly as quaint as the idea the media could be the basis for a major D.C. tourist attraction. A publicly beloved press that earnestly believes in free speech now feels like it belongs to some fictive era of good feelings. These days, the American public distrusts the media more than it ever has.

Confronted with this crisis of legitimacy, today’s corporate media increasingly advances ideas that would delight would-be power trippers of any party—like establishing novel forms of government control over what you can see, read, and hear and identifying people with a broad range of unpopular or unapproved views as domestic terrorists. Public discourse is now a “conflict space” with social media serving as an “information warzone,” the public intellectual Peter W. Singer declared in an essay published a few days after the alternately scary and farcical Trump riot on Capitol Hill, seamlessly adapting a framework of state-level physical violence to a discussion of constitutionally protected speech.

In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol—but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked. The notion that free expression is sedition’s handmaiden or that the prevention of treason should be a higher goal than the open exchange or exposure of allegedly dangerous arguments are not controversial views anymore; they pop up frequently, among putatively liberal-minded commentators in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Media skepticism toward free expression actually began long before the Capitol riot – and before Trump was elected. The New Yorker’s Kalefa Sanneh anticipated the rising ambivalence toward the existing First Amendment regime when he likened “speech nuts” to “gun nuts” in a 2015 essay. Today, support for the mainstream American free speech norms of earlier, less-Trump-addled times is increasingly cast as a kind of sinister eccentricity, as when Slate declared in the days after the Capitol assault that “We have come to a moment in which one half of the country is fighting to be free of crippling, life-ending acts of stochastic terror, while another half of the same country is chillingly preoccupied with their right to just talk shit.”

How chilling, to be preoccupied with one’s individual rights—or at least to not understand that the legitimacy of one’s constitutionally guaranteed freedoms depends on the “moment” that “we” might be “in.” Sanneh wasn’t quite so sneering, and in the end he predicted that custom would override any late-breaking sense of national emergency: “Perhaps America’s First Amendment, like the Second, is ultimately a matter of national preference,” he mused. In any case, Sanneh wasn’t calling for anyone to suffer criminal penalties for protected speech.

Sanneh’s seeming lack of enthusiasm for fining or jailing people who disagree with him is getting less common among members of a media class determined to show that “enemies of the state” are its enemies, too. In a 2019 Washington Post opinion piece, Richard Stengel, the former managing editor of Time magazine and co-author of The Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s now-classic autobiography, argued that the U.S. was in need of hate speech laws, contending that “the First Amendment … should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.” As the Biden administration’s transition team leader for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, he will no doubt find plenty of support for his vision for state-regulated speech among a long list of regimes that journalists once professed to abhor.

Here’s a look at other outlets and media figures who have gone into hall monitor mode, revealing themselves to be skeptics of the very system of law and custom that enables their profession to exist in the first place.

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: “It’s time for this question to be front and center: Should Fox News be allowed to exist?,” the author, MSNBC talking head, New York University journalism professor, and former New York Times writer, Vice talk-show host, and Aspen Institute fellow recently tweeted. “Brain-mashing as a business model shouldn’t be legal.”

He continued: “I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t understand why you’re not allowed to manufacture bucatini that doesn’t have a certain threshold of iron in it but you can broadcast brain-mashing falsehoods and goad people toward terrorism.” Shocking that Giridharadas is still permitted to roam free, given how “brain-mashing” I consider this entire line of reasoning to be (the Bill of Rights lacks a pasta standards amendment, for starters). But there’s an inherent arrogance, perhaps even an optimism, to pro-censorship arguments. No one ever expects their self-invented standards to be turned back against them.

STEVE COLL: There are few figures who can speak as a kind of one-person voice of all institutional journalism, but if the two-time Pulitzer winning dean of Columbia Journalism School can’t do it then no one can. It is a jarring development when someone in Coll’s rarefied position wonders whether this whole freedom of speech thing is really worth it anymore.

In a December appearance on MSNBC, Coll decried the wide latitude of political self-expression that Facebook permitted in the aftermath of a presidential campaign awash in conspiracy theories. “Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism,” Coll warned.

The notion of a dichotomy between free speech and journalism is bizarre enough on its own; stranger still is the idea that in this totally invented standoff between “free speech” and “journalism” the latter should be given higher priority. When one considers Coll’s decadeslong history of contact with the CIA and other security agencies in the course of his prize-winning journalism, perhaps this dichotomy looks a little less weird.

Coll’s statement might have been logically and intellectually incoherent, but like Stengel’s piece it was at least an honest look into what various journalism popes are thinking these days: They’re thinking that it’s more honorable, and perhaps better for society at large, for the Fourth Estate to defend what it believes to be its prestige and its few remaining privileges than it is to uphold free expression, which isn’t the business these people are in anyway.

RICHARD STENGEL: Stengel’s argument for American hate speech laws is worth revisiting, since its author, unlike everyone else mentioned here, has a record of senior government service and is close with the people who have just won control of the American leviathan. “When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting ‘free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate,’” wrote Stengel, the undersecretary of state for public affairs and public diplomacy during the second Obama administration. “But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.”

True! Just listen to the leaders of states like China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, and many dozens of others, friend and foe. They’ll tell you how silly and dangerous the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is. Why should America insist on being some kind of weird exception to global norms? Besides, it’s so much easier and more pleasant to wield power without annoying little gnats contradicting you at every turn and printing baldfaced lies about people going hungry or books being banned or the Great Leap Forward being a failure—not that it could ever, ever get to be like that in the United States. Right?

“All speech is not equal,” Stengel writes. “And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.” Given the almost limitless power of the executive branch under the current incarnation of the American constitutional system, it isn’t totally paranoid to think Stengel’s outlook could have something like the force of law sometime in the near future.

THE NEW YORKER: Masha Gessen and Andrew Marantz have become a veritable tag-team of free speech skepticism at one of America’s leading magazines. Gessen, an author and professor, looked with puzzlement and perhaps even alarm upon their college students’ soberly and sensibly non-instrumental view of the First Amendment and free expression in general. “The news media have traditionally borne the responsibility for insuring that the actual purpose of the First Amendment is fulfilled,” they write. “Yet Americans are content to leave this essential component of democracy to profit-driven corporations with next to no regulatory oversight.” Perhaps free speech can only fulfill its “purpose,” whatever Gessen thinks that might be, with the help of government coercion.

In the course of researching a book about internet-based radicalization, Marantz became convinced that “free speech absolutism” is akin to a civic suicide pact, and that a proper balancing of liberty and security must be introduced into the First Amendment as implemented. “His thesis was that free speech is good,” Marantz lamented about an address given by Mark Zuckerberg. “Of course, everyone apart from Kim Jong Un agrees with this; the question is whether free speech is the only good worth pursuing, and whether it leads inexorably to truth and progress.” Really? That’s the question?

EMILY BAZELON: America is “drowning in lies,” the essayist and journalist declared in the midst of a long piece in The New York Times Magazine last summer, titled “The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation.”

Sure is! But whose lies, exactly? What are they? How can an average person be expected to tell lies from truth? Perhaps government censorship is the answer to this “problem.”

Like many of the other proponents of controlled speech mentioned here, Bazelon’s writing has a detectable winking quality to it: Don’t worry, dear reader, YOU’RE not the one who’s going to be censored. THEY are. In fact, the censorship, so-called, won’t even be that bad. You’ll hardly notice it.

One thing that people might not immediately recognize when they hear scary-sounding words like “censorship” is that the act of controlling other people’s speech can be gratifying, a psychic net-positive for those who dream of a purified information space. Supporting censorship even shows that you’re in touch with the most advanced currents of continental ideas. In Europe, they might have “more regulations on speech”—which is a nice way of saying that the government can fine or imprison you for speech that is constitutionally protected in the United States—but “these countries remain democratic; in fact, they have created better conditions for their citizenry to sort what’s true from what’s not and to make informed decisions about what they want their societies to be.” Thinking about censorship should inspire warm and cuddly thoughts, perhaps of sipping gluhwein up in a schloss, or digging into a plate of steaming oliebollen beside a canal.

By contrast, America suffers from a predictably gross excess of speech. “Censorship of external critics by the government remains a serious threat under authoritarian regimes,” Bazelon writes. “But in the United States and other democracies, there is a different kind of threat, which may be doing more damage to the discourse about politics, news and science. It encompasses the mass distortion of truth and overwhelming waves of speech from extremists that smear and distract.” We simply can’t have a First Amendment with so much truth being distorted by people who disagree with us, can we?

BILL ADAIR: Although he founded Politifact, the Duke University journalism professor now realizes that a mere website can’t go far enough in protecting the public from the dread disease of misinformation—which is this month’s successor to “disinformation,” a foreign-threat-oriented term that is apparently being retired now that Russia and China are threatening to become models for the U.S. Why should weak, pitiful facts be forced to do battle against error without American government forces to back them up?

In an op-ed co-written with Stanford professor Philip M. Napoli, Adair, gravely noting that “fact-checking didn’t persuade the mob that stormed the Capitol,” called for “a bipartisan commission to investigate the problem of misinformation and make recommendations about how to address it,” perhaps through “regulations and new laws.”

