Concentration Camp Survivors Research Articles

In a Different Light: The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak , and: The Holocaust in the Painting of Valentin Lustig (review)

LAWRENCE L. LANGER. In a Different Light: The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak. Boston: Pucker Art Publications; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Pp. 92.EDITH BALAS. The Holocaust in the Painting of Valentin Lustig. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002. Pp. 64.These two art books are different in character even though the artists themselves ostensibly have much in common. Both artists are Surrealists who were touched by the Holocaust - Bak as a survivor of the Vilna ghetto, and Lustig as a son of concentration camp survivors - and each expresses a loss of faith in God because of it. In the works in question, the influence of the Holocaust is largely implicit, but is strongly felt. Moreover, both immigrated to Israel in their youth, served in its army, worked in Italy and Switzerland, and chose to live abroad, Lustig in Zurich and Bak near Boston. The works displayed in these books were all painted at the turn of the century, Lustig's between 1994 and 2001 and Bak's from 1999 and 2000. Yet their styles and their approaches to art are distinct, and so are the styles and contents of the texts that accompany their works.Bak's virtuoso style is strongly realistic and he renders the minutest details of his scenes in the veristic tradition of Surrealism, a style he adapted in the mid-1960s. His symbolism, although stemming from his personal experiences, has always been complex and intellectually distanced, and it reaches new heights in this series. His philosophical, multi-layered exploration of Genesis here is a postmodern and post-Holocaust examination not only of the biblical book but of Jewish religious beliefs in general, and of man s quest for contact with a God he is not sure exists, who seems to have absented himself from modern Jewish history. As he puts it when describing his depictions of guardian angels: I ask them to carry undecipherable messages from a God-fearing atheist to some superior presence, some silent voice from which like Job I seek adequate answers but receive none (p. 86). In quest of these answers, Bak turns to those subjects in Genesis that involve man s contact with God and to their representation in art by Michelangelo (whose works had first inspired him in the Vilna ghetto during the war) as well as by other artists. He remakes these works according to his understanding of modern man's tribulations in a violent world whose roots lie in the Holocaust, symbolized by the almost constant inclusion here of smoking crematorium chimneys. To these subjects, he adds three related themes. The first questions the entire concept of time, history, and tradition. The second represents angels as divine intercessors and guardians who do not succeed in their attempts to save or instruct man. The last investigates the concept of a repair (tikun) of the world after the creation in Genesis has proved itself faulty and after the covenant God made to protect his chosen people in that book was abrogated by the Holocaust.Lawrence Langer, a well-known authority on Holocaust-related literature, explains Bak's approach in an informative essay. He offers an excellent analysis of the way Bak infuses his paintings with deconstructed texts and images, all of which have multiple variations. Langer explains most of the paintings in depth, down to their smallest details-which can be clearly seen in the well-rendered and richly colored reproductions - exploring their many layers of meaning. He shows, for instance, why in Bak's variations on Michelangelo's Creation of Man, the hands of God and Adam do not make contact, why God is represented by a vacant silhouette, a cut-out shape whose void stresses his absence, and why Bak concluded that man must recreate himself in his own image. In like manner, Langer elucidates the paintings in which Bak states that while tikun is necessary, it can never return the world or faith to its original state. Langer's illuminating text also allows one to understand how all four of Bak's themes in this book are related. …

The long-term effects of the Holocaust on the reproductive function of female survivors

Study objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of internment in the German concentration camps during World War II on menstrual function; future fertility; and, ultimately, on gynecologic diseases or future surgery needs. Subjects Five hundred eighty Hungarian female survivors of concentration camps. Intervention Menstrual and reproductive histories of the women were obtained and analyzed, comparing histories and events from pre-internment, internment, and post-internment periods of time. Measurements and main results The mean age of the survivors at the time of internment was 23.4 ± 8.0 years (95% CI 22.7–24.1). Amenorrhea occurred in 94.8% of the women during encampment (95% CI 92.7%–96.5%), with 82.4% experiencing cessation of menses immediately after internment (95% CI 76.9%–85.6%). Only 0.6% of women (95% CI 0.12%–1.63%) menstruated longer than 4 months after internment. After liberation, all but 8.9% of the women resumed menstruation within the first year (95% CI 88.4%–93.3%). Fecundity subsequent to liberation was not significantly affected by the imprisonment nor was there a significant increase in spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancies, stillbirths, or other pregnancy complications. Additionally, there was no evidence of impact on the subsequent frequency of gynecologic diseases or surgical procedures. Conclusions Imprisonment in German concentration camps during the Holocaust resulted in enormous emotional and psychological changes in the survivors. In addition, this study reveals abrupt changes in short-term menstrual function but little long-term physical damage to reproductive function.

