A great deal of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length scholarly work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of the law; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. It provides the history of the Holocaust as a legal event, and sets out how genocide has become known as the "crime of crimes" under both international law and in popular discourse. It goes on to discuss specific post-Holocaust legal topics, and examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, which the author Michael Bazyler labels "Post-Holocaust Law."

Genocide involves significant death and trauma. Yet the enormous scope of genocide comes into view when one looks at the factors that lead to mass killing, the struggle for survival during genocide, and the ways survivors reconstruct their lives after the violence ends. Over a one hundred day period in 1994, the country of Rwanda saw the genocidal slaughter of at least 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of members of the Hutu majority government. This book is a powerful oral history of the tragedy and its aftermath from the perspective of its survivors. Based on in-depth interviews conducted over the course of fifteen years, the authors take a holistic approach by tracing how victims experienced the horrific events, as well as how they have coped with the aftermath as they struggled to resume their lives. The Rwanda genocide deserves study and documentation not only because of the failure of the Western world to intervene, but also because it raises profound questions about the ways survivors create a new life out of the ashes of all that was destroyed. How do they deal with the all-encompassing traumas of genocide? Is forgiveness possible? And what does the process of rebuilding teach us about genocide, trauma, and human life?

Uncovering the secrets behind the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, this is "a brutal, cautionary tale that serves as a painful reminder of the worst that can happen in war."—Chicago Tribune.

On August 1, 1984, a group of Polish Carmelite nuns, with the approval of both church and government authorities, but apparently without any dialogue with members of the Polish or international Jewish community, moved into a building at the site of Auschwitz I. This establishment of a Roman Catholic convent in what was once a storehouse for the poisonous Zyklon B used in the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination center has sparked intense controversy between Jews and Christians. Memory Offended is as definitive a survey of the Auschwitz convent controversy as could be hoped for. But even more important than its thorough chronological record of events pertinent to the dispute, is the book's use of this particular controversy as a departure for reflection on fundamental issues for Jews and Christians and their relationships with each other. Essays by fourteen distinguished international scholars who represent diverse viewpoints within their Jewish and Christian traditions identify, analyze, and comment on the long-range issues, questions, and implications at the heart of the controversy. A recent interview with the internationally renowned Holocaust authority and survivor, Elie Wiesel, makes an important contribution to the ongoing discussion. The volume merits careful reading by all who seek to learn the lessons this controversy can teach both Christians and Jews.

In their introduction, editors Carol Rittner and John K. Roth define the meaning of the word covenant in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. They develop a compelling argument for the notion that the Christian concept of a new covenant between God and humanity, which supposedly superseded JudaisM's old covenant, formed the basis for the centuries-old anti-Jewish contempt that led to Auschwitz--the Nazi death camp where 1.6 million human beings, mostly Jews, were exterminated. The editors contend that the existence of a convent at this site offended memory. The vital issue of what constitutes a fitting Auschwitz memorial is addressed throughout the volume's three major divisions in which important thinkers, including Robert McAfee Brown and Richard L. Rubenstein, among others, investigate The History and Politics of Memory, The Psychology of Memory, and The Theology of Memory. Important tools for researchers are a chronology of events pertinent to the Auschwitz convent controversy, 1933-1990 and an appendix that contains many key documents relating to the controversy. Memory Offended will be an important resource in university and public libraries as well as in Holocaust courses, classes on Jewish Studies, twentieth-century history, and those that focus on interreligious issues.

Though a generation has passed since the massacre of civilians at My Lai, the legacy of this tragedy continues to reverberate throughout Vietnam and the rest of the world. This engrossing study considers how Vietnamese villagers in My Lai and Ha My - a village where South Korean troops committed an equally appalling, though less well-known, massacre of unarmed civilians - assimilate the catastrophe of these mass deaths into their everyday ritual life. Based on a detailed study of local history and moral practices, "After the Massacre" focuses on the particular context of domestic life in which the Vietnamese villagers interact with their ancestors on one hand and the ghosts of tragic death on the other. Heonik Kwon explains what intimate ritual actions can tell us about the history of mass violence and the global bipolar politics that caused it. He highlights the aesthetics of Vietnamese commemorative rituals and the morality of their practical actions to liberate the spirits from their grievous history of death. The author brings these important practices into a critical dialogue with dominant sociological theories of death and symbolic transformation.

