Suffering at a Distance

After the Liberation of France and the surrender of Germany, the Nuremberg trial gave retribution to the senior, surviving and detained, Nazi leaders who were found guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes and crime against humanity. The Gaullist myth of a resistant France covered up the warts, vices and crimes of Vichy. Reconciliation between the two Frances, that of Vichy and De Gaulle, was attempted through amnesties of those punished by the purges. Klaus Barbie became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937 and joined the SD (Security Service), a branch of the SS in 1935. Maurice Papon, a former senior civil servant during Vichy, former prefect of police in Paris and former Budget Minister, was sentenced in 1998 to ten-year imprisonment for complicity with crimes against humanity for his anti-Jewish action between 1942 and 1944.Keywords: crime against humanity; France; Gaullist myth; Germany; Klaus Barbie; Maurice Papon; Nazi leaders; Nuremberg trial; Vichy; war crimes

By Hilary Footitt. Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2004. x+226 pp. Hb £45.00 There are two parallel narratives of the Liberation of France, argues Hilary Footitt, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ version, concentrating on D-Day and the fond embrace of Allied servicemen by French women, symbolizing the gratitude and passivity of the French population, and the French version, highlighting the liberation of France by the French themselves, the Allies confined to walk-on parts. Footitt's project is to bring together these two stories, to construct the liberation as the encounter and co-existence of two very different communities, taking us through a series of case studies and adopting, as she puts it, an ethnographic approach. Some of the cases she selects broadly bear out the received narratives. In Normandy, there was indeed a massive and fast-moving Allied onslaught, leaving the French as bystanders and also victims of Allied bombing and bombardment, lying low or taking to the roads as refugees once again, as in 1940. In the Midi, the Americans arrived late and the French did by and large liberate themselves, whether as Free French or Resistance, and took charge of their own affairs. But the range of Footitt's case studies gives the lie to such simplistic stories and casts much of the liberation of France in a welcome new light. Franco–American relations were not always easy after the first flush of freedom, and indeed the Americans stayed for some considerable time in Cherbourg, Marseille and Reims, all of which are put under the microscope. The massive arrival of troops, equipment and supplies was little short of an invasion, and much damage was done, whether to church towers suspected of hiding German snipers or to whole cities such as Caen. In many ways, such as the recurrence of requisitioning and pillaging, the imposition of curfews and the requirement that firearms be handed over, the flourishing of the black market and clandestine prostitution, the American occupation was little different from that of the Germans. Relations between Americans and French were often difficult: black troops were disliked and accused of rape, drunkenness was rife and Americans were seen either as savage or childlike, resentment built up about continuing shortages while the Americans were well supplied and German POWs were well treated, those working for the Americans demanded rights as workers and went on strike, to the fury of their liberators, and few Americans could communicate in the French language — Colonel Parkman at Marseille being an honourable exception. Above all, there was a gulf between the agenda of the Americans, for whom the Liberation of France was but a link in the chain of the defeat of Hitler's Germany, and the French agenda, which was to reforge national pride and national identity. Footitt has done an admirable job in the French, British and American archives, skilfully woven together a number of stories to illustrate the complexity of the liberation experience, and brought home forcefully that while heroism abounded, the myths on either side need the careful re-examination that she had expertly undertaken.

Introduction Part 1 Crimes Against Humanity: From Nuremberg to Lyon ... And Back Again 1 Trying Klaus Barbie: Setting a Precedent? 1.1 Crimes Against Humanity and the Victimisation of the Individual 1.2 Systematic Crimes 'in the Name of a State Practising a Policy of Ideological Supremacy' 1.3 Perceiving the Knowledge Requirement 2 Trying Paul Touvier and Maurice Papon: Twisting the Precedent 3 A Problematic Legacy 3.1 Equalising Victims, Confusing Crimes 3.2 Making of Nuremberg a Law of Circumstances Part 2 Punishing Genocide: Too Much To Ask? 4 The Direct Applicability of the Genocide Convention under French Law 5 The Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to the Crime of Genocide 6 The Applicability of Retroactive Criminal Norms 7 The Contemporary Understanding of the Law of Genocide by the French Judiciary: Dualism in Disguise? 8 Concluding Observations Part 3 Why Genocide? 9 Responding to the Incorrect Ill-Qualification of Vichy France in the Touvier and Papon cases 9.1 The Laws of Vichy France: 'An Impeccable Style for an Infinite Horror' 9.2 The Criminal Acts of Vichy France: The Question of Genocidal Intent 9.3 The Criminality of Vichy France: Complicity in Genocide 10 Responding to the Equalisation of Victims in the Barbie Case 11 Genocide: A Crime Against the Family? 11.1 The Legal Destruction of the Family 11.2 The Physical Destruction of the Family 12 Conclusion

The article examines the legal and institutional foundations of the fight against the international community and individual states with the crime of genocide and other crimes in Rwanda. An analysis of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda in the field of combating international crimes has been carried out. The features of judicial activity in solving issues of bringing persons to justice for committing the crime of genocide are revealed. Key words: international criminal court, genocide, Rwanda, non-international armed conflict, responsibility.