Adair and Napoli’s essay traces a subtle redefinition of the terms of the censorship debate. Back in the more innocent world of the first Trump electoral campaign, the alleged civilizational scourge of “fake news,” a term originally invented by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to describe accusations made against her by Donald Trump which was then gleefully appropriated by Trump to describe the entire mainstream American news media, generally referred to stories that were entirely fabricated, or that had been pushed out through verifiably state-controlled information channels. “Fake news” later morphed into “disinformation,” or information that someone believes was intentionally meant to mislead. The prime suspects were usually the Moscow-based lords of the American information ecosystem, with the all-powerful Russians working in presumed collaboration with prime fake news purveyor and accuser Donald Trump.

The new enemy is no longer “disinformation” but “misinformation,” or information that somebody, somewhere—perhaps a presidential commission, perhaps an FCC bureaucrat, perhaps a faceless content moderator, perhaps a college professor with a website—deems punishable by virtue of its allegedly being untrue, or not true enough. The “mis” in “misinformation” is a conveniently slippery and expansive term that can include things that might be conventionally regarded as “true,” and in fact are true, but might lead someone to conclusions that fail to conform to a higher truth and are therefore undesirable. What are facts, anyway?

PETER W. SINGER: For Adair, public discourse was swept with a “tidal wave of misinformation” prior to the Capitol attack. The metaphor of choice from Singer, a trendy big-thinker with a nifty title at the New America Foundation—Strategist!—is actual warfare. That’s right: Words aren’t just violence, but violence in its most organized and systematized form, violence on an industrial scale. “They are not just tech creators or even the equivalent of news-media editors,” Singer wrote of social media companies a few days after the Capitol siege in the Atlantic Media-owned national-security-industry-focused publication Defense One. “After years of dodging it, they get that they are running information warzones. And there is a key change that comes from understanding that social media is not just a communication space but a conflict space. In Clausewitzian terms, the forces of toxicity now face a whole new type of ‘friction.’”

That’s mongo kinetic, brah! By the way, incidentally or maybe not so incidentally, Singer has been a member of both the National Security Agency’s advisory council and of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy.

CNN: The network that arguably did more than even Fox to turn cable news into an infotainment-powered anger binge, radicalizing middle-aged centrists and stranded air travelers the country over, now has second thoughts about its particular racket, or at least it has second thoughts about other people participating in its racket now that Donald Trump isn’t around anymore to goose its ratings. Clearly what the 24-hour news network needs to preserve its business is to get better at its job of breaking news—or else, to pick up new viewers by having its weaker competitors in the cortisol-boosting industry run off the air.

“Just a reminder that neither @Verizon, @ATT, nor @comcast have answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN & Newsmax into millions of homes,” media reporter Oliver Darcy recently tweeted, in promoting a CNN segment dedicated to the urgent issue of throwing other cable networks off television. “Do they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism content? They won’t say.”

One wonders if CNN has second thoughts about carrying nearly every single lie-filled Trump rally live during the 2016 presidential election campaign, including during the primaries, an in-kind donation the network made to no other candidate—or any second thoughts about its breathless wall-to-wall Russiagate coverage, which accused literally hundreds of people of various crimes based on anonymous sources, some of whom seem to have been deliberately lying. Probably not: The drama of the Trump era, which CNN had no small hand in creating, was very good for the channel’s bottom line.

PROPUBLICA: Isn’t it strange, the nonprofit newsroom wondered in a Jan. 19 article that required four reporters , that former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon has been kicked off of Facebook and YouTube, while Apple persists in carrying his podcast? Right?

Well, no, it’s really not that strange: Apple delisting Bannon from its podcast app would mean making a series of tricky judgment calls about what exactly constitutes an exhortation to committing real-world acts of violence, creating a range of legal and moral and practical dilemmas for the conflict-averse tech company. Even so, the story expresses a clear hope that Apple and other formerly neutral content carriers will apply sweeping and politically motivated content tests to the material they carry. What could be better, right—especially in a democracy that is in obvious need of strengthening.

“Audio files themselves are supported by a much more fragmented network of hosting services—which costs money, unlike simply being catalogued by a portal like Apple’s,” the article warns. Bannon’s podcast, for instance, “is hosted by Podbean, which did not return a request for comment. Its terms of service forbid content that is ’malicious, false, or inaccurate.’”

There is something unsettling about journalists exhibiting this kind of enthusiasm for corporate censorship and citizen snitching.

THE WASHINGTON POST: The 1798 Sedition Act is traditionally looked upon as a low point in the history of the early republic, single-handed proof that something like the First Amendment had been necessary in order to prevent the new United States from lapsing into European-style despotism.

Well, not anymore: On Jan. 14, the air still pungent with smoke from the smoldering Capitol , Notre Dame history professor Katlyn Marie Carter informed readers of the Washington Post that maybe the Act had an idea or two worth considering after all. Maybe the Sedition Act was actually a missed opportunity to make our democracy better through government censorship, especially when it came to the horror of rhetorical attacks on government office holders.

True, Carter noted, “the legislation has long been vilified as a partisan ploy to suppress the Federalist Party’s political opponents … But that partisan weaponization shouldn’t cloud the fact that the Sedition Act was also advanced as a response to a perceived crisis of misinformation and its potential to undermine trust in elected officials.” For Carter, “Proponents of the Sedition Act did something important. They highlighted the real threat misinformation posed—and still poses—to democracy and recognized that people are often either unable or unwilling to arrive at the truth amid a deluge of material.”

Like a lot of censorship fans, Carter doesn’t define the exact legal remedy for speech she finds unacceptable, or define notably elastic terms like “undermin[ing] of trust in elected officials.” But rest assured, some kind of remedy is needed to stave off the deluge. “Truth” must be protected by some external authority. Today, “the task of safeguarding the truth is functionally left up to profit-driven tech companies, which is no better a solution than that offered by the Sedition Act. Though social media giants seem to have finally awakened to the danger of misinformation spread on their platforms, it took a violent insurrection to spur meaningful action. It may be too little, too late.”

MAX BOOT: The S-word was also thrown around liberally in a post-Capitol siege column from the maverick foreign policy thinker turned repetitive center-left take-slinger, a pro-censorship broadside that was also published in The Washington Post—which is owned by arch-monopolist Jeff Bezos, who is contracted to provide secure cloud computing services for the CIA. Boot argues for legal and extra-legal consequences against “a whole infrastructure of incitement” guilty of aiding and abetting Trump’s grotesque riot. “We need to shut down the influencers who radicalize people and set them on the path toward violence and sedition” he wrote, in a sentence whose hilariously misplaced modifiers both he and his editors missed.

Tellingly, the “we” here includes “large cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Spectrum” who Boot believes should drop Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News. What’s a little censorship among friends? Surely, we won’t be censoring anything too important or vital to the healthy functioning of society by shutting down outlets that pander to the wrong half of American society—while we pander to the right half. Surely the very act of censorship won’t prove corrosive to the country’s civic and moral baseline, however evil these networks might be. The combined forces of The Washington Post and Comcast only have the public’s best interests at heart.

Boot helpfully notes, in a parenthetical, that he is “a global affairs analyst” at the aforementioned CNN, meaning that he is explicitly arguing for his personal competition to be thrown off the airwaves by the combined forces of government and corporate power.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Like ProPublica, the AP has discovered a shocking “loophole” exploited by ideological extremists: podcasts.

“Podcasts made available by the two Big Tech companies let you tune into the world of the QAnon conspiracy theory, wallow in President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and bask in other extremism,” reports the AP, warning that “Podcasting ‘plays a particularly outsized role’ in propagating white supremacy,” according to “a 2018 report from the Anti-Defamation League.” Has anyone investigated comic books yet? The lyrics of rap songs? If you haven’t noticed yet, seditious, violence-inducing content is everywhere.

The lone and very much welcome note of balance comes from Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who observes that censorship “goes with the tide against what’s popular in any given moment.” Today, people considered part of the radical right are targeted. “Tomorrow,” she cautions, “the tide might be against opposition activists.”

For the rising, pro-censorship voices in media and beyond, history has no tides, just correct answers. What objection will today’s anti-speech intellectuals mount if someone in power decides they’re the ones who have it all wrong?

Armin Rosen is a staff writer for Tablet magazine.rmin Rosen is a staff writer for Tablet magazine.

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News From Israel- Jan 25, 2021

Jan26
News From Israel- Jan 25, 2021

ILTV Israel News

Violence between Israeli police and ultra-orthodox #protesters increasing to previously unseen levels overnight.
–
Alleged child sex abuser Malka #Leifer is extradited to Australia after 13 years.
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The Israeli #embassy to the United Arab Emirates opens for business.

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Polski nóż w litewskie plecy. (100 lat temu) Lucjan Żeligowski zajął Wilno

Jan25

Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski ze swoim sztabem podczas mszy przed katedrą w Wilnie po zajęciu miasta w październiku 1920 r. (Fot. Polona)

Polski nóż w litewskie plecy. (100 lat temu) Lucjan Żeligowski zajął Wilno

Zbigniew Rokita

Litwa Środkowa była dla Piłsudskiego mniej więcej tym, czym dla Putina Doniecka Republika Ludowa. Miała pomóc mu zmusić Litwinów do przystania na jego warunki.