Since the Genocide against the Tutsi, when up to one million Rwandan people were brutally killed, Rwanda has undergone a remarkable period of reconstruction. Driven by a governmental programme of unity and reconciliation, the last 25 years have seen significant changes at national, community, and individual levels. This book gathers previously unpublished testimonies from individuals who lived through the genocide. These are the voices of those who experienced one of the most horrific events of the 20th Century. Yet, their stories do not simply paint a picture of lives left destroyed and damaged; they also demonstrate healing relationships, personal growth, forgiveness and reconciliation. Through the lens of positive psychology, the book presents a range of perspectives on what happened in Rwanda in 1994, and shows how people have been changed by their experience of genocide.

The Moral Witness is the first cultural history of the "witness to genocide" in the West. Carolyn J. Dean shows how the witness became a protagonist of twentieth-century moral culture by tracing the emergence of this figure in courtroom battles from the 1920s to the 1960s-covering the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian pogroms, the Soviet Gulag, and the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In these trials, witness testimonies differentiated the crime of genocide from war crimes and began to form our understanding of modern political and cultural murder. By the turn of the twentieth century, the "witness to genocide" became a pervasive icon of suffering humanity and a symbol of western moral conscience. Dean sheds new light on the recent global focus on survivors' trauma. Only by placing the moral witness in a longer historical trajectory, she demonstrates, can we understand how the stories we tell about survivor testimony have shaped both our past and contemporary moral culture.

This comprehensive treatment of post-World War II Allied war crimes trials in the Far East is a significant contribution to a neglected subject. While the Nuremberg and, to a lesser degree, Tokyo tribunals have received considerable attention, this is the first full-length assessment of the entire Far East operation, which involved some 5,700 accused and 2,200 trials. After discussing the Tokyo trial, Piccigallo systematically examines the operations of each Allied nation, documenting procedure and machinery as well as the details of actual trials (including hitherto unpublished photographs) and ending with a statistical summary of cases. This study allows a completely new assessment of the Far East proceedings: with a few exceptions, the trials were carefully and fairly conducted, the efforts of defense counsel and the elaborate review procedures being especially noteworthy. Piccigallo's approach to this emotion-filled subject is straightforward and evenhanded throughout. He concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of such war crimes trials, a matter of interest to the general reader as well as to specialists in history, law, and international affairs.

In The Experiential Ontology of Hannah Arendt, Kim Maslin examines Hannah Arendt's political philosophy through a Heideggerian framework. Maslin argues that not only did Arendt grew beyond the role of naive and beguiled student, but she became one of Heidegger's most astute critics. Well acquainted with and deeply respectful of his contributions to existential philosophy, Arendt viewed Heidegger's work as both profoundly insightful and extraordinarily myopic. Not contented to simply offer a critique of her mentor's work, Arendt engaged in a lifelong struggle to come to terms with the collective implications of fundamental ontology. Maslin argues that Arendt shifted to political philosophy less to escape her own disappointment at Heidegger's personal betrayal, but rather as an attempt to right the collective flaws of fundamental ontology. Her project offers a politically responsive, hence responsible, modification of Heidegger's fundamental ontology. She suggests that Heidegger's allegedly descriptive and non-normative insight into the nature of being is necessarily incomplete, and potentially irresponsible, unless it is undertaken in a manner which is mindful of the collective implications. As such, Maslin shows how Arendt attempts to construct an experiential ontology that transforms Heidegger's fundamental ontology for use in the public sphere.

Following times of great conflict and tragedy, many countries implement programs and policies of transitional justice, none more extensive than in post-genocide Rwanda. Placing Rwanda's transitional justice initiatives in their historical and political context, this book examines the project undertaken by the post-genocide government to shape the collective memory of the Rwandan population, both through political and judicial reforms but also in public commemorations and memorials. Drawing on over two decades of field research in Rwanda, Longman uses surveys and comparative local case studies to explore Rwanda's response both at a governmental and local level. He argues that despite good intentions and important innovations, Rwanda's authoritarian political context has hindered the ability of transnational justice to bring the radical social and political transformations that its advocates hoped. Moreover, it continues to heighten the political and economic inequalities that underline ethnic divisions and are an important ongoing barrier to reconciliation.

