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This two-part documentary series uncovers the ambiguous response to the Holocaust of the Jewish community in Palestine. The new Jewish state's disturbing attitude to Holocaust survivors is explored in depth. Tom Segev's book The seventh million, on which the film is based, shows that survivors were despised in a society glorifying heroism and the creation of a 'New Jew'. Above all, the series casts light on the central trauma of Israeli society and the part it plays in Israeli identity, culture and politics, as well as the political manipulation of this trauma.
Tom Segev is a prominent Israeli historian and journalist. In his monograph, The seventh million, a controversial and powerful work, he exposes the dominant internal mechanisms of Israeli society. The 'seventh million' of the title refers to the ambiguous web of relationships linking Israel's Jews to the six million Jews murdered in Europe during the Second World War. Drawing on thousands of pages of de-classified documents, as well as on diaries and interviews, Tom Segev tells the dramatic story of how the "Yishuv" - the Jewish community of pre-Israel Palestine - failed to confront the rise of Nazi Germany, the events of the Second World War and their aftermath.
The documentary series charts the process that turned the Holocaust into Israel's national secular religion, and transformed the legacy of the Holocaust into a pervasive force within Israeli identity, culture, and politics. It examines the most sensitive and previously closed chapters of the history of the state of Israel. |