The various shades of propaganda broadcast over the BBC by the Free French – silence, discretion, revelations, denunciations – do not fully reflect policy, but they do lay bare the dominant cultural codes of a society, inasmuch as they constituted a bridge between those who represented themselves as the legitimate government of occupied France and the French people who listened to the voice of France broadcasting from London.Throughout the war the representatives of Free France, in total harmony with the directives they were receiving from the Political War Executive, systematically avoided singling out the fate of the Jews. The fear of appearing to be the agents of a ‘Jewish war’ certainly played a key role in this strategy, but everyone was well aware in London that for the vast majority of the French population, France had a ‘Jewish problem’. Such had been the consensus on the eve of the war, and the onset of hostilities had not dispelled the idea that the Jews were too powerful and played a disproportionate role in French society. This consensus explains why the Free French broadcasting from London were so discreet on the persecution of Jews and why their deportation from France was always presented as a prelude to the deportation of French workers.

History has proven that education is the lifeblood of any society or country, providing a firm foundation for an established and civilised community. The destruction of an academic system may be recognised and conceded as a massacre imposed on a selected group. The importance of this research comes from its originality as it explores and introduces a “word” which to date has had no formal definition nor recognition in the English language dictionary, which signifies the impact of mass killing and destruction on education. This research makes an original contribution, through recognising the destructive impact on educational infrastructure as a form of genocide. Accordingly, a significant impact on education and reduces the country's literacy rate, according to the International Criminal Court (International Criminal Court, 1998). The research also makes an original contribution to knowledge as it presents for the first time a formal introduction to this word, reflecting this impact with a well-researched and investigated definition. The research findings demonstrate how war and conflict unquestionably have a significant impact on nations affected by conflict, notably in the fields of education and health. From this point, the research presented reference to previous historical cases, such as the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam war, the genocide in Rwanda, and Nazi Germany, which can be seen as real-life evidence of how conflict would affect education and literacy rates. The research methodology was based on Iraq as a case study, using systematic literature review to investigate the link between genocide and the destruction of the education infrastructure. The research aims to present the elements of crime, justify the usage of the word educide while presenting a formal definition based on the research of previous usage, the genealogy and legality of the term through identifying what constitutes genocide.

The experiences of defeat and occupation by Germany and liberation by the Allies wrought considerable gender damage upon France during the Second World War. In this essay, I examine appropriations of “Quand Madelon,” a popular World War I song that reemerged during the early weeks of France’s liberation, arguing that these appropriations offered one discursive resource by which patriots reasserted the manly strength of their nation. By reviving old archetypal notions of eroticized, subservient femininity and tough, virile masculinity, the tunes exerted discipline over “wayward” French women and eased gendered anxieties about the nation’s ability to reclaim its status as a sovereign nation. Courting widespread favor, even among French women, the songs made this gender discipline more palatable by pairing it with visions of a sexualized, civically engaged womanhood.

In late 1942, Britain’s main problem was having to work with both the Free French and Vichy supporters in West Africa, as feelings ran high and supporters of the former could not accept that the British should now co-operate with Vichy’s one-time followers. Any form of co-operation with the authorities in Dakar was bitterly opposed by F. Éboué, who believed that only Charles de Gaulle’s moral authority could reunite France. If there were compromises with men the Free French regarded as traitors, the French people, in Eboue’s view, would realize the Allies had failed them; as a result they would turn to the Soviet Union and adopt Communism. Previous supporters of the Vichy authorities remained in West Africa because there was a lack of suitable Free French personnel. The Foreign Office was not surprised by this and regarded it as rather unfortunate. It was an added complication to the development of close Anglo-French relations.

