‘Remember Without Hate’: The Holocaust as European Memory in 1960s’ Italian Television

Abstract

This article discusses a small cluster of documentary programmes that aired in the first half of the 1960s and representing Italian TV’s earliest forms of engagement with Holocaust-related topics. Within this small corpus, particular attention will be given to two documentary programmes broadcast by Italian State-owned network RAI in 1965. The documentaries Europa per la libertà (Europe for Liberty) and Il giorno della pace (The Day of Peace) represent some of Italian television’s earliest forms of engagement with the issue of how to remember the Holocaust. Moreover, these discussions of Holocaust memory were framed in terms in which national and transnational dimensions coexisted. However, this emphasis on supranational memory was not at odds with domestic needs, as it was ultimately consistent with established Italian national narratives about the war and the country’s role in it.