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Zbigniew Rokita: W 1918 r. dla Polaków Wilno było jednym z najważniejszych i najbardziej polskich miast – miastem Mickiewicza, Słowackiego, Ostrej Bramy i powstańców styczniowych. Wszystkie siły polityczne zgadzały się, że musi się znaleźć w odrodzonej Rzeczypospolitej. A czym było dla Litwinów?

Prof. Alvydas Nikžentaitis: Najlepiej ujął to Tomas Venclova – powiedział, że dla Litwinów jest tym, czym Jerozolima dla Żydów. To dobre porównanie, bo przecież Żydzi w Jerozolimie długo byli w mniejszości tak jak Litwini w Wilnie.

W 1918 r. Litwini powszechnie uważali, że Wilno musi być stolicą odrodzonej Litwy?

– Zdecydowanie. Znaczenie tego miasta dla nich wynikało z historii: od 1323 do 1795 r. było ono stolicą Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego.

Po I wojnie światowej narody spierające się o jakieś terytoria wysuwały na ogół dwa rodzaje argumentów: demograficzne lub historyczne. I były w tym często niekonsekwentne. Polacy np. na Zaolziu udowadniali Czechom, że ważniejszy jest skład narodowościowy niż historia, a już w Gdańsku tłumaczyli Niemcom coś odwrotnego. W Wilnie demografia stała za Polakami. Według spisu z 1916 r. stanowili 53 proc. mieszkańców, 41 proc. – Żydzi, a Litwini – jedynie 2 proc. Większe prawa do Wilna mieli więc Polacy, skoro było ich przytłaczająco więcej?

– Litewscy historycy udzielą jednej z dwóch odpowiedzi: rację miały obie strony lub żadna strona jej nie miała.

Polacy chętnie powołują się na statystyki językowe. I rzeczywiście, u progu XX w. litewski nie był w Wilnie dominujący, ustępował polszczyźnie i jidysz. Ale języki to jedno, a tożsamości narodowe to drugie – wówczas nowoczesne narody dopiero się kształtowały. Gdy po I wojnie światowej powstawała Litwa, w Kownie nawoływano do wstępowania do tworzącej się armii. Początkowo prowadzono agitację po litewsku, ale odzew był niewielki. Dopiero gdy odezwy wystosowano po polsku, odpowiedziało więcej osób. Nie zapominajmy, że jeszcze w latach 20. XX w. Kowno było miastem głównie polskojęzycznym. Język litewski wzmocnił znacznie swoją pozycję dopiero w latach 30.

Rozmowa na te tematy jest trudna, bo często przykładamy współczesne kategorie do ówczesnej sytuacji. Gdy zaś rozmawiam z polskimi historykami, wciąż im powtarzam: „Wy nawet nie odpowiedzieliście sobie jeszcze na pytanie, kiedy powstał nowoczesny naród polski!”. Nie rozumiał tego również Józef Piłsudski. Myślał, że gdy przyjdzie z Legionami na ziemie zaboru rosyjskiego, lud powita go jako wyzwoliciela. A tak się nie stało. Masy nie myślały jeszcze kategoriami narodowymi. Wówczas dopiero kształtowały się narody polski, litewski czy język litewski. Mylimy często język, jakim ktoś się na co dzień posługiwał, z narodowością.

Czy było jakieś dobre rozwiązanie ówczesnego sporu polsko-litewskiego?

– Chyba nie. Zresztą porozumienie Polaków i Litwinów w tamtym czasie oznaczałoby, że nowoczesny naród litewski nigdy by nie powstał. Może nawet byłoby lepiej, gdyby się nie narodził? Nie wiem, ale taki byłby koszt zgody. To zresztą kolejne błędne wyobrażenie na temat tamtych czasów: że spór dotyczył wyłącznie dwóch grup – Polaków i Litwinów. Była tymczasem jeszcze trzecia – krajowcy. Byli polskojęzyczni, mieli świadomość narodową polską, ale polityczną litewską i zabiegali o niepodległą Litwę, która trwałaby w ścisłej unii z Rzeczpospolitą.

Charakterystyczne są losy braci Narutowiczów. Gabriel został prezydentem Polski, a Stanisław przedstawicielem krajowców właśnie, politykiem litewskim i sygnatariuszem aktu niepodległości Litwy.

– Krajowcem można nazwać też Piłsudskiego, ale okazało się, że tacy jak on są w mniejszości i porozumienie stało się niemożliwe. Większość polityków, np. Roman Dmowski, nawet nie chciała słyszeć o takiej ewentualności. Patrząc z dzisiejszej perspektywy, wydaje się, że nie było alternatywy dla głębokiego sporu polsko-litewskiego.

Była również koncepcja propagowana przez Ligę Narodów czy Michała Römera, aby Litwa składała się z trzech kantonów narodowościowych. Litwa w takim kształcie zawarłaby sojusz z Polską. Czy to nie byłoby dobre rozwiązanie?

– Litwa odrzucała wszelkie tego rodzaju porozumienia, bo pamiętajmy, że na początku XX w. głównym wrogiem według elit litewskich byli nie Rosjanie, ale Polacy. Litwini nie chcieli być w żadnym związku z Polską.

Kres marzeniom Piłsudskiego o polsko-litewskim sojuszu położył ostatecznie „bunt Żeligowskiego” w 1920 r.

– Zanim się odbył, w tym samym roku doszło do dwóch kluczowych wydarzeń. Najpierw w lipcu zawarto traktat litewsko-radziecki. Sowieci przekazywali w nim Litwinom Suwalszczyznę i Wileńszczyznę wraz z Wilnem, w zamian Litwini m.in. umożliwili nacierającym na Polaków Sowietom przejście przez swoje terytorium.

Traktat był dla Litwinów bardzo korzystny, jednak w rzeczywistości bolszewicy grali na czas. Planowali sowietyzację Litwy, na miejscu było już kilkuset komunistów, czekali tylko na sygnał do przeprowadzenia przewrotu. Drugim wydarzeniem była Bitwa Warszawska.

Która uratowała niepodległość Litwy, ale też Łotwy, Estonii czy Finlandii.

– I umożliwiła przeprowadzenie „buntu Żeligowskiego”, który buntem był tylko z nazwy – wszyscy obserwatorzy, w tym alianci, rozumieli, że w rzeczywistości Żeligowski wypełniał rozkaz Piłsudskiego.

Działo się to jeszcze przed traktatem ryskim, który domknął granice w tej części Europy.

– Traktat ryski, który był porażką Piłsudskiego, położył kres jego dążeniom do powołania wschodnioeuropejskiej federacji.

Żeligowski, zabierając ze sobą głównie żołnierzy pochodzących z Wileńszczyzny, zastosował zresztą popularną wówczas metodę rozwiązywania sporów terytorialnych. Trzy lata po nim, w 1923 r., Litwini w podobny sposób zainscenizowali powstanie miejscowej ludności w Kłajpedzie, odnieśli sukces i kontrolowali region aż do marca 1939 r.

Trudno porównywać wydarzenia dzisiejsze z tymi sprzed stu lat, ale zaryzykuję: czy widzi pan podobieństwa między aneksją Krymu przez Rosjan i aneksją Wileńszczyzny przez Polskę? W obu przypadkach, gwałcąc normy międzynarodowe, jednak spełniono wolę większości miejscowej ludności.

– To jakby porównywać jabłko z cytryną. Na początku XX w. nie istniała jeszcze tradycja rozwiązywania takich sporów – dopiero tworzył się ład międzynarodowy, kończyła się epoka imperiów, zaczynała państw narodowych. Od tego czasu powstał pakt Brianda-Kellogga o wyrzeczeniu się wojny, umowa helsińska o neutralności granic i dziesiątki innych reguł. Złamanie prawa międzynarodowego przez Polskę w 1920 r. i przez Rosję w 2014 r. to nie to samo. Polska postąpiła tak jak wiele innych państw w tym czasie, a Rosja kilka lat temu podważyła reguły, którymi kierowaliśmy się co najmniej 50 lat.

Żeligowski na początku operacji się zawahał. Oświadczył Piłsudskiemu, że nie ma wystarczającego autorytetu wśród żołnierzy. Marszałek polecił przejąć dowodzenie gen. Władysławowi Sikorskiemu, ale w międzyczasie Żeligowski zmienił zdanie i ruszył. Na początku października mimo protestów aliantów łatwo zajął Wilno. Jego oddziały nacierały jednak dalej, na Kowieńszczyznę. Polacy chcieli wówczas podbić całą Republikę Litwy?

– Po polskiej stronie ścierały się różne poglądy. Rzeczywiście, część polskiej elity politycznej chciała przyłączenia całej Litwy, ale Piłsudski odmówił. „Bunt Żeligowskiego” był jego ostatnią próbą zmuszenia Litwinów do rozmów o jakiejś formie federacji. Dlatego też początkowo Warszawa nie anektowała Wileńszczyzny, a zamiast tego stworzyła parapaństwo – Litwę Środkową: bo Piłsudski wciąż chciał negocjować i wciąż wierzył w polsko-litewski sojusz. Marszałek nie był polskim nacjonalistą, chciał w miarę możliwości uniknąć konfliktu z Litwinami.

