Beyond a Court of Law: Holocaust Film and the Tensions in Primo Levi’s ‘Grey Zone’

2019 ◽  
pp. 174387211986877
Author(s):  
Adam Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
Nazi Camps

The influence of Primo Levi’s writing on the ‘grey zone’ has only sharpened over the last decade, not only in terms of its broader application to human rights contexts beyond the Holocaust, but also through a greater focus on the question of how to understand the behaviour of so-called ‘privileged’ prisoners in the Nazi camps and ghettos. History has shown a court of law to be an inadequate setting for negotiating the complexities of the ethical dilemmas forced on victims in extremis, and substantial problems of judgement and representation have plagued efforts to understand these liminal figures elsewhere. This article examines the tensions within Levi’s writings and maps these onto attempts to represent the ‘grey zone’ in Holocaust films. Engaging in particular with Margarethe von Trotta’s critically acclaimed feature film Hannah Arendt (2012) and Tor Ben-Mayor’s lesser known documentary Kapo (1999), I highlight how these distinct approaches to depicting ‘privileged’ Jews expose the fraught nature of portraying victim complicity on screen.

scholarly journals Sexualization of Female Perpetration in Fictional Holocaust Films: A Case Study of The Reader (2008)

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Sabine Elisabeth Aretz
Keyword(s):  
Female Victims ◽  
Female Perpetration ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Female Perpetrators ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
The One

The publication of Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader (1995) sparked conversation and controversy about sexuality, female perpetrators and the complexity of guilt regarding the Holocaust. The screen adaptation of the book (Daldry 2008) amplified these discussions on an international scale. Fictional Holocaust films have a history of being met with skepticism or even reject on the one hand and great acclaim on the other hand. As this paper will outline, the focus has often been on male perpetrators and female victims. The portrayal of female perpetration reveals dichotomous stereotypes, often neglecting the complexity of the subject matter. This paper focuses on the ways in which sexualization is used specifically to portray female perpetrators in The Reader, as a fictional Holocaust film. An assessment of Hanna’s relationship to Michael and her autonomous sexuality and her later inferior, victimized portrayal as an ambiguous perpetrator is the focus of my paper. Hanna’s sexuality is structurally separated from her role as a perpetrator. Hanna’s perpetration is, through the dichotomous motif of sexuality throughout the film, characterized by a feminization. However, this feminization entails a relativization of Hanna’s culpability, revealing a pejorative of her depiction as a perpetrator. Consequently, I argue that Hanna’s sexualized female body is constructed as a central part of the revelation of her perpetration.

The age of innocence? Child narratives and Italian Holocaust films

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Lichtner
Keyword(s):  
Historical Film ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Child Narratives ◽  
The Age Of Innocence ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
Post War ◽  
Humanitarian Values ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

This article critically assesses the use of children as narrators in two recent Italian Holocaust films: Roberto Benigni's La Vita é Bella (1997) and Ettore Scola's Concorrenza Sleale (2001). The analysis places the films and their choice of narrator in the context of the child in European Holocaust film and argues that the child's perspective, often used to qualify the actions of adult characters and cast a questioning or even accusatory gaze on them, is used in these Italian films to perform the opposite function. Focusing on cinema as a site of memory and as a site of emotions, the article suggests that Italian filmmakers use children to infantilise the audience, induce pity rather than reflection, and discuss Italy's role in the Holocaust while reassuring audiences of the life-affirming, democratic and humanitarian values of post-war Italians. This political and historiographical use of the child's emotions not only reinforces the need to insist on the revision of the brava gente myth, but also invites a thorough reconsideration of the complexity of the relationship between the historical film and the emotions.

scholarly journals Antyautorytarna edukacja prawnicza

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-382
Author(s):  
Michał Paździora
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Point Of No Return

The article is divided into two parts. In the first part, I present the main assumptions of foundationalism and, using selected examples from general reflection on law, reconstruct related strategies of justifying claims. Then, I discuss the anti-foundationalist method of justifying the universalism of human rights. Referring to the arguments of Hannah Arendt and Alessandro Ferrara, I give the example of the Holocaust as the so-called point of no return, whose exemplary validity justifies the idea of human rights without the need to refer to substantive human dignity. In the second part of the article, I use the anti-foundationalist argument to build a conception of anti-authoritarian legal education. The proposed concept of education based on a collaborative, democratic, nonhierarchical, and pluralistic discussion of historical examples should complement traditional legal education.

scholarly journals Holocaust and its Legacy in the Light of the Contemporary Humanitarian Issues

2015 ◽  
pp. 74-85
Author(s):  
E. S. Gromoglasova
Keyword(s):  
Grey Zone ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
Global Responsibility ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Spatial Imagination ◽  
Nazi Camps

