Buchenwald and Modern Prisoner-of-War Detention Policy

Abstract

A MERICAN sociologists have moved through the last quarter of a century largely as if Nazi concentration camps were never there. Aside from a few early papers about the camps, the major articles to appear in our journals have, in the main, been research promotion surveys.' Major commentaries and survivor accounts have escaped review in these journals.2 Few students have used concentration camp materials for theses or dissertations.3 Little can be gained from editorializing about these facts. Much more can be obtained from demonstrating that concentration camp materials can be used to open critical questions about contemporary issues; for example, prisoner-of-war detention policy. As this interest is approached in this paper, three guiding observations can be put down: First, patent reporting errors and vulnerable theorizing in early American discussions about the camps are conforming and tend to seal off major sociological interests. Second, American policy for counteraction of terror and oppression among captive' peoples, particularly prisoners-of-war, tends to follow the implications of these early papers. Third, failure to re-examine these early accounts and to test the implications of evident decisions in prisoner-of-war policy in light of concentration camp experiences may mean that American sociologists have let an opportunity for most significant and practical contributions to public policy pass by. This paper will document the first two of these points and attempt to phrase the third in such a way that sociologists and other social scientists might be encouraged to make further studies.