Session 7: Holocaust and Genocide

Session 7: Holocaust, Genocide and Torture
Chair: Alan Watt

Women Perpetrators in Birkenau
Sarah Cushman
Spielberg Fellow, Clark University, USA

In this paper, titled “Women Perpetrators in Birkenau,” I examine two ways in which women participated as genocidal agents in the Holocaust, and more specifically, within the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau: as camp guards and as prisoner functionaries (prisoners who assisted in the administration of the camp). I focus not only on how women got into positions of power over other women, but also how they behaved once there. The women camp guards were members in good standing of the Nazi German Volksgemeinschaft. Most historians agree that within the Third Reich there were constraints on women’s choices regarding occupation, family life, community participation, etc. Undoubtedly, there were significantly more constraints on women prisoner functionaries. They were women incarcerated primarily on the tenuous grounds of “racial” or “social” inferiority. They attempted to exist within the life-threatening conditions of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their positions as functionaries provided them with advantages that improved their chances for, but did not guarantee their survival. At the same time, such positions within the camp structure required at least the appearance of, if not actual, complicity in the project of genocide and the daily brutality of camp existence. This paper asserts that the guards and functionaries had some space in which to make choices about how they treated women in the general prisoner population. Both categories of women (and sometimes the same woman) used their power to help or harm others. I analyze how women got into positions of “relative” power within the camp, both as guards and functionaries, how they made use of such power, the constraints on their behaviour in these positions, and the degrees of culpability (or diminished responsibility) indicated by the parameters within which they operated. This analysis is part of a larger dissertation project, a comprehensive history of the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Absolute Evil: International Actors in Contemporary Genocides
Naama Haviv
Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Worcester, MA, USA

This paper is going to address the issue of international response to genocide. The main question that it will try to offer support in answering to is whether modern political systems that identify themselves as democratic are capable to deal with the happening of genocide in a foreign society. It will do so by analysing the British and the US political establishment’s reaction to the genocide undergoing in Darfur . The paper wishes to identify the mechanisms that stop a society from intervening in a genocidal situation, consequently becoming a bystander, and integrate these mechanisms into a model that would explain this behaviour.
The research will try to single out American and British politics as an environment that appropriates the theme of genocide and transforms it into a national political process without a clear ending. The actors that are relevant to this process will be identified. The monitoring of their interactions for three months should indicate the mechanisms that lead to inaction or action in the case of genocide, that reify ongoing genocide into a commodity that can serve social functions in a society that is situated on a different continent than the site of genocide.
This paper is going to try to identify the negotiated nature of reaction to genocide in a contemporary democratic system. It will try to assess the apparently paradoxical relationship between this negotiated nature and dealing with a genocide that is happening.
Further, an attempt will be made at explaining the apparent lack of political will for international intervention. The explanation will attempt to be an interdisciplinary one. Thus, the model (built around the central concept of dialogical self) will integrate elements specific to political science, history and psychology.
This research is going to rely mainly on content analysis of American and British politicians’ discourses and on observation of American and British politicians’ actions regarding Darfur.

Torture: A Literary and Visual Exhibit
Madelaine Hron
Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Torture is an art usually practiced in secret. In the barbaric past, when official torture was practiced routinely, torture manuals insisted on the secrecy of torture procedures. In our enlightened present age, when torture is illegal in most civilized countries, torturers are specifically trained to inflict pain without leaving any proof of their crimes.
Typically also, torture has a purpose. From ancient to contemporary times, we are told that “torture is the inquiry after truth by means of torment.” (Azo, 13 thCE). It serves “to elicit truth” (Ulpian, 3 rd CE), “to gather evidence for juridical proceedings” (Langbein, 20 thCE).
Finally, when evoking torture, we generally think of extreme pain and torment. We conjure up images of terrifying torture instruments or unimaginable bodily agony.
The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, circulated in newspapers and Websites all around the world, exhibited in local museums, are therefore shocking. Shocking in their graphic detail. But also, shocking in their symbolic value. For the first time, exhibited for entire world to see, is incontrovertible visual evidence of torture. What is more, these photographs of torture, sexual in nature, photographed by amateur voyeurs, give no evidence of any ‘inquiry after truth.’ They remind us more of internet pornography or virtual reality than they do of any matters of state or juridical proceedings. They speak more of shameful humiliation than they do of excruciating bodily torment. These are images of post-modern torture. When torture exists simply for torture’s sake. When there is no more truth, only performance. When torture’s no longer a pain, merely a shame.
Indeed, when viewing these graphic images of torture, do we see the suffering experienced by the torture victims? Can we imagine it? Do we feel it?
Ultimately– how to represent the pain of torture in words or images? As Elaine Scarry has argued in the seminal text The Body in Pain, there is seemingly no language for such extreme pain of torture; it resists verbal (and visual) objectification (12).
In this paper, I explore contemporary literary and visual representations of torture, focusing on the pain of torture. Surveying a wide spectrum of literary works – from such varied regions as Tunisia, Iran, South Africa, Chile or Haiti – I examine the fictionalized representations of torture, some by writers who themselves were survivors of torture. Referring to translation theory, I point to some of the difficulties authors and playwrights face when attempting to describe torture in their works, and examine how they nonetheless artistically convey the evil of torture in word and performance. I then briefly point to film adaptations of some of these literary works, so as to contrast verbal and visual representations of torture. My analysis culminates with a reflection on the shocking and symbolic significance of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs.