The Poet as Witness: Abraham Sutzkever in Vilna and at Nuremberg

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hazel Frankel
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Emotional Trauma ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
International Court ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Testimony ◽  
Witness Statement ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

This article juxtaposes Abraham Sutzkever’s Yiddish poems written in the Vilna Ghetto between 1941–1943 with the testimony he gave at the Nuremberg Trials on 27 February 1946. A witness, participant, and survivor of the annihilation, Sutzkever became an appropriate representative and unique spokesperson for the murdered Jewish victims. As evidence of a personal and collective tragedy, providing a double record of the destruction of a once-vibrant community through his poetry and his witness statement, Sutzkever imparts the reality of the Holocaust on the first occasion that leaders of a country were indicted before an international court for crimes against humanity. Hence, this article contributes to the understanding of the emotional trauma and fate of Jewish victims during the Holocaust. Emphasising how artistic expression may assist human beings to endure unimaginable hardship, it highlights the continuing importance of personal testimony to endorse memory and warn against recurrence.

Dubious Premises—Evil Conclusions: Moral Reasoning at the Nuremberg Trials

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDMUND D. PELLEGRINO ◽  
DAVID C. THOMASMA
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Human Experimentation ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Free World ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Medical Morality ◽  
Nuremberg Trials ◽  
Nazi Physicians

Fifty years ago, 23 Nazi physicians were defendants before a military tribunal in Nuremberg, charged with crimes against humanity. During that trial, the world learned of their personal roles in human experimentation with political and military prisoners, mass eugenic sterilizations, state-ordered euthanasia of the “unfit,” and the program of genocide we now know as the Holocaust. These physicians, and their colleagues who did not stand trial, were universally condemned in the free world as ethical pariahs. The term “Nazi doctor” became the paradigm for total defection from the most rudimentary elements of medical morality. The caduceus literally became the instrument of the swastika.

Populism and Memory: Legislation of the Past in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095080
Author(s):  
Nikolay Koposov
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Holocaust

This article belongs to the special cluster “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a “cosmopolitan” memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in “old” continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries’ history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory.

The Legacy of Rita Levi-Montalcini: From Nerve Growth Factor to Neuroinflammation

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-20
Author(s):  
Domenico Chirchiglia ◽  
Pasquale Chirchiglia ◽  
Dorotea Pugliese ◽  
Rosa Marotta
Keyword(s):  
Nerve Growth Factor ◽  
Growth Factor ◽  
Neurological Diseases ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Negative Events ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Nerve Roots ◽  
Nerve Growth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Endogenous Substances

Rita Levi-Montalcini was an extraordinary personality and with her profession she made a tremendous contribution to humanity. Doctor, Nobel laureate for medicine, neuroscientist, she contributed, thanks to her research, to improve the knowledge of the nervous system. She discovered the nerve growth factor, which is applied in various fields of neurology, concerning neurodegenerative diseases. She also studied, in relatively newer years, the mechanisms of neuroinflammation. This last is a research that has been developing in recent years and is based on the predominantly anti-inflammatory properties of endogenous substances that able to act not only on diseases of the nerves, neuropathies, on the nerve roots, and radiculopathies but also on migraine and other non-neurological diseases. Her long life was full of positive and negative events. Born in a Jewish family, she lived her life as a young woman through war, Nazi deportations, and the Holocaust. Despite the difficulties, she found time to do research in the medical field, organizing research laboratories with other scholars. She had a difficult life, interspread with pain, destruction, extermination of human beings but also rewarded by scientific discoveries. A “small” woman but a great neuroscientist.

The Myth of Primordialism in Cicero's Theory of Jus Gentium

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-506
Author(s):  
WILLIAM E. CONKLIN
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
International Community ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
State Laws ◽  
International Court ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Justice Judgments ◽  
Civilized World

AbstractAfter setting out the importance of the notion of an international community in contemporary treaties, International Court of Justice judgments and opinio juris, this paper claims that we need to turn to Cicero's works in order to appreciate a sense of what an international community is. Cicero was the first jurist known to recognize and elaborate a theory of the international community and this through his concept of jus gentium. Cicero's theory of jus gentium, I argue, was neither a positivist theory nor a natural law theory. Instead, jus gentium dwelt in an intermediate position between posited state laws and the laws of nature. I find a problem, however, in that Cicero exempts certain types of society from the guidance and protection of the jus gentium. I document examples of the sort of society so exempted. In order to understand why Cicero exempts such societies from the protection of the jus gentium, I argue, Cicero's theory depends on a primordial condition where human beings, living an animal-like existence, lack a language and reason. Cicero posits that human beings must leap from such a primordial condition into a civilized world where language is shared. Cicero associates a civilized world with communication, deliberation, reason, and law, particularly the jus gentium. His theory of jus gentium thereby hierarchizes societies and begs that we ask whether such a hierarchy remains presupposed in contemporary international law and international legal theory.