The war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century saw unspeakable acts of violence committed against defenceless civilians, including a macabre night of mass murder at Ovcara pig farm in 1991. An international tribunal was set up to try the perpetrators of crimes such as these, and one of the accused was Slavko Dokmanovic, who at the time was the mayor of the local town. Vladimir Dzuro, a criminal detective from Prague, was one of the investigators charged with finding out what happened leading up to and during that horrific night. The story Dzuro presents here, drawn from his daily notes, is hard reading. The incidents are not for the fainthearted. It was a time of torture, random killings and innocent people who had gone missing. But as a detective, it wasn't his job to pass judgment but rather to establish the facts and find those responsible. He provides a gripping account of how he and a handful of other investigators picked up the barest of leads, which eventually led them to locate the gravesite and exhume the bodies. They were even able to track down Dokmanovic, only to find that getting a hold of him was a different story altogether. The politics that led to the war hindered justice once the war was over. But Dzuro and his colleagues had a plan. Without any thoughts of risk to their own personal safety, they were determined to bring Dokmanovic to justice. They knew if they could pull it off, it would only be a matter of time before other accused war criminals were hauled into court as well. The Investigator reads like a thriller and was an instant best seller in the Czech Republic. Now in its second edition, the book was nominated for the Czech national literary prize Magnezia Literia 2018. Translated into English for the first time, this story reveals to the English speaking world the horrors of the Yugoslavic Wars and chronicles a team of brave investigators who stopped at nothing to bring those who were responsible to justice. More information about the author can be found at: https://warcrimeinvestigator.com

The Khmer Rouge revolution turned Cambodia into grisly killing fields, as the Pol Pot regime murdered or starved to death a million and a half of Cambodia's eight million inhabitants. This book--the first comprehensive study of the Pol Pot regime--describes the violent origins, social context, and course of the revolution, providing a new answer to the question of why a group of Cambodian intellectuals imposed genocide on their own country.
Ben Kiernan draws on more than five hundred interviews with Cambodian refugees, survivors, and defectors, as well as on a rich collection of previously unexplored archival material from the Pol Pot regime (including Pol Pot's secret speeches). He recounts how in the first few days after Cambodia became Democratic Kampuchea in 1975, authorities evacuated all cities, closed hospitals, schools, monasteries, and factories, and abolished the use of money. For nearly four years, the country was a prison-camp state, the countryside was "cleansed" of minorities, and a savage war was fought against Vietnam. Exploring the nature of the regime that enforced such a revolution, Kiernan shows that its atrocities--the widespread massacres, forced assimilation of minorities, and foreign alliances and wars--can be explained by its ideological preoccupation with racist and totalitarian policies. Kiernan concludes with a description of the resistance movements that sprang up and the destruction of the regime by Vietnamese forces in 1979.

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE WORK OF NON-FICTION A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Meticulous, clinical and sobering, a shockingly important and incisive book' David Olusoga Vast and revelatory, Dan Gretton's I You We Them is an unprecedented study of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity: the 'desk killers' who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the modern era. From Albert Speer's complicity in Nazi barbarism to cases of ecocide and the deaths of activists, Gretton shines a light on the figures 'who, by giving orders, use paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun.' Over the past twenty years, Gretton has interviewed survivors and perpetrators, and pored over archives and thousands of pages of testimony. His remarkable insight into the psychology of the desk killers is deepened by the intimate journey he travels with his readers.

Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand expeiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda. Barnett's new Afterword to this edition includes his reaction to documents released on the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. He reflects on what the passage of time has told us about what provoked the genocide, its course, and the implications of the ghastly events of 1994 and the grossly inadequate international reactions to them.

What is the appropriate political response to mass atrocity? In Hijacked Justice, Jelena Subotic traces the design, implementation, and political outcomes of institutions established to deal with the legacies of violence in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. She finds that international efforts to establish accountability for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia have been used to pursue very different local political goals.Responding to international pressures, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia have implemented various mechanisms of "transitional justice"—the systematic addressing of past crimes after conflicts end. Transitional justice in the three countries, however, was guided by ulterior political motives: to get rid of domestic political opponents, to obtain international financial aid, or to gain admission to the European Union. Subotic argues that when transitional justice becomes "hijacked" for such local political strategies, it fosters domestic backlash, deepens political instability, and even creates alternative, politicized versions of history. That war crimes trials (such as those in The Hague) and truth commissions (as in South Africa) are necessary and desirable has become a staple belief among those concerned with reconstructing societies after conflict. States are now expected to deal with their violent legacies in an institutional setting rather than through blanket amnesty or victor's justice. This new expectation, however, has produced paradoxical results. In order to avoid the pitfalls of hijacked justice, Subotic argues, the international community should focus on broader and deeper social transformation of postconflict societies, instead on emphasizing only arrests of war crimes suspects.

