scholarly journals The ambiguous victim: Miklós Nyiszli's narrative of medical experimentation in Auschwitz-Birkenau

HISTOREIN ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Turda
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
The Past ◽  
Medical Experimentation ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Eyewitness Account ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims

While recent scholarship has – for the past two decades – endeavoured to transcend initial reservations about memoirs of Holocaust survivors, the difficulty with some of these memoirs – namely their authors’ implicit complicity in unethical medical research and in the Nazi Holocaust in general – remains however problematic. To address this thorny issue, this article considers the memoirs of a Jewish inmate doctor, Miklós Nyiszli, who worked with and for SS medical officers in Auschwitz, and his Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. His memoirs can help us understand wider truths about the “bond of complicity” that, according to Primo Levi, existed between perpetrators and victims in the Nazi concentration camp.<br />

Songs Confront the Past: Music in KZ Sachsenhausen, 1936–1945

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHIRLI GILBERT
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Landscape

This article considers the role of music among German, Polish and Jewish prisoners in Sachsenhausen, the Nazi concentration camp. It focuses primarily on the songs that were composed and sung in the camp, of which at least 350 are known. The article uses song as a lens through which to examine the diversity of the camp's social landscape, and places particular emphasis on the distinctive ways in which prisoner groups chose to interpret and respond to the experience of incarceration.

scholarly journals Medical Research and Incompetent Adults

2014 ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Michael J. Gunn ◽  
J. G. Wong ◽  
I. C. H. Clare ◽  
A. J. Holland
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
World War ◽  
Medical Experimentation ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
Therapeutic Research ◽  
Nuremberg Trials ◽  
Second World

<p>The spectre of Nazi medical experimentation during the Second World War undoubtedly hangs over any discussion of medical research and incompetent adults. The concentration camp experiments denied the rights of people who would have been able to give or withhold consent but were, of course, not asked. The fears raised by the nature of these experiments has given rise to a real, understandable and genuine concern that research participants, particularly those who are vulnerable, may be abused through their participation. For example, Professors Kennedy and Grubb take the view that nontherapeutic research on incompetent adults is prohibited and go on to say that “given the history of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s which culminated in the Nuremberg Trials ... it is entirely understandable that some European countries would hold the view that an absolute prohibition was the only defensible [position].” The question that arises is whether prohibition is always the correct approach, or whether some forms of research should be permissible, recognising that strict protections will be necessary. We reflect upon the rigidity of the distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic research in the context of a research project that we undertook.</p>

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Banki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
World War ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Individual

The book begins by looking at the arguments made by Holocaust survivors (such as Ruth Kluger, Simon Wiesenthal, and Primo Levi) for the impossibility of forgiveness beyond any subjective volition. As the drive towards closure and normalization, forgiveness has been interpreted, particularly since World War II, to be the enemy of justice. Against this background, Eva Mozes Kor’s Forgiving Doctor Mengele argues on the contrary that forgiveness is a means of self-empowerment of the individual. Through forgiveness, the individual can heal themselves from the traumas of the past. The introduction puts forward the thesis that what Eva Mozes Kor calls forgiveness is in fact not forgiveness, but a therapy of mourning in the name of forgiveness. What forgiveness is in relation to the Holocaust must be thought otherwise. It should be determined in relation to what Vladimir Jankélévitch calls the “inexpiable” character of Nazi crimes, i.e., a sphere foreign to any form of reconciliation, mediation, reparation, salvation, normalization, mourning, healing, apology, or excuse. If the value of forgiveness is not to be the philosophical and religious ally of the Nazi Final Solution, then it must be thought as irreducible to any pre-given finality or achieved normalization.

Anti-Catholicism in Germany, Britain, and the United States: A Review and Critique of Recent Scholarship

2001 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjule Anne Drury
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
Political Economic

The past two decades have seen an efflorescence of works exploring cultural anti-Catholicism in a variety of national contexts. But so far, historians have engaged in little comparative analysis. This article is a first step, examining recent historical literature on modern British and American anti-Catholicism, in order to trace the similarities and distinctiveness of the turn-of-the-century German case. Historians are most likely to be acquainted with American nativism, the German Kulturkampf, continental anticlericalism, and the problems of Catholic Emancipation and the Irish Question in Britain. Many of the themes and functions of anti-Catholic discourse in the West transcended national and temporal boundaries. In each case, the conceptualization of a Catholic ‘other’ is a testament to the tenacity of confessionalism in an age formerly characterized as one of inexorable secularization. Contemporary observers often agreed that religious culture—like history, race, ethnicity, geography, and local custom—played a role in the self-evident distinctiveness of peoples and nations, in their political forms, economic performance, and intellectual and artistic contributions. We will see how confessionalism remained a lens through which intellectuals and ordinary citizens, whether attached or estranged from religious commitments, viewed political, economic, and cultural change.