Absent Fathers, Present Mothers: Images of Parenthood in Holocaust Survivor Narratives

Mothering and motherhood figure prominently in the personal narratives of women survivors of the Holocaust. In contrast, men identified as father figures are conspicuously absent from both women’s and men’s personal narratives, and fatherhood plays a relatively minor role in male narratives. This study argues that the paucity of references to fatherly behavior is attributable to a combination of factors. Gender is an important factor in determining the actual ordeals men and women faced as well as the ways in which they interpreted and narrated those events. While there is evidence that some survivors believed Jewish masculinity and paternal authority to have been called into question by the destruction of Jewish families in the Holocaust, gendered narrative construction appears to account for much of the disparity between father and mother figures The Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jewish communities of Europe placed Jewish families under tremendous strain. In their efforts to survive and to resist the Nazi threat, relations between family members changed, upsetting gender roles and power positions between mothers and fathers, parents and children. The survivors of the Holocaust, or Shoah, were primarily young adults whose formative years were spent in the grotesque world created by the Nazis. The selections and the inhumane conditions of the slave labor camps ensured that most of the concentration camp survivors would be between the ages of 18 and 45 at the war’s end, 1 though some children and older adults survived the

Post traumatic stress disorder among Mau Mau concentration camp survivors in Kenya

A decade before Kenya's independence in 1963 thousands of 'Mau Mau' fighters were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps where many underwent torture and inhuman treatment. No studies have been done to establish the presence of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric morbidity among the survivors of those concentration camps. To establish the prevalence of PTSD and other psychiatric morbidity and associated factors among the Mau Mau Concentration Camp survivors. A cross-sectional, descriptive study of all consecutive concentration camp survivors included in the study. Mau Mau War Veterans' Association (MMWVA) headquarters at Mwea House, Nairobi, Kenya Human Rights Commission headquarters in Nairobi, Tumaini House (Venue of MMWVA elections, 2005) and the MMWVA branch office in Kajiado District, Rift Valley Province, Kenya. One hundred and eighty one Mau Mau Concentration Camp Survivors who gave consent to participate in the study. Lifetime and Current PTSD, IES-R score and other Psychiatric Morbidity as measured using the SCID and the IES-R. A DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of current PTSD was made in 65.7% of the survivors. Current PTSD was associated with higher IES-R scores and older age, lower income, non-Catholic religion, larger household size, older age at incarceration, greater length of incarceration, incarceration in two or more camps, experiencing other traumatic events, family history of mental illness and having other psychiatric illness. Similar to other former Prisoners of War (POWs) elsewhere, these survivors suffer high PTSD prevalence rates and a special veterans' service is recommended to address this problem and its associated factors among these and other veterans in Kenya.

W. H. Auden and the Jews

Auden's rejection of his inherited anti-Semitism progressed over the years to an extraordinarily active philo-Semitism not limited to his relationship with Kallman, whom he met after his emigration to America in 1939. From the early 1940s on, Auden engaged intensely with on intellectual, emotional, and social levels, to the extent that during a conversation with Alan Ansen, he announced, I've been increasingly interested in the Jews, and after describ ing a book he had been reading about Hasidism, he mused, wonder what would happen if I converted to Judaism (32).1 In addition to studying Jewish religion and culture, Auden actively supported Jewish causes?he pulled a flier for the United Jewish Appeal out of his pocket during one of his conversations with Ansen (59)?and during his service as a member of the postwar bombing survey team in Germany he met with concentration camp survivors, asking a friend to wire him a hundred dollars for a woman who had been in Dachau

The Maimed Body and the Tortured Soul: Holocaust Survivors in American Film

This article explores how changing modalities of cinematic representation generate new forms of Holocaust awareness and response. It contends that the two phases of Holocaust response in America--the first marked by reticence, the second by a wide proliferation of public discourse--can each be associated with distinct strategies of representing survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. The first strategy draws attention to the maimed body of the victim; the second delves into the tortured psyche of the victim. This transformation can be seen by examining the technical innovations of Sidney Lumet's 1965 film, The Pawnbroker, which incorporates flashbacks to represent involuntary memory and to encourage viewer empathy with the survivor figure.

