CiNii Books - Reckonings : legacies of Nazi persecution and the quest for justice

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 Shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize From the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. to the "stumbling stones" embedded in Berlin sidewalks, memorials to victims of Nazi violence have proliferated across the globe. More than a million visitors as many as killed there during its operation now visit Auschwitz each year. There is no shortage of commemoration of Nazi crimes. But has there been justice? Reckonings shows persuasively that there has not. The name "Auschwitz," for example, is often evoked to encapsulate the Holocaust. Yet focusing on one concentration camp, however horrific the scale of the crimes committed there, does not capture the myriad ways individuals became tangled up on the side of the perpetrators, or the diversity of experiences among their victims. And it can obscure the continuing legacies of Nazi persecution across generations and across continents. Exploring the lives of individuals across a spectrum of suffering and guilt each one capturing one small part of the greater story Mary Fulbrook's haunting and powerful book uses "reckoning" in the widest possible sense: to reveal the disparity between the extent of inhumanity and later attempts to interpret and rectify wrongs, as the consequences of violent reverberated through time. From the early brutality of political oppression and anti-Semitic policies, through the "euthanasia" program, to the full devastation of the ghettos and death camps, then moving across the post-war decades of selective confrontation with perpetrators and ever-expanding recognition of victims, Reckonings exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the fact that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators were never held accountable. In the successor states to the Third Reich East Germany, West Germany, and Austria prosecution varied widely and selective justice was combined with the reintegration of former Nazis. Meanwhile, those who had lived through this period, as well as their children, the "second generation," continued to face the legacies of Nazism in the private sphere - in ways often at odds with those of public remembrance and memorials. By following the various phases of trials and testimonies, from those immediately after the war through succeeding decades and up to the present, Reckonings illuminates the shifting accounts by which both perpetrators and survivors have assessed the significance of this past for subsequent generations, and calibrates anew the scales of justice.

Volume: : [uk] ISBN 9780198811237

Description

A single word-"Auschwitz"-is often used to encapsulate the totality of persecution and suffering involved in what we call the Holocaust. Yet a focus on a single concentration camp - however horrific, however massively catastrophic its scale - leaves an incomplete story, a truncated history. It cannot fully communicate the myriad ways in which individuals became tangled up on the side of the perpetrators, and obscures the diversity of experiences among a wide range of victims as they struggled and died, or managed, against all odds, to survive. In the process, we also miss the continuing legacy of Nazi persecution across generations, and across continents. Mary Fulbrook's encompassing book expands our understanding, exploring the lives of individuals across a full spectrum of suffering and guilt, each one capturing one small part of the greater story. Reckonings seeks to explore the disjuncture between official myths about dealing with the past, on the one hand, and the extent to which the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators evaded justice, on the other. The Holocaust is not mere history, and the memorial landscape barely hints at the maelstrom of reverberations of the Nazi era at a personal level. Reckonings illuminates the stories of those who remained outside the media spotlight, situating their experiences in changing wider contexts, as both persecutors and persecuted sought to account for the past, forge new lives, and make sense of unprecedented suffering.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction: The significance of the Nazi pastPart I. Chasms: Perpetrators and victims as communities of experience 2: The explosion of state-sponsored violence 3: Microcosms of violence: Toil and terror 4: Endpoints: The machinery of extermination 5: Defining experiences 6: Silence and communication 7: Crossing thresholdsPart II. Confrontations: Perpetrators and victims in German courtrooms 8: Stages of justice 9: Redefining perpetrators: From Euthanasia to the Holocaust 10: Major concentration camp trials 11: The diffraction of guilt 12: Late, too latePart III. Connections: Constructing links between present and past 13: Hearing the voices of victims 14: Making sense of the past, living for the present 15: Discomfort zones 16: The sins of the fathers 17: The long shadows of persecution 18: Oblivion and memorialisationConclusions 19: A resonant past

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Reckonings : legacies of Nazi persecution and the quest for justice

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