Abstract
A burgeoning scholarly literature is concerned with the relations between memory, justice, the law and history. The record of state-sponsored atrocity has been at the forefront of this wave of inquiry, and within that the genocide of the Jews in particular. Yet the focus on the legal reckoning with the Holocaust seems to spring from slightly different origins from that on other mass human rights abuses or ‘administrative massacres’.1 In the latter cases, the emphasis is more on the nature of ‘transitional justice’, the shift from discriminatory, generally authoritarian rule to pluralist regime. Legal or quasi-legal proceedings, including truth commissions, have been examined more for their function in restoring or unifying civil society within the borders in which they occur, and thus their importance is defined firmly in terms of time and space.2 Though the first great prosecution of Nazis at Nuremberg was arguably equally an example of transitional justice, it was also much more than that, and subsequent ‘trials of the Holocaust’ have been much further chronologically and conceptually removed from the immediate desiderata of post-war purging and ‘re-education’. In studies of the trials of the Holocaust, ‘memory’ and ‘justice’ have tended to be esteemed more for their own sake, often in abstract senses, than for their immediate reintegrative value. This is due primarily to the latter-day rise to iconic status of the Holocaust and the interest around it in all matters representational.
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Notes
M. Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory and the Law (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1997).
For a cross-section of some of the best literature on ‘transitional justice’, see R.I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Osiel, Mass Atrocity; L. Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
A. Riickerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht (Heidelberg: CF Miiller, 1982), pp. 102–4.
H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); M. Fabreguet, ‘Frankreichs Historiker und der VOlkermord an den Juden 1945–1993’, in Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust: Europa — USA — Israel, ed. R. Steininger (Cologne: Bdhlau, 1994), pp. 317–28.
See I. Deak, J.T. Gross and T. Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
P.D. Jones, ‘British Policy towards German Crimes against German Jews, 1939–45’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 36 (1991), 339–66.
United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1947), p. 93.
P.D. Jones, ‘Nazi Atrocities against Allied Airmen: Stalag Luft III and the End of British War Crimes Trials’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 543–65.
A. RUckerl, NS-Vemichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Munich: DTV, 1977), pp. 331–46. Two later trials, in 1948 and 1949, also examined the operations of Chelmno.
H. Grabitz, Tdter und Gehilfen des Endlosungswahns: Hamburger Verfahren wegen NS-Gewaltverbrechen 1946–1996 (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1999), p. 11; also Ruckerl, NSVerbrechen vor Gericht, p. 122, on trials of Sobibor personnel.
On the development of the reaction to the American trials, see F. Buscher, The US War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946–1955 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).
For edited transcripts of the ‘Belsen trial’, see R. Phillips, ed., The Trial of Josef Kramer and Forty-Four Others (London: William Hodge, 1949); for analysis, Bloxham, Genocide on Trial, pp. 97–101.
Bloxham, Genocide on Trial, chapters 1–3; contrary views about the effectiveness of the Nuremberg trial in informing about the Holocaust are held in M. Marrus, ‘The Holocaust at Nuremberg’, Yad Vashem Studies, 26 (1998), 5–41; J. Wilke etal., Holocaust und NS-Prozesse (Cologne: BOhlau, 1995); J. Wilke, ‘Ein friiher Beginn der “Vergangenheitsbewaltigung”: der Nurnbeger Prozess und wie daruber berichtet wurde’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15 November 1995); and, with more nuance, Douglas, The Memory of Judgment, part one. For analysis of the idea of ‘crimes against peace’ as the supreme crime, see J.A. Bush, “‘The Supreme … Crime” and its Origins: The Lost Legislative History of the Crime of Aggressive War’, Columbia Law Review, 12 (2002), 2324–423.
On ‘liberal universalism’ during the war, see T. Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
N. Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfdnge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1996); R.G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Grabitz, Tdter und Gehilfen, p. 9; Bloxham, Genocide on Trial, chapter 4.
