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Narratives of Innocence and Victimhood: The Reception of the Miniseries Holocaust in Italy
- Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 22, Number 3, Winter 2008
- pp. 411-440
- Article
- Additional Information
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In Italy, the heavy politicization of public discourse, together with dominant cultural narratives positing the country as a "victim" nation in the Second World War, influenced the reception of NBC's miniseries Holocaust. These influences revealed themselves in three main trends: the discussion of the country's involvement in the Holocaust in highly self-acquitting terms that perpetuated a variant of the "good Italian" stereotype; the peculiar domestication of the debate on the "Americanization of the Holocaust"; and the substantially uncontested circulation of various universalizations in the discussion of the program's "meanings."