The aim of this article is to explore possible correlations between literature of Holocaust, widely defined, and recent works about genocide, mass-murder, and atrocity in Africa. It will focus on number of texts that concern both Rwandan genocide (Gil Courtemanche's novel/memoir Sunday at Pool in Kigali [2003] and Paul Rusesabagina's memoir An Ordinary Man [2006]) and victims of numerous conflicts on continent (Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation [2005], Dave Eggers's What Is What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng [2006], and Ismael Beah's Long Way Gone [2007]). However, as both initial hypothetical linkage and object of discussion (African trauma literature) are problematic concepts, I will offer an introductory account of how and why this might be fruitful comparison. The and Postcolonial In his study of discourse of Third Reich, Victor Klemperer writes that Strafexpedition [punitive expedition] is first term which I recognised as being specifically National Socialist.... For me word Strafexpedition was embodiment of brutal arrogance and contempt for people who are in any way different, it sounded so colonial, you could see encircled Negro village, you could hear cracking of hippopotamus whip. Later, but unfortunately not for very long, this memory had something comforting about it despite all bitterness. A mild dose of castor oil. (43) In this fragment, two things become proleptically clear for future understanding of and twentieth-century history. The first--it sounded so colonial--is complex interweaving between discourses of empire and colonialism on one hand and discourses of Third Reich and on other. The second--A mild dose ...--is immediate diminution of these complex interweaving histories. Working though what Dirk Moses calls conceptual blockages as well as issues of prejudice and layers of collective memory, historians, cultural thinkers, and philosophers are now turning with more interest to exploring complex and contentious relationship between Holocaust, colonialism, and genocide; and they are finding this relationship more than a mild dose.' Mark Mazower, for example, notes how Hitler's imagination was caught by example of British in India. Their model of imperial rule, such as he conceived it, struck him as admirable ... for him Ukraine was 'that new Indian Empire': Eastern Front would become Germany's North-West frontier (150). Yet those who develop these historiographical congruencies tread delicate path. As Jurgen Zimmerer and others point out, they should try to avoid using as paradigm or benchmark for genocide and atrocity: yet, as Moses's account of recent historical research suggests, this is very hard. He cites historians of Armenian and Cambodian genocides who use as heuristic device and others who develop concepts of cumulative radicalization, race branding (The Holocaust 547-49), and more diffuse and complex links between violence, modernity, and state building, all drawing from study of Holocaust. Other approaches trace impact of colonial policy, or wider European imperial discourses, on development of genocidal operations of Reich. And others, too, explore contrasts between different genocides. Despite desire not to let small number of examples from Europe, taken without context, set agenda, pull of is sometimes simply too strong. Those making these comparisons must also avoid opposite risk of collapsing into history of colonialism contra Aime Cesaire's famous comment on Nazism: the people of Europe tolerated Nazism before it was inflicted on them ... because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples (14). …

In his "Meditations on Metaphysics," Adorno exhorts us not to believe we can comprehend genocide as a learning experience of the species, and thereby derive some facile sense out of the victims' suffering.' The genocide in Rwanda eludes our comprehension, not because the stories of the victims will never be told, or because the figures for those killed will never be known precisely, but because the very concepts we use to understand genocide are also its causes. The problem is not that genocide is irrational; the problem is that, from the perspective of the political concepts that modernity has bequeathed to us, genocide makes sense; it is calculated, methodical, and "rational." Adorno was among the first to recognize the genocidal potential of modernity. In its conception of reason as an instrument for securing power over untamed nature, he saw the epistemological shadow of a social and political order that tended toward the ruthless exclusion and extermination of all that failed to fit into its own self-conception, its own identity as a distinct people or race set apart from and above other peoples and races. Adorno's analysis of the social context of subjectivity has long been recognized and valued as a source of insight into the cultural underpinnings of the Holocaust. His critique of modernity also has a great deal to tell us regarding the horrific repetition of genocide in societies as different from Nazi Germany as Rwanda and Sudan. Adorno allows us to see the problem of genocide as it emerges from the structural flaws present not only in the modern state (or the "administered world"), but also in the process of political modernization itself, in the formation of a national identity-a process that continues to unfold at a terrible human cost in Rwanda (and in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in many other regions in Africa and throughout the world where ethnic differences and tensions are mobilized for political purposes). Adorno's critique of modernity is indispensable for understanding this phenomenon as a flaw in the process of national identity formation. In his essay on the "Elements of Anti-Semitism: the Limits of Enlightenment," Adorno reveals the political effect of the modern subject's frustrated attempt to dominate nature both outside and within itself in its quest for a single homogenous criterion for rationality.2 The political expression of this frustrated quest can take the form (as it did in the cases of Nazi Germany and Rwanda) of a program to create an ethnically pure homogenous political space, in which the very existence of different peoples becomes the political problem. Reading Adorno's treatment of anti-Semitism along with an analysis of "Hutu Power" propaganda and the political motivation of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide reveals fundamental similarities in the structure of Nazi anti-Semitism and extremist Hutu propaganda, and these similarities indicate the structure of the subject that can take up genocide as a political option. Understanding the recurrence of genocide requires an analysis of the subject of genocide and how the structures of that subject are interwoven with extreme nationalism of the sort that emerged in Rwanda. We also need to understand how these structures are at work in the formation of national identity in the aftermath of colonialism, in which ethnicity was explicitly politicized, defined and focused as a strategy for exercising power over the governed. The events in Rwanda were made possible by a political subject capable of bringing the decision about the existence or non-existence of entire populations within the scope of political practices and institutions (a decision that now structures the central political question for a growing list of developing and stressed nations).3 To understand this situation, we need to address not only the political concepts and theories that modernity has bequeathed to us, but also how these concepts are interwoven with (and mediated by) regional social and political practices. …