Gdy Żeligowski szedł na Wileńszczyznę, Piłsudski polecił mu, aby niepotrzebnie nie antagonizował sobie ludności litewskiej. Powstaje Litwa Środkowa, która będzie istniała blisko dwa lata. Nikt nie uzna tego parapaństwa – nawet Polska. Czym był ten twór?

– Sprowokował mnie pan do analogii ze współczesnością, więc zabawię się w publicystę: to była taka Doniecka Republika Ludowa. I odgrywała podobną rolę jak DRL dla Putina: miała pomóc Piłsudskiemu zmusić Litwinów do przystania na jego warunki.

Litwa Środkowa w herbie miała polsko-litewską symbolikę: orła i pogoń. Emitowała nawet swoje znaczki. Na początku 1922 r. tamtejszy sejm przegłosował w końcu przyłączenie do Polski. Warszawa nie rozważała pozostawienia niezależnej Litwy Środkowej jako państewka buforowego?

– Nic o tym nie wiem. Pan pyta o plany, a trzeba pamiętać, że wówczas w polskich działaniach było mnóstwo improwizacji. Na początku lat 20. nikt nie miał długodystansowej strategii na pięć czy dziesięć lat do przodu.

Jak wyglądały stosunki polsko-litewskie po 1920 r.?

– Plan Piłsudskiego się nie powiódł, Litwini nie zgodzili się na żaden sojusz. Nastała polsko-litewska zimna wojna. Nie utrzymywaliśmy stosunków dyplomatycznych aż do polskiego ultimatum z 1938 r. Mieliśmy zamkniętą granicę. Żeby dojechać z Kowna do Warszawy, trzeba było jeździć przez inne kraje. Ustawały kontakty ludzi na pograniczu, rozluźniały się więzi rodzinne.

To był ówczesny mur berliński, jedna z najmocniej chronionych granic europejskich.

Była to nie tylko granica fizyczna, ale też mentalna – po setkach lat funkcjonowania tego terytorium jako jednego obszaru kulturowego.

Litwa nigdy nie uznała aneksji Wilna. Oficjalnie Kowno było tymczasową stolicą międzywojennej Litwy, ale w konstytucji stało jasno, że prawdziwą stolicą jest Wilno. To wówczas wśród Litwinów ukształtował się syndrom antypolski.

Jak się rodził?

– W międzywojniu Litwini kreowali obraz Wilna jako miasta nie tylko historycznie litewskiego, ale również zdominowanego przez litewski żywioł. Proszę poczytać wspomnienia licznych Litwinów, którzy przybywają tam w 1939 r. [ZSRR przekazał je Litwie po zajęciu wschodniej Polski] i są zdziwieni, że jest tam tak dużo Polaków – a oni myśleli, że to prawdziwe litewskie miasto.

W tym czasie tworzono też nowe narracje historyczne i były one głównie wymierzone w Polaków. Centralnym mitem kreowanej w międzywojniu pamięci Litwinów był mit Witolda Wielkiego [wielki książę litewski w latach 1401-30]. Nikomu nie stawiano tylu pomników co jemu, szczególnie w związku z hucznie obchodzonym 500-leciem jego śmierci. A na czym polegał mit Witolda? Na międzywojennej Litwie było niewiele świeckich świąt państwowych, a jednym z nich była rocznica jego nieudanej koronacji na króla Litwy. Ostatecznie nie doszła do skutku, a Litwini byli przekonani, że stało się tak, bo Polacy w osobie Jagiełły ukradli mu koronę i skazali na unię z Rzeczpospolitą.

A co z dobrymi kartami wspólnej historii, na przykład bitwą pod Grunwaldem?

– Wspominając Grunwald, zastanawiano się głównie nad tym, kto dowodził wspólną armią i kto był autorem sukcesu – Jagiełło czy Witold? Jagiełłę w międzywojniu widziano jako zdrajcę narodu litewskiego. To były jedne z wielu elementów kompleksu antypolskiego, który istnieje zresztą do dzisiaj. Trudno to zmienić, bo przez pięć-sześć pokoleń mówiono o Polakach jako bandytach i terrorystach, a dopiero od dwóch pokoleń akcent kładzie się na to, że są dobrymi sąsiadami.

Jednocześnie wciąż słyszę na Litwie głosy, że Polacy regularnie wbijają Litwinom nóż w plecy – gdy Litwa zdobywała niepodległość po I wojnie światowej, był Żeligowski, gdy odzyskiwała ją 70 lat później, miejscowi Polacy tworzyli podejrzaną autonomię narodowościową, którą porównywano do Naddniestrza, teraz jest agresywny AWPL.

– Tak, efekty „buntu Żeligowskiego” widzę do dziś. Kiedyś w gronie profesorów rozmawialiśmy o tym, czy litewskim Polakom powinno się dać prawo zapisu w dokumentach ich imion i nazwisk z wykorzystaniem liter niewystępujących w alfabecie litewskim. Część profesorów odpowiedziała, że to wykluczone, bo oni dążą do odłączenia Wilna od Litwy i przyłączenia do Polski.

Choć trzeba powiedzieć uczciwie, że takie głosy są coraz rzadsze. Zmienia się nawet stosunek do Piłsudskiego, który przestaje być największym wrogiem Litwinów. Wileńskie obchody 150-lecia urodzin Marszałka pokazały, że dla Litwinów nie jest to już tak bardzo drażliwy temat.

Ale powiem panu tak: polsko-litewskie demony z przeszłości wracają zawsze, gdy pogarszają się stosunki między państwami.

Prof. Alvydas Nikžentaitis – dyrektor Instytutu Historii Litwy, współzałożyciel i dyrektor Centrum Historii Prus i Litwy Zachodniej przy Uniwersytecie Kłajpedzkim. Po polsku ukazała się jego książka „Witold i Jagiełło: Polacy i Litwini we wzajemnym stereotypie”. Odznaczony Krzyżem Oficerskim Orderu Zasługi RP

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As the Holocaust escalated, the Swedish press fell silent: media and the normalisation of passivity and non-engagement in WWII Sweden

Jan25
As the Holocaust escalated, the Swedish press fell silent: media and the normalisation of passivity and non-engagement in WWII Sweden

Ester Pollack

Pdf document

ABSTRACT

How could the Holocaust happen – and why did the surrounding world not react? During the first decades after World War II, in Sweden as in many other countries, a common answer was “we did not know.” The argument is still used. However, today we know that testimonies about the mass murder in concentration camps were spread through both diplomatic channels and international news reports. To what extent did this information also reach the Swedish citizens, living in a neutral nation? In this article I present two studies. One study analyses Swedish news about Jews from January 1933 to the end of May 1945. The results show an interest in “Jewish questions” throughout the 1930s, culminating in 1938 (Kristallnacht), but with a decreased attention thereafter and with very limited reporting in 1940 and 1941. A second study analyses articles about the extermination camps in Germany and Poland in 1938–1945 and shows that bits and pieces of news information can be found, but the publications are at the same time limited in facts and restricted in coverage. Information control by Swedish authorities and self-censorship contributed to the silencing of the German war crimes and the normalisation of “not knowing.”

Introduction

In July 1944, the Red Army – and allied Polish forces under Soviet command – liberated the extermination camp Majdanek in Lublin, Poland. One of the camps used by Nazi Germany to kill people on an industrial scale, it was captured before the SS and the German forces could destroy the gas chambers and other pieces of evidence of war crimes. Approximately 200,000 people lost their lives in Majdanek, among them 60,000 Jews (Benz 1999, 140). On 27 January 1945, the Red Army further liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest extermination site. By the time the Soviet troops reached Auschwitz, the German Nazis had done what they could to cover their tracks (Pitzer 2017, 214). The gas chambers had been dismantled and destroyed with explosives. Just over 7,500 survivors remained in the camp; 66,000 had been forced to leave on death marches to other, soon to be overcrowded camps in central Germany. It is estimated that in the period from January 1942 to the end of 1944, around one million people died in Auschwitz; approximately 90% of them were Jews, but the camp was also responsible for the extermination of Roma minorities and prisoners of war from both the Soviet Union and other countries (Benz 1999, 139; Pitzer 2017, 209). During the ensuing months, the Allied forces from the US and the UK liberated concentration camps in the western part of Germany, among them Bergen-Belsen, where the lack of food and poor sanitation conditions led to mass deaths shortly before and after the liberation.

With the liberation of the concentration and the extermination camps, written documentation and pictures of horror reached and shocked the world. Debates about guilt, morality and responsibility have since formed different countries’ self-understanding in various ways. Over time, Auschwitz has become one of the most prominent symbols of the Nazi genocide of the Jews and the “Gypsies” (Roma and Sinti), as well as the persecution and the murder of homosexuals, prisoners of war and others viewed as inferior or undesirable. In 2005, the United Nations designated 27 January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, as a day of remembrance for the Holocaust victims. In Sweden, the date has been designated as a national day of remembrance since 1999.

This does not mean that this Remembrance Day is observed in every country or that it is the only day of remembrance of the Holocaust. Nor does it mean that people in different countries remember the Holocaust in the same way. Remembrance involves looking back at the history of one’s own nation, which is affected by the historical and the political changes that have occurred during the intervening period, while also relating to the present and the future. International Holocaust research has used the concepts “perpetrators, victims and bystanders” when discussing the neutral countries’ relationship to the Holocaust and has characterised it as a bystanders’ position (Åmark [2011] 2016, 482; see also Marrus 1985; Hilberg 1992; Cesarini and Levine 2002). The collective memories of different countries are naturally affected not only by the role that a given country played at the time but also by the various ways of understanding, interpreting, reinterpreting and attempting to come to terms with this history or of using it as an effective means of achieving various political goals that have characterised different countries over subsequent decades.