Practical geriatrics: possible association of posttraumatic stress disorder with cognitive impairment among older adults.

Practical geriatrics: possible association of posttraumatic stress disorder with cognitive impairment among older adults.

Magnitude of trauma and personality change

In this paper the author postulates that, in post‐traumatic personality structures caused by overwhelming traumatic experiences, pre‐traumatic personality features and childhood experiences are of little or no relevance. Sixty‐four survivors of Nazi concentration camps are examined, their concentration camp experiences detailed and pre‐persecution histories and post‐persecution psychopathology studied. The significance of a concentration camp experience is analytically discussed and evaluated. This study shows that 52 cases (81.2%) of the 64 survivors of concentration camps presented an almost identical depressive personality structure irrespective of their prepersecution life history. The 64 survivors of concentration camps are psychologically compared to 78 cases of people who, in view of the menacing circumstances, decided to emigrate and in this way were spared from becoming victims of the Nazi ‘final solution’. Finally, the author discusses the value of psychoanalytical treatment.

Dissociative symptoms and amnesia in Dutch concentration camp survivors.

We examined to what extent dissociative phenomena in concentration camp survivors are related to post-traumatic stress symptoms. Self-reports of amnesia for traumatic war events and other dissociative experiences were studied in a sample of 31 Dutch survivors of World War II (WWII) Japanese concentration camps. Seventeen survivors treated for war-related psychiatric symptoms were compared to 14 concentration camp survivors who had no psychiatric diagnosis. Although survivors who received treatment scored significantly higher on the Impact of Event Scale and the Post-Traumatic Symptom Scale than control survivors, the two groups did not differ in terms of accessibility of war memories or dissociative experiences. Levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms were not significantly correlated with dissociative experiences. In both groups, reports of psychogenic amnesia for traumatic events were rare. Our results support previous studies demonstrating that post-traumatic stress symptoms are not necessarily accompanied by dissociative experiences. They also contradict the suggestion that amnesia is a common phenomenon in people who have been exposed to war atrocities.

Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators (review)