The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature

They Forgot Their Role is a comparative study of women’s actions and agency during genocide, examining women perpetrators of the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda. It foregrounds the stories of individuals’ experiences of genocide and examines the impact of deeply entrenched patriarchal systems on women who became perpetrators in Nazi Germany and 1994 Rwanda. It explores how, in both instances, many of the socially prescribed and perpetuated norms of gendered behavior were suspended, modified, or dissolved. It asks how this “relaxing” of the patriarchal order facilitated women’s participation in both genocides and considers the impact of a prevailing silence that has influenced women’s post-genocide trajectories and narratives. Men perpetrators are “ordinary,” women perpetrators are “aberrant, flawed, or inhuman.” And it argues for further discussion and analysis of women perpetrators in contemporary society and in scholarship.

This article examines the origins, implementation and results of salvage drives carried out in wartime France from 1939 to 1945. In post-war accounts – including memoirs and local histories of the occupation – these salvage drives were understood simply as wartime frugality, a logical response to wide-spread shortages. Yet a careful study of the records of both the French Ministry of Armaments and Vichy's Service de la Récupération et de l'Utilisation des Déchets et Vieilles Matières combined with municipal and departmental sources reveals that these salvage drives were heavily influenced by Nazi German practices. From 1939 to 1940, even though French propaganda had previously ridiculed Nazi German salvage drives as proof of economic weakness, officials at the Ministry of Armaments emulated Nazi Germany by carrying out salvage drives of scrap iron and paper. After the fall of France, this emulation became collaboration. Vichy's salvage efforts were a conjoint Franco-German initiative, organised at the very highest levels of the occupation administration. Drawing on the experience of Nazi German salvage experts, Vichy officials carried out the salvage drives according to German models. Nevertheless, they carefully hid the German origins of the campaign from the chain of departmental prefects, mayors, Chambers of Commerce and youth leaders who organised the local drives and solicited participation by evoking French patriotic sentiment. After the liberation of France in 1944, the French Provisional Government renamed but otherwise maintained the Vichy-created salvage organisations and continued to oversee the collection of scrap iron, paper, rags, glass and bones until 1946. At that point, the government largely relinquished control of the salvage industry.

Much that has happened in the world since 1989 gives cause for elation, but there is also much that gives reason for alarm. The euphoria that attended the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism has been compromised by tragic events in recent years, such as the bitter ethnic rivalries in Yugoslavia, the civil war in Rwanda, and the terrorist bombings in New York City and Oklahoma City. In Search of Germany seeks to accomplish three purposes: to initiate a review of the whole of the post-World War II period and consider what actually happened in the Federal Republic and in the German Democratic Republic during those forty years; to acknowledge that the present age of anxiety did not originate in 1989; and to see that Europe today is indeed in trouble and the difficulties that the world is experiencing have social, political, and intellectual roots. In Search of Germany is an augmented and enlarged collection derived from a special issue of Daedalus. Additions that have been made to the book include a chapter by Timothy Garton Ash entitled Germany's Choice, a concluding section by the editors, and an index. While the book focuses on Germany, it serves a wider purpose as well by also studying Europe, democracy, and modernity. The prejudices and fears of Germany, precisely because they are specific to and yet not peculiar to Germany, tell a great deal of why an earlier European (and American) optimism has been lost, and why so much contemporary political discourse avoids explicit consideration of really sensitive issues. Half a century after the end of World War II, there is interest not only in the policies pursued by the Nazi regime, the crimes it perpetrated throughout Europe, and the suffering it inflicted on hundreds of millions, but also on what preceded that unprecedented tragedy and what has followed it. In Search of Germany is a timely and significant analysis of contemporary world politics and will be necessary reading for political scientists, historians, and scholars of international studies.

Women's Rights and Women's Lives In France 1944-1968 explores key aspects of the everyday lives of women between the Liberation of France and the events of May '68. At the end of the war, French women believed that a new era was beginning and that equality had been won. The redefined postwar public sphere required women's participation for the new democracy, and women's labour power for reconstruction, but equally important was the belief in women's role as mothers. Over the next two decades, the tensions between competing visions of women's `proper place' dominated discourses of womanhood as well as policy decisions, and had concrete implications for women's lives. Working from a wide range of sources, including women's magazines, prescriptive literature, documentation from political parties, government reports, parliamentary debates and personal memoirs, Claire Duchen follows the debates concerning womanhood, women's rights and women's lives through the 1944-1968 period and grounds them in the changing reality of postwar France.