Since the end of World War II, it has been observed that the majority of European countries have struggled over which narratives about their own histories should be acknowledged as authentic. This is also true for the Nordic countries.

How could this happen? Why did the surrounding world not react? These have been two of the recurrent questions concerning the Holocaust. During the first decades after World War II, a common answer was “we did not know.” In Scandinavia, this is still an ongoing debate. For example, in 2014, when Swedish Television interviewed the well-known Swedish author and journalist Jan Guillou about his new novel, the fourth of a series about a family and the European history during the twentieth century, his standpoints led to an animated public debate. The book title is Not wanting to see [Att inte vilja se], and the author claimed that Swedish upper- and middle-class citizens generally did not know about the extermination camps until they were publicly revealed in 1945 (Guillou 2014). After critique, he nuanced himself and claimed that Swedish intelligence and the government most certainly knew about the development of the persecutions against the Jews, and that the communist press reported after 1941. Yet, Guillou claimed, the dominating mainstream press only published small news items hidden in the last pages of their papers.

However, we know that testimonies about the brutal persecution of Jews, Roma and other people – leading to industrial extermination – were spread both through diplomatic channels and newspaper reports, not least in the US and the UK. Nonetheless, to what extent did this information reach ordinary Swedish citizens? Sweden, a so-called neutral nation, took a bystander’s position during the World War II. State regulation of the media was introduced to avoid Nazi Germany’s disapproval. Self-censorship concerning war news and reports about Nazi Germany was widespread. Some newspapers were denied distribution, and their information was therefore effectively censored. What kind of information about the escalating victimisation of the Jews, the theme of this article, did the Swedish press in this situation provide their readers? If the silencing of the persecution and the extermination of the Jews did take place, what discourses and wider social practices enabled this?

In the analysis of silencing as a strategy for the normalisation of passivity and non-engagement, a key term is symbolic annihilation. The sociologist Gaye Tuchman (1978) has used it to characterise the underrepresentation and trivialisation of women in the news media, making male dominance seem the normal and self-evident media depiction. Gavriely-Nuri (2013) has later used the concept in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to characterise a strategy normalising war through a discourse that omits elements such as death, damages and environmental destruction (for other strategies see also Krzyżanowski 2020 – in this Special Issue).

Previous research has presented and discussed different hypotheses about Swedish news reporting and the Holocaust. Koblik (1988) maintains the idea that the media were principally indifferent to and silenced about the fate of the Jews. Levine (1987) argues that the information was comprehensive but fragmented and without analysis and therefore inconsistent. Svanberg and Tydén (1997) notice a rich documentation about the persecution of Jews in the pre-war time but less interest after the outbreak of the war. According to their study, the destiny of Norwegian and Danish Jews nonetheless had a dramatic impact on the Swedish press and resulted in increased publications. They also observe a greater outspokenness about the persecution from 1943 – when Germany’s fortune in the war turned. Therefore, they propose reformulating the question of how the Holocaust could happen without the outside world knowing it to the question about how the genocide could continue even though the outside world had adequate knowledge of the event. However, their study suffers from a methodological problem as they analysed the most manifest and initiated articles in different newspapers; thereby the researchers constructed a corpus that showed a picture about what the most well-informed could provide.

The media historian Göran Leth (2007) has characterised this development as Swedish media’s betrayal in the shadow of the Holocaust; information and opinion building were influenced by the consideration for the perpetrators, not the victims. The media did not offer the public the possibility to judge the violence and the murderous intent of the Nazi regime, making it easier for anti-Semitism to unfold (Leth 2007, 191). Perhaps it also created a normalisation pattern whereby the apparent “not knowing” – a fallacy that indeed persisted over time – also created a justification for neither opposing the Nazi regime’s atrocities openly nor taking any counter actions and measures.

None of the above-cited studies represents a systematic media analysis of the whole wartime period (1939–1945) reporting; they build mostly on case studies of selected periods. However, in a broad descriptive study about how World War II was depicted by the daily press, the diplomat Axel Moberg (2015) has shown that some information was available regarding the extermination of the Jews from 1942 onwards.

The purpose of my study is to concentrate on Swedish news reporting about the Jews and the Holocaust, analysed in the historical context of Swedish politics at the time, and with the aim of providing a better-informed answer.

It is necessary to comment on the concept of the Holocaust as a generic terminology summarising the atrocities against Jews, Roma and others during the World War II period. In Sweden, as in other Western countries, the concept was not used during the war years or the first decades thereafter. However, it became widely known and popularised through the American TV series The Holocaust, produced by NBC in 1978. In Sweden, the series was shown in the spring of 1979, with the title Förintelsen. Subsequently, the Holocaust concept has been adopted and used by both politicians and historians, sometimes first and foremost characterising the systematic mass murder of the Jews and other defined groups, such as Roma, Sinti and people with handicaps (Friedlander 1995; Bruchfeld and Levine 1998), at other times characterising the broader and systematic mass killing of civilians organised by the Nazi state (Bergen 2009). In the following sections, I primarily use the term in relation to the extermination of the Jews.

The two overall research questions are as follows: How did the Swedish press report about the development concerning Nazi Germany’s policy against the Jews? Was the mass murder of Jews and others effectively and purposefully silenced by the wide sections of the Swedish press, thus normalising the Swedish bystander position of not opposing or taking actions against the Nazi crimes?

Two connected research questions are as follows: What kind of information reached the Swedish citizens? Was it possible to know about the ongoing persecution of the Jews between 1941 and 1945?

To this end, two studies have been conducted. The first follows four daily newspapers with different attitudes to Nazi Germany and Sweden’s relationship to Nazi Germany from 1933 to the end of 1945 and analyses what they wrote about the Jews. The second study analyses the reporting about concentration camps over the period from 1938 to 1945 in the leading liberal paper, Dagens Nyheter. I provide a brief overview of my findings.

This article is organised as follows. In the section “Sweden’s relationship to Nazi Germany,” I discuss the political context that influenced the media coverage of the persecution of the Jews before and during the war years. In the next section, “Press data and methods,” I explain the selection of the newspapers and the methods. In “Jews in the news,” different stages of the press reports in the 1933–1945 period are presented. In “Holocaust in the Swedish press,” I conclude the discussion on what Swedes could know about the extermination of the Jews and other people before the war in Europe ended. In the final section, “Adaptation to the fortune of the war, fragmentation – and silence,” I return to the research questions and discuss them in the light of my findings.

Sweden’s relationship to Nazi Germany

To give meaning to the results and understand the discussion, some background information on Sweden’s political position and press policy during World War II is necessary.

During the 1920s and the first years of the 1930s, Sweden had good economic and cultural relations with Germany. 1 These relations became more strained after Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power but basically continued as previously, not least on the economic front. Sweden upheld its position as a neutral country during World War II (while its neighbouring countries, Denmark and Norway, were occupied by Germany), but the Swedish-German trade was important for both countries, and they had mutual economic dependency. Sweden imported coke and coal from Germany and paid these imports with exports of primarily iron ore and ball bearings. Germany also used Swedish railroads as transit routes to Norway and affected the Swedish business community through claims for “Aryanisation,” calling for the Jews’ expulsion from the businesses. Many Jews became severely affected by such persecution even though some Swedish companies showed opposition (Blomberg 2003, 205–211; Åmark 2016, 192). However, during the war, the two countries economic cooperation was gradually reduced, but until the turn of the year 1945, Sweden still had limited trade with Nazi Germany.

During the 1930s, the Swedish Social Democratic Party dominated the government, but from 1936, they ruled in a coalition with the Agrarians (today named the Centre Party). The Social Democrats’ ambition was to build a welfare state with broad popular support (folkhem, meaning people’s home). When World War II broke out in 1939, a new and broader coalition government was formed, with participation from two other parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. This coalition governed Sweden during the entire war period, and the responsibilities for different policy areas were distributed among the coalition parties. The most important project for the Social Democrat Prime Minister, Per Albin Hansson, was to maintain peace. Sometimes, this contrasted the principle of neutrality, which triggered major and minor crises. The most debated is the so-called midsummer crisis in 1941, when Germany was allowed to bring a battle-equipped division of military personnel from Oslo to Haparanda, near the Finnish-Swedish border in Northern Sweden, for further transportation eastward. 2 Besides this, historical research has documented that a German attack on Sweden during these years was unlikely and that the appeasement policy put Sweden’s neutrality and independence at risk. However, in the summer of 1943, the transit agreement with Germany was terminated.

The government was often divided in questions concerning the adaptation to Nazi Germany, one of the reasons being the necessity to handle German-friendly sentiments in the bourgeoisie, the police and the military forces. The war risk and perceptions of Germany as an upcoming great power, in whose empire Sweden needed to settle, came to characterise the Swedish attitude to Nazi Germany.

