Auschwitz Investigations

Christian Maes

Dan Vack

Alex Hendricks

New and Journalism Project

Making History in Real Time: The Reopening of Auschwitz Investigations

SCPR

50-some odd years ago Nazi-Germany fell, and with that came the end of the dreaded concentration camps. Horrifying compounds where Nazis corralled many thousands of people, a majority of these people being Jews. Jews were seen as impure, had to be quarantined, and most of them, executed. This is the most well known genocide and had such a huge impact on the 20th century.

Nowadays the German government is reopening cases of suspected war criminals in the hopes of being able to prosecute and convict Nazi guards and officials. For my media outlet, I found a webpage for Southern California Public Radio, 89.3 KPCC, which brought this topic up on the air on October 18, 2011 and posted an article to their page. The image below was posted alongside the article and shows a Jewish family walking through Auschwitz, the most well known and feared Nazi concentration camp that was located within Poland. Also below, I included the link to the audio clip of the airtime they devoted to this topic. This was a 323 word article that may have been seen by a very broad audience as KPCC is followed by 9,324 people on Twitter and liked by 14,398 people on Facebook. This article was Tweeted 5 times and, within the first week that the article was posted, received 30 comments on their webpage. Several of these comments were posted during the time while they were talking on the air as the radio host read them to help continue the airtime they spent on this topic. Several of these comments were very strongly worded and opinionated as this is clearly still a very sensitive topic for many people. One commenter states herself as German born and is in the majority of opinion for the comments in that she believed that this is the absolute right action and that the “Nazis should be brought to justice.” This was most definitely the majority of the comment’s opinions, although there were a few comments that felt we should just let the past be past.

Also posted on the webpage was the 16 minute audio clip of the conversation the radio host had with David Rising, The Associated Press’ German Bureau chief. Rising was the authority and main source of information for the talk. Throughout audio clip, the radio host read 3 comments that must have been posted to the webpage during their airtime and also took calls from people phoning in to give their opinion. There were 5 different people that phoned in to speak and their opinions reflected what was later shown in the comments. A few of the people commemorated the German government for going through this process and digging this information back up. However, one man also agreed with some of the comments and felt that instead of bringing all of this back to the surface we should just be trying to heal.

http://media.scpr.org/audio/upload/2011/10/18/20111018_airtalk_nazis.mp3

BBC

According to a short article (linked below) posted by BBC News (British Broadcasting Corporation), Polish authorities recently decided to reopen investigations, after being closed for around 30 years, involving the crimes that were committed at Auschwitz and a few other, smaller camps during the Holocaust. This article has over 180 facebook references and over 27 tweets on twitter, showing that it is a popular news source on social networking. The investigations were closed by Poland in the 1980s with no explanation; the camps were previously open for investigation in the 60s and 70s. The head international “Nazi hunter”, Efraim Zuroff, was enthused when the news about the death camp investigations were going to be reopend once again.

The main goal for the continued investigation of these crimes is to track down some of the Nazi war criminals that are still around today, and to serve justice to those who remain. This goal seems to very difficult considering the fact that the war ended over 65 years ago (in 1945), and that the Nazis in charge must have been over 20 years old at the time; this means that if there are some war criminals left today, they would most likely be around or over 90 years of age if they are still living. Even if something did come up from this investigation within a timely matter, serving justice to the few that remain seems to be nearly impossible.

There was an estimated death toll of ten to eleven million people that were killed in the camps, almost six million of which were Jewish. Looking at the outrageous numbers of the murders committed during World War Two (WWII), out of the six million Jews that were targeted in this genocide, one million had their lives ended at the infamous Auschwitz camp. These unspeakable crimes are to be reinvestigated by The Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes; the decision to once again allow the crimes to be examined was determined by the institute's branch at Krakow, near the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The most recent conviction was in 2001; when Henryk Mania, a Pole, was sentenced to eight years in prison for being a part of the genocide acts in the Chelmno concentraion/extermination camp.

BBC News did not seem to have strong knowledge on what the investigations are aiming towards. They did not even know which camps other than Auschwitz were being looked into for the crimes; some of the possible death camps that they mentioned included:Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzec.

Overall, there was not a whole lot of information about what the investigations are trying to accomplish, especially with the crimes at Auschwitz happening around 70 years ago. There is a fair amount of lost ground to cover over the many years that the investigations were disallowed by the Polish government. Also, there is a definite time crunch for the investigations which would seemingly take quite a while when considering what needs to be investigated and how long the Nazi war criminals will still be around for at their old ages.

The brief article (334 words) written by BBC News on the investigation of the crimes committed at Auschwitz extermination camp was composed in a manner of using several concise paragraphs and statements in order to get the information across, instead of using more text and detail about the topic. The article in general did not offer sufficient amount of insight or knowledge on what is to be done with the investigations; they provided some background information on what happened involving the camp, but mainly just vague details about what is to come of this investigation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15486472

http://world-news.newsvine.com/_news/2011/10/27/8510844-investigation-into-auschwitz-crimes-reopened#comments

MSNBC

The re-opening of Auschwitz for criminal investigations warranted a short article on MSNBC’s news page, under the “World – Europe” category. The web page is well trafficed, with 23 Facebook recommendations, 4 related tweets, and a little over 200 comments in discussion (although many posts are by recurring individuals). The article is about 500 words, and originally comes from the Associated Press - an international news corporation whose page seems less cluttered by advertisements than MSNBC’s.