In war, there is no easy victory. When troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, most people expected an easy victory. Instead, the gamble we took was a grave mistake, and its ramifications continue to reverberate through the lives of millions, in Iraq and the West. As we gain more distance from those events, it can be argued that many of the issues facing us today - the rise of the Islamic State, increased Islamic terrorism, intensified violence in the Middle East, mass migration, and more - can be traced back to the decision to invade Iraq. In The Iraq War, award-winning documentary maker James Bluemel collects first-hand testimony from those who lived through the horrors of the invasion and whose actions were dictated by such extreme circumstances. It takes in all sides of the conflict - working class Iraqi families watching their country erupt into civil war; soldiers and journalists on the ground; American families dealing with the grief of losing their son or daughter; parents of a suicide bomber coming to terms with unfathomable events - to create the most in-depth and multi-faceted portrait of the Iraq War to date. Accompanying a major BBC series, James Bluemel's book is an essential account of a conflict that continues to shape our world, and a startling reminder of the consequences of our past decisions.

Why is it that men and boys have been and still are violated in human conflict, be it in conventional war, insurgencies or periods of civil and ethnic strife? Above all, why, throughout history, have victims, perpetrators and society as a whole refused to acknowledge this violation, and why do episodes of male-on-male rape and sexual abuse feature so rarely in accounts of war, be they official histories, eye-witness ac- counts or popular narratives? Is there more to this elision of memory than simply shame? Is there more to it than the victor's desire to violate the enemy body? Amalendu Misra's startlingly original re- search into male sexual violence explores the meaning and role of the male body prior to its abuse and how it is altered by violation in war- time. He examines the bio-political contexts of conflict in which primarily men and occasion- ally women sexually violate men; he details the inadequate legal safeguards for survivors of such events; and in unearthing and analysing an ignored aspect of war, he inquires whether such violence can ever be deterred.

The Right to a Fair Trial in International Lawbrings together the diverse sources of international law that define the right to a fair trial in the context of criminal (as opposed to civil, administrative or other) proceedings. The book provides a comprehensive explanation of what the right to a fair trial means in practice under international law and focuses on factual scenarios that practitioners and judges may face in court. Each of the book's fourteen chapters examines a component of the right to a fair trial as defined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and reviews the case law of regional human rights courts, international criminal courts as well as UN human rights bodies. Highlighting both consensus and divisions in the international jurisprudence in this area, this book provides an invaluable resource to practitioners and scholars dealing with breaches of one of the most fundamental human rights.

The law relating to fitness to plead is an increasingly important area of the criminal law. While criminalization may be justified whenever an offender commits a sufficiently serious moral wrong requiring that he or she be called to account, the doctrine of fitness to plead calls this principle into question in the case of a person who lacks the capacity or ability to participate meaningfully in a criminal trial. In light of the emerging focus on capacity-based approaches to decision-making and the international human rights requirement that the law should treat defendants fairly, this volume offers a benchmark for the theory and practice of fitness to plead, providing readers with a unique opportunity to consider differing perspectives and debate on the future development and direction of a doctrine which has up till now been under-discussed and under-researched. The fitness to plead rules stand as an exception to notions of public accountability for criminal wrongdoing yet, despite the doctrine's long-standing function in criminal procedure, it has proven complex to apply in practice and has given rise to many varied legislative models and considerable litigation in different jurisdictions. Particularly troublesome is the question of what is to be done with someone who has been found unfit to stand trial. Here the law is required to balance the need to protect those defendants who are unable to participate effectively in their own trial, whether permanently or for a defined period, and the need to protect the public from people who may have caused serious social harm as a result of their antisocial behaviour. The challenge for law reformers, legislators, and judges, is to create rules that ensure that everyone who can properly be tried is tried, while seeking to preserve confidence in the fairness of the legal system by ensuring that people who cannot properly engage in the criminal trial process are not forced to endure it.

From events at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, to the recent trials of Slobodan Milosević and Saddam Hussein, war crimes trials are an increasingly pervasive feature of the aftermath of conflict. In his new book, Law, War and Crime, Gerry Simpson explores the meaning and effect of such trials, and places them in their broader political and cultural contexts. The book traces the development of the war crimes field from its origins in the outlawing of piracy to its contemporary manifestation in the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Simpson argues that the field of war crimes is constituted by a number of tensions between, for example, politics and law; local justice and cosmopolitan reckoning; collective guilt and individual responsibility; and between the instinct that war, at worst, is an error, and the conviction that war is a crime.

Written in the wake of an extraordinary period in the life of the law, the book asks a number of critical questions. What does it mean to talk about war in the language of the criminal law? What are the consequences of seeking to criminalise the conduct of one's enemies? How did this relatively new phenomenon of putting on trial perpetrators of mass atrocity and defeated enemies come into existence? This book seeks to answer these important questions whilst shedding new light on the complex relationship between law, war and crime.

In recent years there has been a tendency to intervene in the military, political and economic affairs of failed and failing states and those emerging from violent conflict. In many cases this has been accompanied by some form of international judicial intervention to address serious and widespread abuses of international humanitarian law and human rights in recognition of an explicit link between peace and justice.

