Devin O. Pendas – författare

The aftermath of the Holocaust has been long and wide-reaching. Any act of mass murder and genocide leaves powerful traces: the trauma of the survivors, the challenge of punishment for the perpetrators and justice for the victims, and questions of how to properly commemorate and memorialize the loss and how to rebuild and restore. This is all the more true for the Holocaust, which has come to serve as a global cultural touchstone for evaluating mass violence. The legacy of the Holocaust has impacted every area of political and cultural life in many different countries since 1945. What is the state of aftermath studies for the Holocaust? How do we periodize the post-Holocaust landscape? Where are there continuities and where are there changes? How, when, and where has the Holocaust been globalized? In what areas did the Holocaust generate a fundamental rethinking of human relations and state institutions? And where did it not? This volume offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the impact and legacy of the Holocaust around the world and demonstrates its enduring significance, from the postwar period to the present day.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was the largest, most public, and most important trial of Holocaust perpetrators conducted in West German courts. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Devin O. Pendas provides a comprehensive history of this momentous event. Situating the trial in a thorough analysis of West German criminal law, this book argues that in confronting systematic, state-sponsored genocide, the Frankfurt court ran up against the limits of law. Because many of the key categories of German criminal law were defined with direct reference to the specific motives of the defendants, the trial was unable to adequately grasp the deep social roots and systematic character of Nazi genocide. Much of the trial's significance came from the vast public attention it captured, and this book provides a compelling account of the divided response to the trial among the West German public.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was the largest, most public, and most important trial of Holocaust perpetrators conducted in West German courts. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Devin O. Pendas provides a comprehensive history of this momentous event. Situating the trial in a thorough analysis of West German criminal law, this book argues that in confronting systematic, state-sponsored genocide, the Frankfurt court ran up against the limits of law. Because many of the key categories of German criminal law were defined with direct reference to the specific motives of the defendants, the trial was unable to adequately grasp the deep social roots and systematic character of Nazi genocide. Much of the trial's significance came from the vast public attention it captured, and this book provides a compelling account of the divided response to the trial among the West German public.

Post-war Germany has been seen as a model of 'transitional justice' in action, where the prosecution of Nazis, most prominently in the Nuremberg Trials, helped promote a transition to democracy. However, this view forgets that Nazis were also prosecuted in what became East Germany, and the story in West Germany is more complicated than has been assumed. Revising received understanding of how transitional justice works, Devin O. Pendas examines Nazi trials between 1945 and 1950 to challenge assumptions about the political outcomes of prosecuting mass atrocities. In East Germany, where there were more trials and stricter sentences, and where they grasped a broad German complicity in Nazi crimes, the trials also helped to consolidate the emerging Stalinist dictatorship by legitimating a new police state. Meanwhile, opponents of Nazi prosecutions in West Germany embraced the language of fairness and due process, which helped de-radicalise the West German judiciary and promote democracy.

From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones? Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they matter.

The 'racial state' has become a familiar shorthand for the Third Reich, encapsulating its raison d'être, ambitions, and the underlying logic of its genocidal violence. The Nazi racial state's agenda is generally understood as a fundamental reshaping of society based on a new hierarchy of racial value. However, this volume argues that it is time to reappraise what race really meant under Nazism, and to question and complicate its relationship to the Nazis' agenda, actions, and appeal. Based on a wealth of new research, the contributors show that racial knowledge and racial discourse in Nazi Germany were far more contradictory and disparate than we have come to assume. They shed new light on the ways that racial policy worked and was understood, and consider race's function, content, and power in relation to society and nation, and above all, in relation to the extraordinary violence unleashed by the Nazis.

From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones? Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they matter.

The 'racial state' has become a familiar shorthand for the Third Reich, encapsulating its raison d'être, ambitions, and the underlying logic of its genocidal violence. The Nazi racial state's agenda is generally understood as a fundamental reshaping of society based on a new hierarchy of racial value. However, this volume argues that it is time to reappraise what race really meant under Nazism, and to question and complicate its relationship to the Nazis' agenda, actions, and appeal. Based on a wealth of new research, the contributors show that racial knowledge and racial discourse in Nazi Germany were far more contradictory and disparate than we have come to assume. They shed new light on the ways that racial policy worked and was understood, and consider race's function, content, and power in relation to society and nation, and above all, in relation to the extraordinary violence unleashed by the Nazis.

This book explores the diverse ways in which Holocaust representations have influenced and structured how other genocides are understood and represented in the West. Rebecca Jinks focuses in particular on the canonical 20th century cases of genocide: Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Using literature, film, photography, and memorialisation, she demonstrates that we can only understand the Holocaust’s status as a ‘benchmark’ for other genocides if we look at the deeper, structural resonances which subtly shape many representations of genocide. Representing Genocide pursues five thematic areas in turn: how genocides are recognised as such by western publics; the representation of the origins and perpetrators of genocide; how western witnesses represent genocide; representations of the aftermath of genocide; and western responses to genocide. Throughout, the book distinguishes between ‘mainstream’ and other, more nuanced and engaged, representations of genocide. It shows how these mainstream representations – the majority – largely replicate the representational framework of the Holocaust, including the way in which mainstream Holocaust representations resist recognising the rationality, instrumentality and normality of genocide, preferring instead to present it as an aberrant, exceptional event in human society. By contrast, the more engaged representations – often, but not always, originating from those who experienced genocide – tend to revolve around precisely genocide’s ordinariness, and the structures and situations common to human society which contribute to and become involved in the violence.