Generally, see M. Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999); on the use of trials to this end by the Soviets and the DDR, see I. Eschebach, ‘NS-Prozesse in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone und der DDR. Einige Uberlegungen zu der Strafverfahrensakten ehemaliger SS-Aufseherinnen des Frauenkonzentrationslagers Ravensbruck’, in Die fi uhen Nachkriegsprozesse: Beitrage zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland, Heft 3 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1997), pp. 65–74, here p. 72.
M. Overesch, Buchenwald und die DDR (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1995); Fulbrook, German National Identity, pp. 28–35.
E. Goldhagen, ‘Der Holocaust in der sowjetischen Propaganda und Geschichtsschreibung’, Vierteljahrshefte fiir Zeitgeschichte, 28 (1980), 502–7; RJ.B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War, 1945–1990 (London: Routledge, 1991).
Or perhaps because they did not wish to embrace the evidence of the murderous potential of modern occidental culture as illuminated in Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (New York: Cornell University Press, 1992).
D.C. Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Bloxham, Genocide on Trial, chapter 4; for the Nuremberg evidence on Wehrmacht criminality, J. Perels, ‘VerpaRte Chancen: Zur Bedeutung der Nurnberger Nachfolgeprozesse vor dem Hintergrund der ungeniigenden Strafverfolgung von NS-Tatern in der BRD’, in Die fruhen Nachkriegsprozesse, pp. 30–7, here p. 32; B. Boll, ‘Wehrmacht vor Gericht’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 24 (1998), 570–94.
H. Langbein, ed., Der Auschwitz-Prozess: Eine Dokumentation, 2 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Europa Verlag, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 993–1005.
R. Giordano, Die zweite Schuld oder von der Last ein Deutscher zu sein (Hamburg: Rasch und Rohrig, 1987); J. Friedrich, Die kalte Amnestie: NS-Tater in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984), for harsh critiques of German investigation and trial policy.
H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1994), p. 17; her claim is reproduced in Douglas, The Memory of Judgment, p. 174. On the background to the trials, Langbein, Der Auschwitz Prozess, vol. 1, pp. 21–34. For the most incisive analysis of that background, see R.E. Wittmann, ‘The Wheels of Justice Turn Slowly: The Pretrial Investigations of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963–65’, Central European History, 35 (2002), 345–78.
Langbein, DerAuschwitz Prozess, vol. 1, pp. 21–34 on some of the procedural/investigative problems, esp. p. 23 on the fortuitous beginning of the investigation. Wittmann, ‘The Wheels of Justice’, 345–63 for more on these problems, especially on the legal side. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 17 on Bauer. D. de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1996), p. 26 on Schule. For the problems in the system from the point of view of the later head of the Zentrale Stelle, see A. Ruckerl, ‘Staatsanwaltschaftliche Ermittlung der NS-Verbrechen — Schwierigkeiten und Ergebnisse’, in Vergangenheitsbewaltigung durch Strafverfahren?, ed. J. Weber and P. Steinbach (Munich: Olzog, 1984), pp. 71–83.
M. Broszat, ‘Siegerjustiz oder strafrechtliche Selbstreinigung: Aspekte der Vergangenheitsbewaltigung der deutschen Justiz während der Besatzungszeit’, Vierteljahrshefte fiirZeitgeschichte, 29 (1981), 477–544, here 480–1; De Mildt, In the Name of the People, pp. 30–1.
H. Hannover, ‘Vom Nurnberger Prozeβ zum Auschwitz-Prozeiβ’, in Auschwitz — ein Prozeβ, ed. U. Schneider (Cologne: PapyRossa, 1994), 67–74, here 71.
R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 640.
R. Vogel, ed., Ein Weg aus der Vergangenheit: Eine Dokumentation zur Verjahrungsfrage und zu den NS-Prozessen (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1969).
For breakdowns of types of crime and criminal prosecuted in the BRD, see R. Reiter, 30 Jahre Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Die Aktualität einer Urteilssammlung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998). For analysis, de Mildt, In the Name of the People, pp. 20–35.
R.E. Wittmann, ‘Indicting Auschwitz? The Paradox of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial’, forthcoming in German History. Also highly critical of the public reaction to the trial, see Hannah Arendt’s introduction to B. Naumann, Auschwitz. Bericht iiber die Straftache gegen Mulka u.a. vor dem SchwurgerichtFrankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1968).