Abstract: The paper discusses in-depth new perspectives in the Holocaust studies. It pays special attention to the spatiality of the Nazi camps and analyzes the Holocaust geographies more in general. It conceptualizes the camp as a ‘space of lawlessness’ that was created by political means of terror and exclusion. The specific spatiality of the Nazi camp was constructed by perpetrators with intentions to neglect both juridical law and moral laws of humanity. To prove this point the author analyzes P. Levi, the survivor of Auschwitz, witness and his prominent books “The Drowned and the Saved” and “If This Is a Man”. After reading his witness one can conclude that two spatial characteristics of the camp have been the most fundamental. The first one were the borders that cut the camp’s inmates from the people lived in the outside world and made impossible all human relations like providing help, solidarity, empathy. The second one was ‘the grey zone’ - a spatial metaphor that P. Levi used to explain all forms of collaboration with the camp authorities. The presence of the ‘grey zone’ as a main characteristic of the Nazi camp allows us to conceptualize it as a ‘space’ where ‘the starry heavens and internal moral law’ were no more present. So, the Nazi camp is a ‘place of indistinction’, a ‘spatial threshold’ where ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, ‘human’ and ‘animal’, ‘drowned’ and ‘saved’ were no more distinguishable. The author analyzes more broaden Holocaust geographies outside the camp. Nazis used extensively occupied territories in Eastern Europe to perpetrate their crimes. The author concludes that the geographical localization of the Holocaust was an expression of Nazi irrational genocidal intentions and spatial imaginations. Eastern territories have been constructed by Nazis as ‘broaden spaces of exception and lawlessness’. That spatial imagination and planning allowed the perpetrators to neglect juridical and moral laws in reality. The paper concludes by insisting on the importance of the Holocaust legacy for modern humanitarian action and thinking. The Holocaust legacy helps us to conceptualize more precisely ‘new spaces of lawlessness’. It provides a base for the concepts of human security and ‘global responsibility’ for saving humanity in the contemporary world.

scholarly journals From Fordism to Post-Fordism: Representation of Work in the Films about Nazi Concentration Camps

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Mazierska
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Nazi Camps ◽  
Free People

FROM FORDISM TO POST-FORDISM: REPRESENTATION OF WORK IN THE FILMS ABOUT NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS Nazi concentration camps in cinema, as well as in other media, tend to be represented as an aberration from the human norm. Watching films about the camps (the mainstay of the Holocaust film), we get the impression that there is a clear division between life in a camp and normal life. The inclusion of walls and barbed wire, marking the boundary between the prisoners' world and that of free people, as well as between camp and non-camp stages of the characters' lives confirm this impression. I also regard camps as extraordinary. This extraordinariness has a double meaning. In some aspects Nazi camps deviated qualitatively from ordinary institutions and everyday practices. In others, they were different in a sense of intensifying certain aspects of practices tested in other historical circumstances or even regarded as normal and...

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Re-presenting Genocide: The Canadian Museum of Human Rights and Settler Colonial Power

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Kaur Dhamoon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Forced Movement

AbstractIn settler societies like Canada, United States, and Australia, the bourgeoning discourse that frames colonial violence against Indigenous people as genocide has been controversial, specifically because there is much debate about the meaning and applicability of genocide. Through an analysis of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this paper analyzes what is revealed about settler colonialism in the nexus of difficult knowledge, curatorial decisions, and political debates about the label of genocide. I specifically examine competing definitions of genocide, the primacy of the Holocaust, the regulatory role of the settler state, and the limits of a human rights framework. My argument is that genocide debates related to Indigenous experiences operationalize a range of governing techniques that extend settler colonialism, even as Indigenous peoples confront existing hegemonies. These techniques include: interpretative denial; promoting an Oppression Olympics and a politics of distancing; regulating difference through state-based recognition and interference; and depoliticizing claims that overshadow continuing practices of assimilation, extermination, criminalization, containment, and forced movement of Indigenous peoples. By pinpointing these techniques, this paper seeks to build on Indigenous critiques of colonialism, challenge settler national narratives of peaceful and lawful origins, and foster ways to build more just relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

scholarly journals Genocide and Holocaust Education at Secondary Schools in Armenia

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1 (8)) ◽  
pp. 150-161
Author(s):  
Siranush Chubaryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
National Program ◽  
Holocaust Education ◽  
The Holocaust

The article refers to the organization of Genocide and Holocaust Education at secondary schools in Armenia. The survey and investigation indicate the key direction of the reforms in the national program of education. Special attention is paid to reforms in the fields of social sciences, as well as human rights (including the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust) at the secondary schools in Armenia which significantly contribute to the establishment of civil society in our country.

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