Boasting over 25 advertisements, the page glows with product and service suggestions – none of which remotely relate to the article at hand. The type of advertisements included delicious baking recipes, cheap luxury cruise tickets, and tips on how to reduce the age of your face in less than 14 days. While browsing through the list of links (and resisting the urge to buy $40 iPads) I began to apply Chomsky’s train of thought to the media page, beginning with how the target market and advertisements are related.

Judging from the money based advertisements; I was lead to believe the target audience consisted mostly of middle class citizens in the United States. As the middle class is relatively new (being brought into existence after World War II), the majority of the audience selected have very little, if any, connection to the Holocaust and prosecution of post Nazis. Subsequently, this results in somewhat of a negative attitude directed towards officials seeking justice against Nazi war criminals. A slight majority of those leaving comments would rather see the investigations cease, suggesting in some cases, to “give it a rest.” This demonstrates who’s in control – people with no connection to the Holocaust (assuming those connected would favor diverting resources to the prosecution of war criminals).

In addition to the website’s advertisements aiming for middle class individuals, the article presented on the page is written in a way to suggest that the prosecution of WWII war criminals is fruitless. This also displays the news corporation’s dedication to companies and individuals who have become disconnected from atrocities of the past – or rather, its submission. The author brings up the fact that “Poland is the country with the most ongoing investigations into Nazi crimes, but that these almost never result in prosecutions,” and “German authorities have since reopened hundreds of dormant investigations of Nazi death camp guards — men who are now so old that time is running out for prosecutors.” Had the author and/or news corporation favored the ongoing battle to bring justice upon war criminals, the article may have been written in a way to show support for victims of the Holocaust, or omitted the Polish and German government’s failures and difficulties.

In conclusion, MSNBC appears to be a news corporation controlled by the interests of advertising firms and the middle class individuals to whom they sell their products. By reading history and applying it to today’s issues using ideas such as Chomsky’s theory on manufacturing consent, we can discover how background players are able to twist the ‘news’ in order to benefit themselves. In the case of MSNBC’s article on the reopening of Auschwitz and Birkenau, advertising agencies have shaped the web page and article in a manner to attract their target demographic.

COMPARISON

We focused our comparison between the three web pages by identifying the underlying message sent by the author, and relating it to how background forces affect the news station. Each case has different, although similar, background forces compelling the news station to ‘take a side’ in order to be successful. We started our comparison by discerning the demographic each news station was attempting to attract, and how it affected the general opinion of the page.

MSNBC is a dominant news corporation based in the United States, with ties to large companies, such as General Electric and Microsoft. By digging through the advertisements and applying Chomsky’s theory on manufacturing consent, we decided that MSNBC’s main audience is the middle class – which has implications discussed in the analysis of MSNBC. This results in somewhat of a negative attitude directed towards the developing story – which is very apparent when looking at the comments (the majority of which would rather see the investigations cease). The Southern California Public Radio page however, has a more positive outlook on the situation.

Although SCPR had a few comments agreeing with MSNBC, that these prosecutions should just be put to rest, the SCPR article is written in a way that puts these prosecutions in a good light as do the comments given. SCPR credits the painstaking work the German government is doing in trying to tract down what happened and who was responsible. In general, people that commented on the page and the ones who called in during the radio broad cast agreed that this is something that should be done no matter how hard it will be. These people were not ignorant either, recognizing that these prosecutions might not find anything or put many people on trial, as BBC pointed out that these perpetrators, if still alive, will be pushing at least 90 years of age.

BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, is the largest broadcaster in the world, and it has a high profile known around the world. It covers not only news throughout Europe, but around the world. The article, “Auschwitz crimes to be reinvestigated by Poland” does not appear to be one sided when looking at the aspects of being positive or negative, or when looking at political views (conservative verses liberal). They have a neutral stand point that simply gives a small portion of background information about previous cases that were dealt with years back. They also include some approximated facts about how the investigation was closed down in the 1980s. The article never seems to state any certain stand point on whether or not reopening the investigations at the extermination camps like Auschwitz will even be beneficial or not. Being such a large and well known news source around the globe, BBC has plenty of advertisement surrounding their articles on the webpage. The advertisements consists of various ads mainly focusing on keeping your body looking good, life insurance, and credit cards. Based upon these ads, one can conclude that the intended audience for similar articles would be middle to upper aged adults who most likely would be concerned about their bodies as they are aging, along with keeping on top of their fiances. BBC must be able to reach and relate all types of people; these ads do a great job of attracting attention from many adults that would look into an article like this.

These new Nazi war criminal investigations have brought up a variety of responses from the public worldwide. Different news stations are also putting forth very different views on what is going on and whether or not it should even be happening. These different news stations have therefore brought about an extremely differing variety of responses from its followers. This perfectly displays how easily our society can be influenced by what we see and hear in the media.