Reviewed by: Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators Ethan Goffman Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators, edited by Alan L. Berger & Naomi Berger. Syracuse University Press, 2001. 378 pp. $59.95 (c); $24.95 (p). The children of concentration camp survivors have long been prominent in the media and in scholarship, while the stories and thoughts of children of holocaust perpetrators have been more submerged. Despite the obvious dichotomy between the two groups, they have much in common. Both must grapple with a family history dealing with events almost beyond belief. Both groups find their personal identity often overshadowed by their tragic history. And members of both groups have responded to this history with lives dedicated to helping humanity through teaching, activism, and community service. Because of the personal nature of these essays, they constitute in no way a unifying overview, but rather a series of viewpoints, almost of short stories, always dramatic and compelling and often beautifully written. As such, the volume provides a rich vein of raw material to be further mined by future scholars and analysts. Nevertheless, more scholarly balance is called for; the voices in Second Generation Voices mirror current media and social awareness, foregrounding the Jewish experience over the German. Most of the volume explores the perceptions and experience of the children of holocaust survivors, [End Page 166] while a shorter section is devoted to essays by children of Germany’s wartime generation, often children of Nazis. Some Jewish sections are digressive, such as a discussion of the Yiddish language. Jewish issues are explored in depth and intricacy, whereas the German voices, equally heartfelt and dramatic, do not as fully discuss issues of historical identity. One issue confronted by both the German and the Jewish second generation is the need to reconstitute a vanished, often repressed past. This repression, while notable in American Jews in the years after World War II, is no longer a part of the larger Jewish social landscape. Yet historical restoration remains critical to individuals; one essay discusses the need “to fill in the gaps, fit the pieces of the puzzle together” (p. 52), a task shared by all writers in this volume. Historical and personal reconstruction are approached most directly through flashes of memory and meaning in which history and symbol converge. One child of survivors remembers dreams of being hunted by Nazis. Another describes a routine question from her gynecologist, “had anyone in my family had breast cancer. I thought for a moment and to my shock realized that every single woman in my family, excepting my mother, had been killed in the war” (p. 245). Still others recall moments of realization that long ago their parents had lived other lives with other spouses and children and discuss the burden of being replacement children for those destroyed by the Nazis. One German writer also born as a replacement for war deaths, as a gift to Hitler, has rejected her personal history, going so far as to convert to Judaism, epitomizing a blatant confrontation with the past. Obviously, this situation is not a representative reaction; indeed the German writers in this volume are notable as anti-Nazi activists. Anna Rosmus, for instance, is famous for unearthing her hometown’s crimes in the face of virulent resistance. The drama of repression and recovery shared by all of these writers is stronger among the Germans, for whom often “Jews had been edited out of family narratives” (p. 267). Paradoxically, then, German children of the Nazi generation may face a more difficult task than children of Holocaust survivors. The latter, while dealing with a horrific past and with shorn family trees, often look up to their parents as heroic or, at the very least, consider them innocent. Children of Nazis, by contrast, inherit a terrible shame. One writer complains of being orphaned when she learned of her parents’ deeds, and believes that “to stop loving one’s parents is to stop loving oneself” (p. 304). As someone who believes in a collective responsibility to the past but not in collective guilt, I became aware, through reading this volume, of how guilt, both intellectual...

Parental communication of Holocaust experiences and interpersonal patterns in offspring of Holocaust survivors

This study examined the interpersonal problems and central relationship patterns of Holocaust Survivors’ Offspring (HSO) who were characterised by different patterns of parental communication of their parents’ Holocaust trauma. Fifty-six adults born to mothers who were survivors of Nazi concentration camps and 54 adults born to parents who immigrated to Israel before 1939 with their own parents (non-HSO) were recruited randomly from an Israeli sample. While the groups did not differ in their current mental health, HSO who reported nonverbal communication with little information about their mother’s trauma endorsed more interpersonal distress than HSO who experienced informative verbal communication and less affiliation than either HSO who experienced informative verbal communication or non-HSO. They also differed in their central relationship patterns with their parents and spouses. The findings are discussed in the context of the unique dynamics of growing up with the silent presence of the mother’s trauma.

Self-taught and outsider art: the Anthony Petullo collection

This spectacular volume reproduces in full color some 150 pieces from the Anthony Petullo Collection, an extraordinary assemblage of paintings and drawings produced by individuals working outside the perimeter of conventional art training and traditions. Some of the pieces are fanciful, even whimsical. Others are haunting in their unembellished depiction of vulnerability and terror. Some are spare; others are crowded with figures. Some exhibit a childlike simplicity; others are almost sculpted in their precision and clarity. The thirty-six European and North American artists represented in and Outsider include a hospital janitor, a factory worker, concentration camp survivors, a truck driver, a guard at the Tate Gallery, a self-proclaimed fortuneteller and healer, and a female impersonator and Hollywood screenwriter. Their canvases include paper, wood, long strips of calico cloth, and cardboard. One artist paints with both hands simultaneously; another finds it difficult to paint except amid the chaos of his family. Many began painting quite late in life; others had early dreams of pursuing art that were deferred by economic and family circumstances. Some have been institutionalized or incarcerated; others have struggled with terrible poverty and personal loss. Perhaps more than the work of conventionally trained artists, pieces by outsider or self-taught artists are entwined with the identities of their creators. In support of that connection, Self-Taught and Outsider Art presents the artworks in conjunction with portraits, usually photographs, of the artists and brief biographical sketches. In some cases a friend or patron provides an anecdote about the artist. Taken together, these offer an intimate glimpse of the process by which art emerges from experience.

Review of Light from the ashes.