Did the Nazi ideology with its racist and anti-Semitic ideas matter in Sweden’s relation with Nazi Germany? This question has been considered first with newer research about Sweden’s role in relation to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Racist and anti-Semitic perceptions existed long before the Nazi movement made its entrance. This was a historical tradition, which Swedish Nazi circles, inspired by Hitler’s Germany, tried to use during the 1930s and the first part of the 1940s. However, the Nazi movement never received any political mandate; its proponents were defeated in the elections (Åmark [2011] 2016, 311). Anti-Semitic perceptions nevertheless existed in a variety of sectors and environments. 3

How widespread were these ideas, and what significance did they have? This question has been answered very differently. Among the reasons are that various definitions of anti-Semitism, either broader or narrower, have been used and that much search remains to give us better knowledge and overview. Some researchers argue that everyday anti-Semitic perceptions were widespread throughout society (e.g. Berggren 1999; Andersson 2000; Byström 2008; Kvist Geverts 2008); others contend that anti-Semitism had an uneven spread (Svanberg and Tydén 1997). In a summary of the research situation, Åmark ([2011] 2016, 396) formulates a hypothesis of polarisation of attitudes towards anti-Semitism. The driving force was the German development towards a coarser and more violent anti-Semitism, which activated the small Swedish Nazi parties. However, this also led to deprecation from Swedes influenced by more “everyday” anti-Semitic perceptions.

From the summer of 1940, Sweden was one of three neutral, democratic European countries neither participating in the ongoing war nor being occupied by Nazi Germany (the others being Ireland and Switzerland) and left with a relatively free press. However, Sweden’s neutrality came at a price and required extensive negotiations in its foreign and trade policies. Swedish exports of iron ore and ball bearings, as well as the use of the Swedish communications network for the transit of war materials and soldiers on leave, were long regarded by historians as the price Sweden had to pay to stay out of the war.

The potential importance of news reporting at the time should not be underestimated. The possibility for media organisations and journalists in neutral countries to reveal the nature of the Nazi occupations and the brutalisation of the war did exist. This was exactly what the German regime knew. The German authorities therefore read Swedish newspapers very closely, which they had done since Hitler became Reichskanzler, and they regularly sent complaints to the Swedish government.

Before World War II, these complaints were mostly directed towards the social democratic and communist press and also against the liberal business daily, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, which had an outspoken anti-Nazi attitude. In the summer of 1940, after the occupation of Sweden’s neighbouring countries Denmark and Norway, the Swedish Foreign Ministry received one German complaint a week (Åmark 2016, 227). In subsequent years, most complaints were related to news from occupied countries and stories about Nazi occupation politics. This represented a political and diplomatic pressure that Nazi Germany maintained all through the war. How did the coalition government respond to the German pressure? How free was the Swedish press under these circumstances?

During the war, the Swedish government initiated two new institutions with responsibilities for information control and press politics. One was The National Bureau of Information, established in 1940 and chaired by the vice-chancellor of Stockholm University College. The bureau produced “Grey Notes” (to be kept secret) on what was considered either appropriate or inappropriate for publication, including instructions about the necessity of not publishing negative information about the powers at war. The other wartime institution was the Press Committee, established in 1941 and chaired by Sten Dehlgren, the chief editor of Dagens Nyheter. As a collaboration forum between the state and the press, the Press Committee organised meetings between high-ranking representatives of the press and the Foreign Affairs Minister. It also published press guidelines that advocated neutrality in relation to warring nations. The system aimed to secure close cooperation between the government and the press.

The guiding principle for the papers was to be careful; published articles should strictly be based “on grounds of fact.” The attitude was that publications of cruelty and brutality linked to the war had to be avoided. In practice, this cooperation system meant that self-censorship became an important method to secure press coverage loyal to the needs of the coalition government.

Even a law of state censorship before publication was prepared and enforced by the Swedish parliament in 1940 in case Sweden was drawn into the war, but this limitation of the Constitution’s principle of free speech and press freedom was not put into practice (Funcke 2006). However, the threat of censorship was launched and influenced the political climate. There were also several other methods of repression. Post censorship was carried out within the framework of the public security service (Sandlund 2001, 269). One legal loophole was the possibility to confiscate news organisations’ assets, a type of repression that was frequently used, especially against the leftist press. In total, 200 out of 303 confiscation acts were directed towards communist and social democratic papers, 30 against Nazi papers (Funcke 2006, 88; Åmark 2016, 236). Accusations/motivations for such confiscations were references to foreign propaganda and predictions about cruelties by the powers at war, such as “the tyranny of Hitler,” or characterisations, such as “barbaric,” “sadistic regime” and so on. Another method to limit press freedom was communication and transportation prohibition (by mail, train or bus). However, this was only carried out against papers being prosecuted in other ways, mostly hitting the communist press.

The main aim of the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Minister of Justice was to improve the relations towards Nazi Germany under the mask of a press policy; the politics were mainly directed against the newspapers that represented opposition towards the Swedish government’s politics of neutrality (Åmark [2011] 2016).

The so-called small-state realist paradigm on the necessary consequences of neutrality remained dominant until the mid-1990s. However, the Swedish self-understanding excluded the idea of any form of complicity or guilt in relation to the Holocaust. This perspective underwent a shift during the 1990s. A debate developed about both the concessions made by Sweden to Nazi Germany and the country’s restrictive refugee policy before and during the war. Among others, the journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius (1991) raised questions about the Swedish self-image in her book Honour and Conscience. Sweden and the Second World War (Heder och samvete. Sverige och andra världskriget). A paradigm of moral responsibility emerged to challenge previous perspectives. Since then, the Swedish debate about the country’s position during the war and its possible complicity in the Holocaust has been conducted within the framework of these two opposing viewpoints – the small-state paradigm and the moral responsibility perspective. The historian Klas Åmark’s book To Live Next Door to Evil (Att bo granne med ondskan) ([2011] 2016) presents perhaps the best Swedish account of the relations between Sweden and Nazi Germany, along with an overview and an insightful analysis of the debate regarding Sweden’s approach to this relationship.

Press data and methods

As mentioned in the introduction, the empirical research is divided into two studies. The first covers the period from 1933 – the year Hitler’s Nazi Party came to power in Germany – to the end of 1945, the year World War II ended. The aim has been to find the texts that deal with the fate of European Jews, regardless of the perspective and the context. 4

Four Swedish newspapers have been selected for this analysis. It is a strategic selection, not a representative selection where all types of Swedish papers are represented. The aim has been to be able to conduct a comparative analysis of papers known to have different attitudes concerning Swedish policy in relation to Nazi Germany. The selection has been inspired by Leth’s (2005) analysis of ten Swedish newspapers’ reporting on the violent abuses against German Jews in November 1938, which has come to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glasses). In the newspapers’ coverage, he discovers patterns that make it possible to divide the press into three categories: Protest, Indifference and Adaptation. The Protest group includes newspapers that openly distanced themselves from the heavily brutalised Nazi politics typical of the Kristallnacht’s abuse. The Indifference group consists of newspapers that over time expressed a kind of normalisation of Germany’s anti-Semitism. Here, Leth includes Dagens Nyheter, a newspaper also chosen for my study. However, I have relabelled this group Caution, a name more in accordance with what my analysis shows for the period as a whole. The newspaper is first and foremost characterised by its careful closeness to government politics. The Adaptation group consists of newspapers whose editorial pages expressed adaptation to – or direct support for – Nazi Germany and its policy.

This categorisation has guided the selection of newspapers: The Protest group is represented by the Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, a regional trade and shipping newspaper with a liberal profile, published in Gothenburg and owned by a corporation of trade papers. 5 The paper’s chief editor, Torgny Segerstedt, was a well-known, outspoken critic of Nazi Germany. Dagens Nyheter, a liberal newspaper that in the 1940s was the largest in Sweden with a circulation of 210.000 copies, represents the Caution group. The paper was (and still is) owned by the Bonnier family, a Swedish family of Jewish descent who since the nineteenth century has been active in the book and publishing industry. The Adaptation group is represented by Stockholms-Tidningen, 6 a regional and national newspaper, and Aftonbladet, 7 which in this period was a pro-German and Nazi-influenced newspaper. The German-friendly businessman Torsten Kreuger owned both newspapers. 8 Before and during the war, the editorial pages of Stockholms-Tidningen were nationalistic and strongly opposed to the Social Democrat Swedish Prime Minister, Per Albin Hansson. The editor in chief and some of its commentators had links to the Nazi movement but not as openly as Aftonbladet. Both newspapers cooperated with the German legation in Stockholm during the war. However, Aftonbladet was more outspoken about its pro-Nazi policy and its editorial organisation had to go through a de-Nazifying process after the war (Sandlund 2001, 354–360).

Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and of course Stockholms-Tidningen were all published in Stockholm, but also reached a public beyond the capital of Sweden. Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning was published in Sweden’s second big city Gothenburg, and had readers in the region of western Sweden.

Without systematically reviewing all of the Swedish daily newspapers during the 1930s and the 1940s, I think it is fair to state that a minority of them belonged to the Protest category, and most of these papers also had a fairly small total circulation. Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, which grew in circulation during the war years, was the most renowned paper in this group. The largest group of newspapers can probably be included in the Caution category, a group most typical of the bystander position and a driving force in accepting and thereby normalising a situation with limited press freedom. The German-friendly newspapers with anti-Semitic sympathies constituted a small but not insignificant group. It may be added that the categorisation does not follow a newspaper’s party affiliation in any given way (see Leth 2005).

