Search results for "Genocide"

Reflections on the Significance of Images in Genocide Studies: Some Methodological Considerations

2018

Social practices such as massacres, mass violence and the extermination of entire populations are not a historical novelty. Indeed, when Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1944 he was but giving a new name to an old crime.1 Such phenomena have been witnessed by humanity since Ancient times and historians, as well as artists and writers, have utilized every tool at their disposal to find ways to depict them and impress upon their audience the impact they had. Insofar as these are extreme phenomena that challenge the very notion of our humanity, such events inevitably test as well the limits of representation. Eyewitness accounts, historical narrations, philosophical observations, and…

Ecumenical news / Aktuelles. World Council of Churches involvement in the efforts for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide

2015

The Perpetrator's mise-en-scene: Language, Body, and Memory in the Cambodian Genocide

2018

Rithy Panh's film S-21. The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) was the result of a three-year shooting period in the Khmer Rouge centre of torture where perpetrators and victims exchanged experiences and re-enacted scenes from the past under the gaze of the filmmaker's camera. Yet, a crucial testimony was missing in that puzzle: the voice of the prison's director, Kaing Guek Eav, comrade Duch. When the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) were finally established in Phnom Penh to judge the master criminals of Democratic Kampuchea, the first to be indicted was this desk criminal. The film Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell (R. Panh, 2011) deploys a new confrontation – an a…

Victors, Vanquished and Neutrals: The Swedish Press and the Nuremberg Trial

2011

After the shock of the ghastly revelations from the liberated concentration camps began to wane in late spring 1945, there was little written on the Nazi genocide in the Swedish press until autumn 1945. As elsewhere, the attention and energies of the newspaper media were directed to covering other tumultuous events of the world. For example, the Swedish press followed closely the developments in its neighbouring countries — not least Finland, which seemed to be on the verge of a Soviet-instigated coup, and therefore caused a lot of anxiety and discussion in the Swedish press. In line with the concept of Nordic Brotherhood, as discussed in Chapter 3, the Swedish press functioned as a channel…

From the Risk Society to Thana Capitalism

2021

The current paper focused on the spectatularization of disasters as the main commodity thana capitalism exchanges. The discussion around the crimes against mankind perpetrated by Nazis in the clandestine concentration camps opened the doors towards new insights respecting the roots of thana capitalism. Nazis violated human rights secreting their crimes in a moment of the world where millions certainly died. Today´s philosophers are shocked to see how Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the sanctuary of the horrors of the Second World War, sets the pace to a new allegory, intended to entertain thousands of tourists, many of them unfamiliar with these events. As a highly-demanded tourist destinatio…

How to Teach about the Holocaust? Psychological Obstacles in Historical Education in Poland and Germany

2017

Holocaust education in many countries faces severe obstacles, and the effects of such education are far from desirable. Research on German students found that education about the National Socialist period in Germany did not improve intergroup attitudes. Similarly, a study performed on Polish students in Warsaw showed that the extent of Holocaust education did not affect intergroup attitudes and led to more biased vision of the Holocaust. In both countries current Holocaust education seems to convey simplified entitative information about groups—such that all members of perpetrator group are presented as evil, and all bystanders as righteous. Based on psychological research on moral emotions…

Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment

2009

A reconsideration of Finland’s relationship with the Holocaust is needed for two reasons. First, the country has recently witnessed a debate over its role in the Holocaust, stimulating new academic research. Second, the standard reference work on the subject, an article published in this journal in 1995 and subsequently condensed in Walter Laqueur and Judith Baumel’s Holocaust Encyclopedia , is outdated. By shedding light on a well-known episode in which Finland transferred eight foreign Jews to German control, the following article reframes the question of whether Finland was victim, bystander, or perpetrator during the Nazis’ genocide.

‘A Hellish Nightmare’: The Swedish Press and the Construction of Early Holocaust Narratives, 1945–1950

2020

This study examines how the Swedish press responded to and portrayed the Holocaust immediately after the war. The liberation of the camps, the role and guilt of ordinary Germans, the Nuremberg trials and the ongoing problem of Jewish DPs in Europe were the most important issues on the basis of which the Swedish press had shaped the early post-war view of the Holocaust. Moreover, the fate of the Jews under Nazi Germany formed an important element of such reporting. The author argues that, contrary to the dominant Anglo-American historiography, which holds that the first post-war decades were marked by silence surrounding the German genocide, the Swedish press wrote about the Holocaust often …

The Problem of Displaced Jews and the Holocaust

2011

So far we have discussed how the Holocaust was portrayed as part of the discourse on the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trial. The last part of this book takes on a theme that runs parallel to, sometimes converging with, the ‘Nuremberg interregnum’. As Suomen Kuvalehti pointed out in 1945: ‘The Nazi war of extermination against the Jews did not resolve the Jewish question. On the contrary, the persecution has made the agenda more complicated than ever before.’1 Therefore, an examination of the press discourse on Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs), the creation of Israel and the emergence of the Cold War is necessary. However, it makes sense to deal with these topics separately in ord…

Challenging Old and New Images Representing the Cambodian Genocide: The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)

2018

This article focuses on the images used over four decades to represent the Cambodian genocide in photography, cinema, visual arts and the media as the basis for analyzing the documentary-memoir directed by Rithy Panh, The Missing Picture. First, there is a paucity of images which depict, evoke or allude to the crimes perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979); second, scholars raise objections about whether any image can adequately depict a catastrophic event such as genocide. This article begins by categorizing the Cambodian genocide iconography according to the modality of the visual production. After briefly classifying this visual output in four categories (perpetrator images, liberator…