A range of judicial and non-judicial approaches has been adopted in recognition of the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all model through which to seek accountability. This book considers the merits and drawbacks of these different responses and sets out an original framework for analysing transitional societies and transitional justice mechanisms.

Taking as its starting point the post-Second World War tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo, the book goes on to discuss the creation of ad hoc international tribunals in the 1990s, hybrid/mixed courts, the International Criminal Court, domestic trials, truth commissions and traditional justice mechanisms. With examples drawn from across the world, including the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the DRC, it presents a compelling and comprehensive study of the key responses to war crimes.

Peace and Justice is a timely contribution in a world where an ever-increasing number of post-conflict societies are grappling with the complex issues of transitional justice. It will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers seeking to understand past violations of human rights and the most effective ways of addressing them.

Studies of genocide and mass atrocity most often focus on their causes and consequences, their aims and effects, and the number of people killed. But the question remains, if the main goal is death, then why is torture necessary? This book argues that genocide and mass atrocity are committed not as an end in themselves but as a means to pursue sustained and systemic torture - the spectacle of violence - against its victims. Extermination is not the only, or even the primary, goal of genocidal campaigns. In The Macabresque, Edward Weisband looks at different episodes of mass violence (Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Holocaust, post-Ottoman Turkey, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, among other instances) to consider why different methods of violence were used in each and how they related to the particular cultural milieu in which they were perpetrated. He asserts that it is not accidental that certain images capture our memory as emblematic of specific genocides or mass atrocities (the death marches of the Armenian genocide, mass starvation in the Ukraine, the killing apparatus and laboratories of the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia) because such violence assumes a kind of style each time and place it arises. Weisband looks at these variations in terms of their aesthetic or dramaturgical style, or what he calls the macabresque. The macabresque is ever present in genocide and mass atrocity across time, place and episode. Beyond the horrors of lethality, it is the defining feature of concentration and/or death camps, detention centers, prisons, ghettos, killing fields, and the houses, schools and hospitals converted into hubs for torture. Macabresque dramaturgy also assumes many aesthetic forms, all designed to inflict hideous pain and humiliating punishments, sometimes in controlled environments, but also during frenzied moments of staged public horror. These kinds of performative violations permit perpetrators to revel in their absolute power but simultaneously to project hatred, revenge and revulsion onto victims, who embody the shame, humiliation and loss felt by their torturers. By understanding how and why mass violence occurs and the reasons for its variations, The Macabresque aims to explain why so many seemingly normal or "ordinary" people participate in mass atrocity across cultures and why such egregious violence occurs repeatedly through history.

Africa has been at the forefront of contemporary global efforts towards ensuring greater accountability for international crimes. But the continent's early embrace of international criminal justice seems to be taking a new turn with the recent resistance from some African states claiming that the emerging system of international criminal law represents a new form of imperialism masquerading as international rule of law. This book analyses the relationship and tensions between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Africa. It traces the origins of the confrontation between African governments, both acting individually and within the framework of the African Union, and the permanent Hague-based ICC. Leading commentators offer valuable insights on the core legal and political issues that have confused the relationship between the two sides and expose the uneasy interaction between international law and international politics. They offer suggestions on how best to continue the fight against impunity, using national, ICC, and regional justice mechanisms, while taking into principled account the views and interests of African States.

Set in the South and Southeast Region, this book attempts to analyse the implications of both genocides perpetrated on the unarmed Rohingya minority community in Myanmar, and the geopolitics of the powers of the region that deter the resolution of this festering problem. The book highlights the helplessness of the UN system to take any punitive actions against the perpetrators (ie: the security forces of Myanmar) given that China, India and Russia, who are taking the side of Myanmar for geopolitical reasons. They have exercised their vetoes at the UNSC to such an action. The book describes the key players in this region, their interests, compulsions and imperatives, and covers different strategies launched by the United States, China, India, Japan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar that tend to stall the resolution of the process or even refusing to take back the Rohingya refugees -- 1.1 million of them including children and women -- now languishing in the cramped camps inside Bangladesh. Most of these refugees were forced to flee their ancestral homes after a ghastly genocide meted out to them in October 2017. Such massacres have been taking place in a series of violence starting from 1977-8. This issue has huge regional security implications. The ugly heads of insurgency are also looming large. This has turned out to be a huge burden on the economy and environment of Bangladesh. However, different donor agencies including UNHCR are providing relief and rehabilitation. The author provides ramifications and reflections in the form of scenario development and suggesting certain options -- uniqueness of this book -- on this festering humanitarian issue.