Ravensbruck: An Eyewitness Account of a Women's Concentration Camp.

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 339
Author(s):  
Nancy R. Chiswick ◽  
Germaine Tillion ◽  
Gerald Sotterwhite
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Eyewitness Account

Geochemical assessment of soils in the German Nazi concentration camp in Stutthof (Northern Poland)

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (sup1) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Przemysław Charzyński ◽  
Maciej Markiewicz ◽  
Magdalena Majorek ◽  
Renata Bednarek
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Northern Poland ◽  
Geochemical Assessment

Houses of cards

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 56-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Bergmann
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Ad Hominem ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
New Information ◽  
Exciting Time

We have reached an important moment in the study of the Roman house. The past 20 years have been extremely active, with scholars approaching domestic space down different disciplinary and methodological avenues. Since the important essay on Campanian houses by A. Wallace-Hadrill in 1988, new excavations and scores of books and articles have changed the picture of Pompeii and, with it, that of the Roman house. Theoretical archaeologists have taken the lead, approaching Pompeii as an "archaeological laboratory" in which, armed with the interpretative tools of spatial and statistical analysis, they attempt to recover ancient behavioral patterns. The interdisciplinary picture that emerges is complex and inevitably contradictory. There is so much new information and such a tangle of perspectives that it is time to consider what we have learned and what kinds of interpretative tools we might best employ. Without doubt this is an exciting time in Roman studies. But two overviews of recent scholarship to appear this year, the present one by R. Tybout and another by P. Allison (AJA 105.2 [2001]), express considerable frustration and resort to ad hominem recriminations that signal a heated backlash, at least among some.

Red Parents, Blue Parents: The Politics of Modern Parenthood

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Elder ◽  
Steven Greene
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
American Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractOver the past several decades the major parties in the US have not only politicized parenthood, but have come to offer increasingly polarized views of the ideal American family. This study builds on recent scholarship exploring the political impact of parenthood (e.g. Elder, Laurel, and Steven Greene. 2012a.

Archaic Shell Mounds in the American Southeast

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Saunders
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeastern United States ◽  
Savannah River ◽  
The Past ◽  
Island Area ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Shell Mounds ◽  
The Future ◽  
American Southeast ◽  
Shell Rings

Freshwater and estuarine shellfish began to be exploited in the southeastern United States between 9000 and 7000 b.p. Shortly thereafter, shell mounds appeared in the mid-South Shell Mound Archaic, along the St. Johns River in peninsular Florida, and, somewhat later, in the Stallings Island area along the middle Savannah River. On the lower Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, shell rings arose. Until recently, all these mounds were considered middens—the accumulations of the remains of simple meals of mobile peoples who visited the same areas for hundreds or thousands of years. More recent scholarship indicates that these mounds were deliberate constructions—some of the first sculpted landscapes created by Archaic peoples to memorialize the past, celebrate the present, and provide for the future. In this chapter, recent research on shell sites in these four areas is discussed. The emphasis is on changing perspectives about the peoples who built them.

scholarly journals Human Beings after Catastrophe: Poetical Portraits by Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Veronica De Pieri
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Primo Levi ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Submission Date

January 27, 1945: the Red Army set Auschwitz concentration camp free, making this date the liberation day for thousands of inmates, victims of the Nazi’s idea of a master race. August 15, 1945: Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on Japanese radio after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. XX century witnessed two of the most abominable atrocities of human history whose repercussions still affect not only German and Japanese societies, involved at first place, but also each individual’s consciousness too. Over the past decades different studies have been investigating these indelible marks on history on many levels: historical, political, sociological, psychological and even artistic approaches were called into question in the search for the truth about Shoah and atomic bombing catastrophes. This study offers a different perspective on the topic by comparing the poetical responses of two representatives of the so-called Shoah Literature and Atomic Bombing Literature: Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara. Both authors, although the space-related distance and the different nature of the traumatic experiences they witnessed, gave birth to similar poetical responses under the title of Se questo è un uomo (“If this is a man”) and Kore ga ningen na no desu (“This is a human being”).This research sets itself the ambitious goal to demonstrate how, regardless of territorial, cultural and stylistic boundaries, a similar human response toward catastrophe can be detached in the literary productions of Levi and Hara: a comparison on stylistic, figurative and expressive level reveals the analogous literary solutions adopted by the authors to depict human’s frailty in front of trauma. Both authors answer the literary imperative of writing: their commitment unveils the aim to bear witness and to convey memory to the future generations. Words, enriched by authors of allusive and critical meanings, represent an effective and necessary means to keep alive and to preserve the traumatic memory. The literature of the catastrophe, then, becomes a language that unites, rather than divides, different societies. It serves as an universal mouthpiece for victims’ experiences to prevent Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen again. Submission date: September 2017.

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