In the first study covering the 1933–1945 period, the first page of each of the four selected newspapers’ issue every three days and the entire newspapers’ issues every six days were read. Relevant pages were copied from the archives of the National Library of Sweden. The selection (of in total 1383 articles) can be considered sufficiently comprehensive to provide a largely representative picture of how the persecution of the Jews was depicted in the four newspapers. All articles that contained the word jude* (Jew) in all its compositions and the word anti-Semitism were selected for the analysis. Articles about literature, theatre and sports could therefore also become part of the sample. This was motivated by the ability to analyse the discourse about Jews and Jewishness in texts from the whole spectra of areas covered by the press at the time. Texts that dealt with flyktningar (refugees) were also examined since the newspapers could write about German, as well as Norwegian and Danish refugees, without stating that they were Jewish refugees. A few such texts have been included in the sample when the context confirmed or indicated that they were about Jews.

The second study concerned Dagens Nyheter’s news and opinion coverage of concentration camps in Germany, German-allied countries and German-occupied countries in the period from 1938 to the end of May 1945. This study was based on a search in the digital archives of Dagens Nyheter. The main search word was koncentrationsläger*, supplied by a list (12) of specific concentration camp names in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia that possibly could have been used by Swedish newspapers. Two other search words, likfabrik* (corpse factory) and gaskammare* (gas chamber), were also used. 9 Every article that was found through this search was read to judge its relevance. Only reports of concentration camps connected with Nazi Germany were coded for this study.

Jews in the news

Figure 1 shows the results of the number of texts about Jews and Jewish questions, including news, features and opinion material, as well as the newspapers’ priorities concerning front-page news about Jews over the period 1933-1945. These news texts dealt with a variety of themes, such as foreign policy issues (Jewish immigration and emigration), developments in Palestine (the problems of the British mandate, Jews and Arabs in conflict), Jewish culture (theatre, literature and music), Norwegian and Danish Jewish refugees, Swedish heroes rescuing Jews, anti-Semitic legislation and concentration camps. 10

Figure 1 Articles about Jews and Jewish Questions in four leading Swedish newspapers, 1933–45. Yearly distribution of a total of 1383 articles.

Display full size

The proportion that specifically dealt with anti-Semitic persecution, concentration camps and the mass extermination and its consequences constituted around one-third of all texts. Three of the newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning and Stockholms-Tidningen, had coverage on around the same level, while Aftonbladet – the Hitler-sympathetic newspaper, had significantly less frequent articles. The newspapers’ priorities concerning front-page news about Jews basically followed the same pattern. The two newspapers belonging to the Adaptation group obviously paid the least attention to news about Jews.

The four newspapers represented different attitudes towards the fate of the Jews, attitudes that also varied over time. However, there was also a common pattern. During the 1930s, all of the papers reported on the various persecutions, legislative initiatives and the terror that Nazi Germany was directing at the country’s Jewish population. It reached a new height in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht in Germany. Nonetheless, during these years with news about persecutions, there was little critique of and opposition to Sweden’s restrictive refugee policy 11 , especially concerning Jewish refugees. According to a secret circular from the Foreigner’s Bureau sent to passport officials on 27 October 1938, a person with an Austrian or a German passport with a red J-stamp on page 1 should be regarded as an immigrant and refused entry if the person had no resident permit or border recommendation. 12 A depressing part of this story is the fact that the J-stamp in the passports held by Jews was introduced by Germany after proposals from the Swedish and the Swiss governments. Both countries wanted to restrict refugee immigration and suggested that Jews from Germany should receive separate passports (Kvist Geverts 2008).

If we look at the distribution of the texts in different years, another result becomes visible. The coverage was relatively high in 1933, the year the Hitler regime came to power, but subsequently declined, and then 1938, the year of the Crystal Night, represented a new peak of interest. 13

Attention diminished significantly during the years of the outbreak of the war, reaching its absolute bottom in 1940. In 1941, when the persecution of the Jews started developing into mass extermination and the outcome of the war was highly uncertain, the issue was not prioritised. The silence of the press at this time is quite remarkable. Here, we can clearly see the traces of Swedish information control and self-censorship.

Holocaust in the Swedish press

When the Norwegian Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps in the autumn of 1942, and the Danish Jews fled across the Øresund to Sweden in the following year, the reporting changed its character once again. It is easy to observe a strong engagement in the newspaper reporting regarding what was happening to Sweden’s Nordic neighbours. Nonetheless, this should not be confused with a generally increased and focused attention on the German policy of extermination.

However, in 1942, some of the Swedish newspaper readers became aware of reports about the persecutions and the massacres of the Jews also on a more general level. Some information about the German concentration camps and the massacres was printed but mostly as short news items. Widespread and collective publications in the Swedish newspapers, with stories on the first page and headlines that caught attention, did not occur. In a brief bulletin published on 4 December 1942, the Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning informed its readers that during the celebrations of Hanukkah at the Stockholm synagogue, Rabbi Ehrenpreis stated that the extermination campaign against the Jews in Europe had already cost the lives of two million victims. Another, very short item the same day mentioned that 21 women organisations opposed the terrible treatment of Norwegian Jews. A third short report from the newspaper’s London correspondent announced that the Nazi regime’s intention to exterminate all Jews was confirmed and verified. On 12 December 1942, two brief bulletins from the national news agency Tidningarnas telegrambyrå (TT) were published in both Aftonbladet and Stockholms-Tidningen. According to the Polish government-in-exile in London, one-third of the three million Jews in Poland had “died” during the preceding years. These reports were not treated as major news stories but brief registrations of events.

Contrary to these short news items, on 13 October 1942 Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning published a long article by the Swedish historian Hugo Valentin about what he named “the war of extermination against the Jews” (Valentin 1942a). This was followed up on New Year’s Eve in a commentary with a new analysis, titled “Världshistoriens största judepogrom” (“The Biggest Pogrom of Jews in History”). Its starting point was a reference to a 17 December meeting in the House of Commons in the British parliament where Anthony Eden recited a declaration signed by the governments of the UK, the US and several other countries, stating that Germany had started to carry out its plan to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe, including through mass executions. It was a very well-formulated analysis of how the ideology of Anti-Semitism was used by Hitler and the Nazis to gain power and expand their territory. By awakening the slumbering hatred of Jews in different countries, Germany aimed and hoped to win influential groups in every country for Hitlerism. “Once the will to hate is provoked, the most grotesque tales and conclusions will be accepted, only hatred is bred” (Valentin 1942b, 3).

However, the insights in this article represented an exception and a contrast to how the same information was treated in other and leading parts of the Swedish press. One of the early, important international sources documenting the German annihilation of the Jews and other victims in the concentration camps was the report, The German New Order in Poland, published in England in 1942 by the Polish government-in-exile’s information department (Polish Ministry of Information 1942b). In the US, the book was published the same year with the title The Black Book of Poland (Polish Ministry of Information 1942a). In Sweden, the report was mentioned in a few newspapers, one of them being the small, anti-Nazi weekly Trots Allt! [Despite all!]. The paper also quickly published a short extract of the text, but the Swedish authorities immediately confiscated the publication. The editor of the weekly, Ture Nerman, responded by translating and publishing the whole report in November 1942, with the title Polens martyrium [The Martyrdom of Poland]. It was confiscated by Swedish authorities without trial, and the same procedure was repeated when Trots Allt! published new and revised editions of the report in February 1943 and September 1943. In an advertisement in Dagens Nyheter on 25 September 1943, p. 3, some days before the last edition would be released, the publisher wrote:

The publication of this book is not a violation of Swedish law. Knowing the truth and concealing it is, on the other hand, criminal. “The Martyrdom of Poland” is an appeal to the conscience of the civilized world. And Sweden still claims to be part of the civilized world.

Table 1 shows the frequency of the articles in Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper with the highest circulation and readership, mentioning Germany-related concentration camps in the period from 1938 to the end of May 1945. The pattern was the same as the one we have observed in the general coverage of the Jews. After the Kristallnacht in 1938, the number of mentions about Jewish persecution decreased and remained relatively low until it started to increase in 1942–1943.

Table 1. Mentions in Dagens Nyheter of concentration camps (situated in Germany and in countries occupied by or allied with Germany), 1938–31 May 1945.

As the Holocaust escalated, the Swedish press fell silent: media and the normalisation of passivity and non-engagement in WWII Sweden

Ester Pollack
https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2020.1766195

PUBLISHED ONLINE: 26 May 2020

Table 1 of 1
Table 1. Mentions in Dagens Nyheter of concentration camps (situated in Germany and in countries occupied by or allied with Germany), 1938–31 May 1945.
Year Camps in Germany and other countries outside Scandinavia Camps in Norway Camps in Denmark Total
1938 76 – – 76
1939 46 – – 46
1940 19 1 1 21
1941 35 21 – 56
1942 19 50 – 69
1943 41 58 9 108
1944 75 46 37 158
1945 96 45 34 175
All years 407 221 81 709

Until 1945, the majority of these reports were about concentration camps located in Norway and Denmark, representing the same news priorities as discussed above, partly relating to their closeness, geographically and culturally. It was easier to obtain reliable news reports from nearby sources. Large groups of refugees from Norway and Denmark gave easy access to new information. The emotional impact of the Nazi persecutions of Sweden’s neighbours on the Swedish population was also strong, leading to increased reader interest. This also meant that the horrors of the large extermination camps in Central and Eastern Europe became news headlines to a very limited degree.