PETER SUEDFELD (Ed.) Light From the Ashes Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2001, 456 pages (ISBN 0-472-06745-1, US$24.95, Softcover) Reviewed by ANDREW WINSTON How does a child of twelve experience this upheaval? asks Gerda Lederer, in Peter Suedfeld's Light From the Ashes. This upheaval is the Nazi persecution culminating in the Shoah. The contributors to this volume explore the way in which childhood experience of the Shoah affected their careers in psychology and other social sciences. The volume is the outgrowth of a 1996 symposium at the International Society for Political Psychology. Peter Suedfeld, who has studied coping in Holocaust survivors for a number of years (see, e.g., Suedfeld 1997, 2000; Suedfeld, Fell, & Krell, 1998), asked the participants to reflect on the relationship between their childhood trauma and their adult research interests. He subsequently invited other social scientists from a range of disciplines and countries to contribute to the published work. Specialists in Holocaust studies were explicitly avoided in this opportunity sample in order to focus on less obvious kinds of influence. The task proved painful for many; some potential contributors refused or withdrew. Readers will recognize such familiar names as Herbert Kelman and Ervin Staub, who are well known for their work on group conflict and violence; those from other disciplines generally have interests that overlap with political, social, or clinical psychology. In the case of Staub and Suedfeld, who have written explicitly on genocide, the influence of their experience seems obvious. However, they and the others have used these memoirs to explore the more subtle ways in which the Shoah helped to shape their emotional life, interpersonal style, values, and sense of meaning. The chapters are divided into three groups. First are six contributors, including Peter Suedfeld, who survived during the war in hiding. In contrast to the memoirs of adult concentration camp survivors such as Victor Frankl (1963), these are recollections of childhood. Mostly from assimilated middle class or professional homes, these children were forced to hide, flee, confront their own death, and confront the real death of their mothers and fathers. The use of unadorned prose increases the poignancy. Hadasa Black-Gutman tells of her experience at age five: Another family moved into our room as well. There was a tall man, his wife, and two children. They were nice. After a while the Gestapo took them away. The man came back alone. His wife and children had been killed. He became very ill, lying there for hours staring at the wall, refusing to eat. They made chicken broth for him, but he did not want any food. He died. He was put in the room at the end of the hallway where he lay covered with a sheet. I kept sneaking in, along with another little girl, to see what a dead body looked like and whether he would move again. He did not. (p. 19) Older children assume adult roles: The late Mary Engel relates how she quickly transformed herself into a courier of forged documents, an aid to the underground, and a scrounger for food. The brief narrative of her capture by the brutal Hungarian Arrow Cross is gripping, no matter how many times one has read such accounts. The urgent problem for these children was the management of their Jewish identity. Their names and histories were changed, often several times, and woe to the children who failed to remember which name was current, or to cross themselves, or to say recently learned Christian prayers. For boys, there was concealment of the body as well as the name. Circumcision must be hidden, a theme portrayed brilliantly in Agniezka Holland's 1991 film, Europa Europa. It is not surprising that themes of identity, stress, and danger appeared later in the research of these survivors. A second group of eight memoirs is provided by refugees who were able to leave Europe by 1940, some just barely in time. …

Amnesia, flashbacks, nightmares, and dissociation in aging concentration camp survivors

The current study examined to what extent war memories of Dutch survivors of Japanese/Indonesian concentration camps display characteristics that are often believed to be typical for traumatic memories. Twenty-nine survivors were interviewed about amnesia, flashbacks, nightmares and the sensory quality of their most upsetting war memories. In addition, they completed self-report scales measuring post-traumatic stress symptoms and dissociation. In contrast to prevailing notions, amnesia, flashbacks and nightmares were not typical for this sample. Neither were traumatic memories characterized by a particularly strong sensory loading. Post-traumatic stress symptoms were not related to dissociative experiences. At least for this group of aging survivors, it appears that the pathogenic potential of traumatic memories has more to do with their extremely aversive content than with a qualitatively different type of organization of these memories.

