Mass-Observation and the Holocaust : Traces in the Margins

What did people in Britain know (or not know) about the Holocaust as it was unfolding? Did the news of what was happening to the victims of Nazi Persecution reach them? What were people’s attitudes towards antisemitism? What were the reactions of those in the streets compared to the bigger political and national responses to the War in Europe? What role might such attitudes have played in shaping our memorial practices in 21st century Britain?

As part of the Mass-Observation movement (1937- 1950s), more than 500 volunteer Mass-Observes responded to day surveys and directives and wrote diaries capturing the details of their daily lives during the Second World War. Reviving the national writing panel in 1981, the Mass Observation Project continues to collect data on the thoughts and opinions of everyday people in Britain. Investigating this material through the lens of the Holocaust, a cross-disciplinary group of scholars maps out the traces, absences and connections that point to nuanced understandings about what individuals knew before, during and after the Holocaust. Each chapter grapples with the Mass-Observation Online resource using a different methodological approach rooted in the disciplines of history, geography, digital humanities, psychology, education, anthropology, language and translation, refugee studies and archival research.

By placing the collection into conversation with other primary sources, such as newspapers, cabinet papers and testimonies, contributors to this volume look upon Mass-Observation materials anew to identify where the Holocaust is both present and absent in the lives of locals and how that speaks to the complex discourses around the Holocaust and national memory in the UK today.