However, from 1944, the figures about the mass killings began to be commented on. On 1 April and 6 August 1944, Dagens Nyheter published sharp editorials about Germany’s extermination of the Jews. The newspaper also printed book reviews with documentation of mass murders in concentration camps and used the expression likfabriker (corpse factories). A news report on 12 December 1944 stated that 4000 people had been killed in a gas chamber in Alsace. On 28 January, 1945, p. 10, Dagens Nyheter printed a news item stating that Russian forces had taken control of an infamous concentration camp near Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

News reports about the concentration camps were frequent at this stage of the war, but headlines and information about the systematic massacres in the camps, even at this stage, near the end of the war, were limited in Dagens Nyheter. However, in repeated advertisements for new films, the readers received information about “a sensational Russian documentary” that was being shown at a Stockholm cinema in April 1945. The title was The March against Berlin, and the film revealed “the corpse factories in Maidanek,” one of the German extermination camps. A review of the film in Dagens Nyheter on 11 April, p. 12, read:

… This is a reportage from the so-called corpse factories in Majdanek, where according to reports, 1.380.000 human beings have been put to death. Among them thousands of children between 3–10 years old. An endless amount of piles with shoes and toys talk silently to us, more eloquent than ever the mountains of bones found around the site of the camp.

In late April and May 1945, such cinema advertisements about the horrors of the camps were frequently published in Dagens Nyheter and remind us of that other channels of information and documentation about the consequences of the Nazi policy against the Jews now became accessible for a wider public.

Adaptation to the fortune of the war, fragmented information – and silence

How did the Swedish press report about Nazi Germany’s policy against the Jews? Was the mass murder of Jews and others effectively and purposefully silenced by the wide sections of the Swedish press, thus normalising the Swedish bystander position of not opposing or taking actions against the Nazi crimes?

Concerning the general tendencies in the reporting, the results of the two presented studies showed that the coverage varied in different years and periods, with the reports about the Crystal Night representing a peak of the news interest in the 1930s. However, after the outbreak of World War II – when the German strategy for the extermination of the Jews was planned and gradually executed – the Swedish press fell silent for nearly three years. The few voices that tried to follow another line were supressed by different types of government sanctions. The omission of news that could anger the German Nazi authorities became the new normal, symbolically annihilating most of the horrifying reports about the massacre of the Jews from the news.

However, the results show that news priorities about geographically and culturally closeness mattered; as events crept in close to Sweden, the press interest increased significantly. Some news items about the mass murder and the extermination of the Jews were printed as early as autumn 1942, but the information was at the same time sparse and limited. This result can thus be said to substantiate the thesis that the press adapted to the turmoil of the war and that the newspapers had priority of the news that rewarded events in Sweden’s immediate vicinity. In the last stage of the war and in the months after it ended, articles were successively published on the opening of the extermination camps, on the refugees and on Sweden’s participation in various aid operations, including those involving the so-called White Buses. 14

What kind of information reached the Swedish citizens? Was it possible to know about the ongoing persecution of the Jews between 1941 and 1945? Information about the Nazi persecution of the Jews could undeniably be found in the news, but the reporting was fragmented and fluctuated over time. Depending on what newspaper the people read, their possibility to be well informed would differ. My results confirm a fragmentation and scarcity of analyses in the news reporting. At the same time, an attentive and engaged reader, willing to search for news from different sources, had the possibility to be well informed. This also meant that the political elite certainly had access to information about the development of the Jewish genocide, but the government’s general press policy was that this should not be actively disseminated and broadcasted to a mass audience.

Koblik’s (1988) thesis about Sweden’s indifference to the fate of the Jews and the news media’s silence was applicable to certain years. The pattern of my findings clearly showed a decrease in news reporting during the years 1940–1942, when the Holocaust escalated – and the Swedish press fell silent. These were also the years when the outcome of the war was very uncertain, Sweden’s neighbouring countries were occupied by Nazi Germany, and the question of neutrality and adaptation to Germany’s demands about a friendly press was the Swedish government’s main concern. Clearly, the Swedish government’s press policy, with its prohibition on “atrocity propaganda,” had consequences. Those parts of the Swedish press that reported Nazi atrocities and the systematic persecution of the Jews suffered reprisals. The news reporting that might have provided the public with better knowledge of what was happening in the Third Reich was suppressed. Despite this, the political elite – and those who sought information from various sources – had more insights into what was going on.

In a commentary in Dagens Nyheter 4 April 1945, “The Corpse Factory as a Symbol” the historian Hugo Valentin wrote:

recomended by: Leon Rozenbaum
The fact that the Swedish population did not understand the significance of the fight against the swastika, was only natural as long as the Bureau of Information did not allow a free debate. The public was misled by the forced omission to make mention of German cruelties. Thereby sections of our nation obtained a truly unrealistic picture of both the means, aims and consequences of Nazism.

We should be careful not to confuse the fact that something has been mentioned in a brief news item or a commentary with it having received sufficient attention to become part of the public debate and a country’s collective consciousness. In the political landscape of neutral wartime Sweden, the space for truthful reporting was limited. A normalisation of “not knowing” and a bystander’s position were constructed, both through government control and self-censorship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Ester Pollack , PhD, is a Professor of Journalism Studies, Stockholm University. Her research concerns historical and critical studies of journalism’s different roles in society, and its importance to democracy. She has analysed the interaction between Swedish crime policy and criminal journalism, the reporting on the Holocaust in Sweden, Swedish news reporting about the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the development of journalism on political scandals in the Nordic countries and the importance of source verification and fact checking in times of disinformation and propaganda.

Notes

1 The historical information in this section is essentially based on a synthesis of recent research about Sweden’s relation to Nazi Germany, conducted by the historian Klas Åmark, summing up a comprehensive research programme about “Sweden’s relationship with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust” (Åmark [2011] 2016).

2 Germany was mobilising for an attack against the Soviet Union. The Swedish military leadership, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs knew about the plan because the Swedish intelligence service had cracked the code for the telegram traffic that went through Sweden. However, the majority of the government members, including the Defence Minister, were not informed (Åmark [2011] 2016, 116–117).

3 Kvist Geverts has used the metaphor of anti-Semitism as a background bustle to explain the paradoxical situation in Sweden where “bureaucrats and politicians could express moderate anti-Semitic perceptions and, at the same time, explicitly and clearly distance themselves from antisemitism … ” (2008, 291).

4 This study was conducted within the research programme Sweden’s relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, financed by the Swedish Research Council and led by Professor Klas Åmark.

5 Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning went into bankruptcy in 1973. Different attempts to restart the paper have been made, but none has been successful.

6 Stockholms-Tidningen was the leading morning paper in Sweden in the first decades of the 20th century, until Dagens Nyheter took over this position. From 1937, it was owned by Torsten Kreuger, but it was sold to the National Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) in 1956. In 1966, due to severe economic problems, the newspaper was closed.

7 Aftonbladet was founded by Lars Johan Hierta in 1830. Initially it was a liberal paper, later shifting to other ideological positions. In 1956, similar to Stockholms-Tidningen, it was sold to the LO. In the last part of the 20th century, it was developed successfully into a modern, popular tabloid. After the millennium this was followed up online, and Aftonbladet is today Sweden’s leading media house in terms of readership. The major and controlling owner is the Norwegian listed media company Schibsted, but the LO is still a minority owner, and the editorial comment pages are edited with a social democratic profile.

8 Torstein Kreuger was the brother of Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish industrialist, investor and swindler whose international financial empire collapsed in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

9 The first time the word likfabrik was used was on 18 April 1944, in a review of a book by the pseudonym Stefan Tadeusz Norwid. 1944. Landet utan Quisling (The country without Quisling) (Norwid 1944).

10 Here, the space is not enough for a close reading and a text analysis of my material; this will be the theme of a forthcoming publication.

11 See, for example, Byström 2006, 2008; Kvist Geverts 2008.

12 “Hemligt circulär till samtliga passkontroller” [“Secret circular to all passport controls”], 27 October 1938; referred to in Byström and Kvist Geverts 2007, 156–157.

13 As Leth (2005) shows in his analysis about the Crystal Night in Swedish dailies, they did not represent a unanimous protest against the Nazi persecutions. Only a few newspapers belonging to the Protest group gave voice to the Jews as sources and actors and openly criticised Germany. Overall, Leth concludes that the reporting over time contributed to indifference about the fate of the Jews.

14 This was a rescue action during the last month of the war, organised by the Swedish Red Cross under the responsibility of the Swedish government. Around 20,000 people from concentration camps were brought to Sweden, with the main aim to repatriate imprisoned Scandinavians. Jews were also among them, but their number is uncertain. This initiative has become part of a heroic storytelling about Sweden’s response to wartime cruelties but has also drawn critiques for wrongfully giving the impression of a rescue aimed at saving surviving Jews from the concentration camps (Lomfors 2005).

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