The Role of the United States Government in Recent Holocaust Claims Resolution

This is, I think, an interesting story?one that is hard for outsiders to know. I will talk about the U.S. government's role in three of the Holocaust settlements: the 1995 so called agreement; the Swiss bank settlement, and the German foundation for payments to forced and slave laborers and other victims of the Nazi era. Let me start by pointing out that for two centuries the U.S. government has con cluded claims settlement agreements on behalf of its nationals. Under the customary international law of state responsibility and diplomatic protection, in certain circum stances a state has the right to and settle the claims of its nationals. A state may espouse, and take over, the claim of one of its nationals against another state if the claim was owned by one of its nationals at the time it arose and continuously thereafter until it is espoused, if the claim involves a breach of an international obligation attribut able to the foreign government, and if the national has first exhausted local remedies in the foreign nation. If these requirements are met, there is discretion to espouse a claim; a government may choose not to espouse a claim for foreign policy reasons. The discretionary authority of the executive branch of the U.S. government?the president and the secretary of state?to exercise the espousal power has consistently been upheld by U.S. courts. The Princz agreement between Germany and the United States of September 1995 followed this traditional framework. It was a lump-sum settlement with Germany that provided compensation to certain U.S. citizens who were victims of Nazi persecution (essentially concentration camp survivors) in return for waiver of all claims against Germany in that category. Byway of background, Hugo Princz, a Holocaust concentration camp survivor, for many years sought compensation from Germany. Mr. Princz sued the German govern ment in U.S. federal court, but the suit was dismissed in view of Germany's sovereign immunity. Then Mr. Princz sued German companies. At the same time, Mr. Princz's con gressional supporters pressed U.S. legislation to remove sovereign immunity from the German government for Holocaust suits, and in 1994 such a bill passed in the House of Representatives. This situation warranted serious attention by the two governments, and the German chancellor and U.S. president agreed in March 1995 thata claimssettle ment agreement covering Mr. Princz and comparable claimants should be concluded. The German government wan ted to have a settlement that finally resolved any future potential claims. We in the State Department did not, however, believe that it would be just to settle all claims that were comparable to Mr. Princz's without a thorough program to locate claimants who might qualify, since all claims in the categories covered by the settlement would be cut off. To allow time for the United States to

Authenticity and memory at Dachau

This essay explores the contradiction that arises between the search for authenticity or historical accuracy and the attempt to ‘express the inexpressible’ in the memory and testimony of concentration camp survivors. Curators at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site face an impossible demand to present the site as it was in the Nazi period while at the same time allowing for its use as a memorial. However, visitors interact with the exhibits and each other to produce a more open engagement than the designers anticipate and the exhibits themselves often have an unexpected impact. Artefacts in particular seem to have key emotional effects that exceed the impact of their authenticity, as do camp buildings, and the testimony of survivors can provide a disturbing challenge to the values of truth and authenticity.

Latin American Dictatorship in Erich Hackl's Novel Sara und Simón and Miguel Asturias's El Señor Presidente

When Austrian writer Erich Hackl's novel Sara und Simon was published in 1995, the truth about the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 was not widely known. The majority ofthe Argentine military had notyet admitted that approximately thirty thousand people had been made to disappear, among them children as well as adults. In order to understand Hackl's intention in writing this novel it is important to know that, until that time, the majority ofArgentines continued to support the military's declaration that the reports ofthese disappearances were pure fiction: Den Aussagen der uberlebenden Opfer hatte die Mehrheit der Argentinier kaumBeachtung geschenkt.Die Mutterund Grosmuttervon Verschwundenen, die jeden Donnerstag vor dem Prasidentensitz auf der Plaza de Mayo fur die Herausgabe ihrer Kinder demonstrieren, nannten viele nur 'locas,' Verruckte. (Mein Gefangnis 200). The majority ofArgentines hardly paid attention to the statements ofsurviving victims. The mothers and grandmothers ofthe vanished were called crazy, because they were demonstrating every Thursday in front of the Presidential Place for the return oftheir children.1 Once the dictatorship came to an end, the failure of the courts to prosecute military officials intensified the people's reluctance to accept what had happened under their rule. After military tribunals in 1985 rejected the cases against the generals, the civil courts took them over. Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky has described the trial: The members of the military juntas who had made the entire society tremble untiljust a few years before rose respectfully to their feet on the order ofa young clerk each time the members ofthe federal chamber that was judging them returned to the courtroom. But all nine denied having ordered the use ofmethods that were injurious to human rights. They did not acknowledge the facts and accused the concentration camp survivors of fabricating their testimony about a descent into hell. They even suggested mat theirjudges were also part ofa sinister conspiracy against the virtuous guardians ofthe nation. Ifany mistake had been made, it was the responsibility oftheir subordinates. (97) Nevertheless, between April and September of that year, nine highranking military officials were forced to resign. Moreover, after listening to the testimonies of the victims, the civil judges condemned the two highest-ranking generals of the army, Videla and Massera,2 to life in