A. Wieviorka, ‘La construction de la mémoire du genocide en France’, Le Monde Juif 149 (1993), 23–37, here p. 30.
Wittmann, ‘The Wheels of Justice’, pp. 367–8; G. Werle and T. Wandres, Auschwitz vor Gericht (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995), pp. 58–9.
Including particularly Sephardim, who were held to be ignorant of the Holocaust. See T. Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), p. 397.
T. Teichholz, The Trial of Ivan the Terrible: State of Israel v John Demjanjuk (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); and from the point of view of Demjanjuk’s one-time defence counsel, Y. Sheftel, Show Trial: The Conspiracy to Convict John Demjanjuk as ‘Ivan the Terrible’ (London: Gollancz, 1994).
A. Wieviorka, L’Ere du témoin (Paris: Plon, 1998), pp. 97–105.
Segev, The Seventh Million, pp. 434–6; Douglas, The Memory of Judgment, chapter 6; Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 10.
R. Paxton, Vichy France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
T. Todorov, ‘Letter from Paris: the Papon Trial’, in The Papon Affair: Memory and Justice on Trial, ed. R. Golsan (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 220.
For an overview, see S. Chalandon, Crimes contre l’humanité: Barbie, Touvier, Bousquet, Papon (Paris: Plon, 1998).
For detailed examination of the Touvier case, see R. Golsan, ed., Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs (London: University Press of New England, 1996); and L.N. Sadat, ‘The Legal Legacy of Maurice Papon’, in The Papon Affair, ed. Golsan, pp. 131–60, here pp. 132–41.
Die Zeit, 31 October 1997, reproduced in Thomas Vornbaum, ed., Vichy vor Gericht: der Papon-Prozefi. Der Strafprozef3 gegen Maurice Papon in der deutschen Presseberichterstattung 1997/98 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), pp. 76–8.
L. Greilsamer and N. Weill, ‘Maurice Papon was tried long ago in History’s Court’, in The Papon Affair, ed. Golsan, pp. 205–11, here pp. 207–8. On his refusal to testify, see H. Rousso, The Haunting Past: History, Memory, and Justice in Contemporary France, trans. Ralph Schoolcraft (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); see also Richard Evans’ discussion of Rousso in ‘History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness’, History and Theory, 41 (2002), 326–45.
C. Gerlach, ‘The Eichmann Interrogations in Holocaust Historiography’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 15 (2001), 428–52. Gerlach also illustrates how on the flip-side the context of Eichmann’s various testimonies in criminal investigations has adversely influenced their reliability.
Grabitz, Tater und Gehilfen, pp. 11, 19–20; C.R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper, 1992).
D. Bloxham, ‘Punishing German Soldiers during the Cold War: the Case of Erich von Manstein’, Patterns of Prejudice, 33, 4(1999), 25–45, here 25–6.
See the Foreword to the original German edition of Anatomie des SS-Staates reproduced in translation in H. Krausnick and M. Broszat, Anatomy of the SS State (London: Paladin, 1970), pp. 13–15.
M. Broszat and S. Friedländer, ‘A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism’, Yad Vashem Studies, 19 (1988), 1–47.
For an expansion of this point, D. Bloxham, ‘Reworking the Past in the Interests of the Present: Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Days’, Immigrants and Minorities, 21, 1& 2 (2002), 41–62. See also the essay by Moses in this volume.
Y. Lozowick, Hitler’s Bürokraten: Eichmann, seine willigen Vollstrecker, und die Banalitat des Bosen (Munich: Pendo, 2000). Cf. S. Felman, ‘Theaters of Justice: Arendt in Jerusalem, the Eichmann Trial, and the Redefinition of Legal Meaning in the Wake of the Holocaust’, Critical Inquiry, 27 (2001), 201–38.
See, for instance, the subjects of C.R. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978).
T. Todorov, ‘The Touvier Affair’, in Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice, ed. Golsan, pp. 169–78, here p. 177.
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Bloxham, D. (2004). From Streicher to Sawoniuk: the Holocaust in the Courtroom. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of the Holocaust. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524507_19
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