| dc.description.abstract | The following years after polish independence was followed by a series of anti-Jewish violence in Poland and increased hostility to jews. With the polish soldiers expansion of Poland’s border to the east, the Jews in cities like Lviv, Vilnius, Lida, Pinsk and many more experienced outbreaks of violence directed against them by the polish soldiers and settlements in different cities. My research question is the following: How was outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence, or pogroms, in Poland and polish-occupied territories between 1918–1920 portrayed in Norwegian and Danish newspapers? I analyze news-text from the four major Copenhagen- newspapers Berlingske Tidende, Nationaltidende, Social-Demokraten and Politiken. The Norwegian newspapers included in this research project are Aftenposten, Morgenbladet, Social-Demokraten, Arbeidet and Dagsposten. I emphasize that descriptive words used in the retelling of events, the construction of sentences and naming of events, perpetrators and victims are crucial in the construction of different narratives. In this thesis I conclude that the pogroms in Lviv in November 1918 invoked a corpus of protests against pogrom violence and anti-Polish sentiment in Denmark and Norway. However, in the aftermath of these events and in the following years after the November attacks, conflicting narratives also appeared in the news. The construction of different narratives was facilitated by the foreign telegraphic bureaus, mainly Wolffs’ telegraphic agency, and by statements of Polish officials and by news from the Polish press agency. But difference of opinion on what exactly constituted pogrom-violence and different naming of the violent attacks also played a decisive part in the construction of conflicting narratives. By looking at reader’s letters appearing in some of the Danish and Norwegian newspapers I identify two “camps” construing conflicting narratives in the Norwegian and Danish newspapers. Representatives of the “polish side” were either of polish origin or decent, or catholic. I argue that they were largely in line with the “official story” regarding the accusations against Poland that pogrom-violence had occurred. Scandinavian Jewish representatives were the accusers against Poland, but they too retold different stories of the how, why and when pogrom violence had occurred. In my analysis I also conclude that most debate regarding news of anti-Jewish violence and pogroms against Jews in Poland in Danish and Norwegian newspapers was in the year 1918, declining in 1919 and then in 1920 being mostly absent, though pogroms and other forms of anti-Jewish violence appeared in these two years as well. | |