The Role of the United States Government in Recent Holocaust Claims Resolution

This is, I think, an interesting story?one that is hard for outsiders to know. I will talk about the U.S. government's role in three of the Holocaust settlements: the 1995 so called agreement; the Swiss bank settlement, and the German foundation for payments to forced and slave laborers and other victims of the Nazi era. Let me start by pointing out that for two centuries the U.S. government has con cluded claims settlement agreements on behalf of its nationals. Under the customary international law of state responsibility and diplomatic protection, in certain circum stances a state has the right to and settle the claims of its nationals. A state may espouse, and take over, the claim of one of its nationals against another state if the claim was owned by one of its nationals at the time it arose and continuously thereafter until it is espoused, if the claim involves a breach of an international obligation attribut able to the foreign government, and if the national has first exhausted local remedies in the foreign nation. If these requirements are met, there is discretion to espouse a claim; a government may choose not to espouse a claim for foreign policy reasons. The discretionary authority of the executive branch of the U.S. government?the president and the secretary of state?to exercise the espousal power has consistently been upheld by U.S. courts. The Princz agreement between Germany and the United States of September 1995 followed this traditional framework. It was a lump-sum settlement with Germany that provided compensation to certain U.S. citizens who were victims of Nazi persecution (essentially concentration camp survivors) in return for waiver of all claims against Germany in that category. Byway of background, Hugo Princz, a Holocaust concentration camp survivor, for many years sought compensation from Germany. Mr. Princz sued the German govern ment in U.S. federal court, but the suit was dismissed in view of Germany's sovereign immunity. Then Mr. Princz sued German companies. At the same time, Mr. Princz's con gressional supporters pressed U.S. legislation to remove sovereign immunity from the German government for Holocaust suits, and in 1994 such a bill passed in the House of Representatives. This situation warranted serious attention by the two governments, and the German chancellor and U.S. president agreed in March 1995 thata claimssettle ment agreement covering Mr. Princz and comparable claimants should be concluded. The German government wan ted to have a settlement that finally resolved any future potential claims. We in the State Department did not, however, believe that it would be just to settle all claims that were comparable to Mr. Princz's without a thorough program to locate claimants who might qualify, since all claims in the categories covered by the settlement would be cut off. To allow time for the United States to

Binge eating and eating attitudes among Nazi concentration camp survivors.

Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps lived through extreme situations that included starvation. We test our hypothesis that there is a greater lifetime presence of binge eating among survivors from concentration camps than in a control group. The subjects were 51 political prisoners who survived Nazi concentration camps and 47 ex-partisans of similar age and sex. A clinical interview investigated the lifetime occurrence of binge eating. The Eating Attitudes Test was also administered. The mean reported loss of weight among survivors was 27-3 kg. Thirty-three per cent of them and 4% of the ex-partisans reported going on eating binges at some time in their lives (P < 0.0007). There was no significant difference in the Eating Attitudes Test scores of survivors and ex-partisans, but, among survivors, the Bulimia subscale significantly discriminated subjects who reported current binge eating. Our study confirms that subjects who have survived a period of extreme food deprivation are more likely to develop binge eating behaviour.

Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp

Like Coleridge's ancient mariner who fixes us with his glittering eye and forces us to hear his tale of horror, survivors of the Nazi concentration camps are plagued by demons.2 In the face of the inexpressible horror of the camps, they have a compulsion to bear witness. They have to offer atonement for their survival. To their audience, they are both frightful and compelling. Like the ancient mariner, survivors seize the attention of their unwilling listeners: Primo Levi, for instance, summons those who live safe in their warm houses to consider his words or face his curse.3 And the lis-