The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the HolocaustThis powerful book offers the first detailed examination of the law's response to the crimes of the Holocaust. In vivid prose it offers a fascinating study of five exemplary proceedings--the Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals, the Israeli trials of Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk, the French trial of Klaus Barbie, and the Canadian trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. These trials, the book argues, were "show trials" in the broadest sense: they aimed to do justice both to the defendants and to the history and memory of the Holocaust. With insight Lawrence Douglas explores how prosecutors and jurors struggled to submit unprecedented crimes to legal judgment, and in so doing, to reconcile the interests of justice and pedagogy. Against the attacks of such critics as Hannah Arendt, Douglas defends the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials as imaginative, if flawed, responses to extreme crimes. By contrast, he shows how the Demjanjuk and Zundel trials turned into disasters of didactic legality, obfuscating the very history they were intended to illuminate. In their successes and shortcomings, Douglas contends, these proceedings changed our understandings of both the Holocaust and the legal process--revealing the value and limits of the criminal trial as a didactic tool. |
Contents
Film as Witness Screening Nazi Concentration Camps Before the Nuremberg Tribunal | 11 |
The Idiom of Judgment Crimes Against Humanity | 38 |
The Father Pointed to the Sky Legitimacy and Tortured History | 65 |
Ada Lichtmann on the Stand | 97 |
The Court v the Prosecution Policing Survivor Testimony | 123 |
Didactic Legality and Heroic Memory | 150 |
Retrials and Precursors Klaus Barbie and John Demjanjuk | 185 |
Other editions - View all
The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust Lawrence Douglas No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
accused acts Adolf Eichmann aggressive American Arendt argued argument attorney Auschwitz Barbie Buchenwald caust challenge Christie Christie's claim committed concept contrast conventional Courtesy courtroom crimes against humanity crimes against peace criminal defendants Demjanjuk trial deniers described didactic legality documentary documents Eichmann in Jerusalem Eichmann trial Ernst Zundel evidence extermination fact film final solution French gas chambers genocide German Government Press Office Hausner hearsay Hilberg historian Holo Holocaust denial Ibid images indictment international law Israel Israeli Government Press Ivan Jackson Jewish Jews judgment Judgment at Nuremberg juridical jurisdiction justice law's memory murder narrative Nazi atrocities Nazi Concentration Camps negationists normative Nuremberg trial offense perpetrators political PRESIDING JUDGE proceeding prosecution prosecution's prosecutors question Report responsible rhetorical screening Servatius Shawcross Six Million stand statement statute story Supreme Court survivor testimony survivor witnesses tion traumatic history Treblinka understanding University Press victims Vrba war crimes words Zundel trial