Simoncioni v. Germany

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-406
Author(s):  
Riccardo Pavoni
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Compensation Claims ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Access

With Judgment No. 238/2014, the Italian Constitutional Court (hereinafter Court) quashed the Italian legislation setting out the obligation to comply with the sections of the 2012 decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy; Greece intervening) (Jurisdictional Immunities or Germany v. Italy) that uphold the rule of sovereign immunity with respect to compensation claims in Italian courts based on grave breaches of human rights, including—in the first place—the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court found the legislation to be incompatible with Articles 2 and 24 of the Italian Constitution, which secure the protection of inviolable human rights and the right of access to justice (operative paras. 1, 2).

scholarly journals Criminal Force: Review of Islamic Law in Contemporary Context

Fahm-i-Islam ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Dr. Zainab Ameen ◽  
Sana Zia
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Contemporary Context

Like the limits of crime, crimes against human life and body are also very dangerous in terms of their effects, so the Qur'an has fixed their punishment for them. Islamic law has set specific punishments for it, and it does not allow any kind of crime to be reduced. These crimes have schakled the very basis of society and they have to be dealt with severely. The basic elements of society are the need to protect the structures on which the lives and deaths of society depend. These crimes can be basically divided into two types: 1.Crimes against human beings (e.g. murder) 2.Crimes against the human body. There is a long way to go around, and in the meantime, this kind of research is needed, the seriousness of which is far greater than the rest of researches. This article examined the crimes against humanity in the light of Islamic law.

2 Crimes Against Humanity Under General International Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mettraux Guénaël
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses crimes against humanity under international law. Crimes against humanity were first introduced at Nuremberg as a means of criminalizing three sorts of criminality that so far had evaded the sanction of international law: atrocities committed outside the context of an armed conflict or independent of it; crimes committed against fellow nationals or nationals of allied nations; and institutionalized discriminatory violence that resulted in individuals being targeted and mistreated by a state because of their identity. Crimes against humanity seek to protect core attributes of all human beings: their dignity; their humanity; and their fundamental human rights. The notion of crimes against humanity reflects the fact that the protection of those interests and the punishment of serious violations of these interests is a matter of universal concern. It also makes it clear that the protection arising from international law does not depend on the nationality of the victim or his membership in a group, nor on his or relationship to the perpetrator. Instead, it is the sheer humanity of the victim that warrants and justifies the criminalization of such acts. And whilst the notion of genocide and crimes against humanity overlap in part in their efforts to protect these core values, unlike genocide, crimes against humanity seek to protect individuals as such, rather than groups of individuals. The chapter then looks at the relationship between crimes against humanity and other international crimes as well as the process of defining crimes against humanity.

scholarly journals Voorzienigheid en verantwoordelijkheid

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Van de Beek
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
The Real ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Genesis 22 ◽  
Existential Problem ◽  
Theological Concept

Providence and responsibility Providence is usually regarded as a theological concept that sets human hearts at rest. God rules our lives, and in particular those of Christians. Modern people often have problems with this idea. How can a good God rule a world with diseases and disasters? And can we actually imagine such an all-controlling power? Nevertheless, these are not the real issues concerning the concept of providence. The existential problem is that providence in the Bible has to do with responsibility: God takes responsibility for his world. This responsibility is total; it even implies responsibility and punishment for sin. Thus providence and atonement are not two separated fields of theology, but coincide. The chapter in the Bible to which the concept is originally related makes this plain: Genesis 22, and verse 8 in particular, states, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son”. (The Vulgate reads: “the victim for the holocaust”.) In Genesis 16-22 the word “to provide”, literally “to see” (r’h), turns out to be a key concept. Who sees? The Lord sees, Abraham sees and Hagar sees – and it is always in a situation of life and death in which they are called to responsibility to save lives. But actually these are lives that have already been sacrificed. Thus providence demands the ultimate from human beings, as it asks the ultimate from their God. Noordmans highlights this in a meditation on Matthew 6:34: “Jesus does not say this in order to lay worries to rest but in order to raise worries”. If you search for the kingship of God, all things that are needed will be given to you – such as feet to walk the second mile.

Barbarous Nationalism and the Liberal International Order: Reflections on the ‘Is,’ the ‘Ought,’ and the ‘Can’

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 439-462
Author(s):  
Carol A.L. Prager
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
International Order ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
First Time ◽  
Second World

It's a mistake to endow the Holocaust or any other massive case of crimes against humanity with cosmic significance. We want to do it because we think the moral enormity of the events should be balanced by an equally grand theory. But it's not. The attempt to do so is poignant.Alain FinkielkrautSavage ethnonationalism, dating back to the end of the eighteenth century, and violent ethnic conflict, as ancient as history, are sometimes viewed as if for the first time in the post-Cold War era. Still, it is the case that the end of the discipline imposed by the bipolar international system has permitted temporarily repressed ethnic and nationalist passions to reassert themselves. In response, a vast literature has sprung up discussing what states should do about genocide and ethnic cleansing, the gravest human rights abuses. In what follows I will consider barbarous nationalism in the context of the liberal international order put into place at the end of the Second World War, the roles of politics, law and morality forming a sub text to that discussion.

Unethical Human Experimentation in Developing Countries and International Criminal Law: Old Wine in New Bottles?

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 1022-1048
Author(s):  
Stefania Negri
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Human Experimentation ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Public Officials

Since Nuremberg, the ethics of scientific research involving human beings has been for decades the source of concern and controversy. Profit-driven experimentation sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry has progressively migrated to the South, turning into a widespread phenomenon imbued with ethical challenges and dilemmas. The protection of vulnerable communities from the risks of unethical behaviour and exploitation, often associated with the outsourcing of clinical trials in developing countries, calls for respect of internationally agreed standards. This Article argues that massive experiments conducted in disregard of universal bioethical principles and human rights may amount to crimes against humanity under international criminal law. It also suggests that, in such cases, the International Criminal Court would have jurisdiction over a broad range of liable individuals, including public officials of host and sponsoring States, physicians and researchers acting in their private capacity, as well as officers and directors of pharmaceutical corporations.

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