The return of Herero and Nama bones from Germany: the victims’ struggle for recognition and recurring genocide memories in Namibia

The colonial troops of imperial Germany, the Schutztruppe, carried out a systematic war of extermination (1904 – 1908) against the Herero and Nama people in what is now modern day Namibia. An undisclosed number of bones of the victims were traded to Germany in their pursuit of scientific racial studies. As part of the post-genocide growing trend calling for the repatriation of the bones, ongoing negotiations between the Namibian and German governments have resulted in the return of fifty-five skulls, including a few skeletons since October 2011. The return of these bones to Namibia has divided Namibian society on religious, cultural, political and ethnic issues regarding what to do with the genocide victims’ remains. In view of the general public perception that the genocide bones have been treated with a considerable degree of indignity, this study attempts to associate the evolving disrespectfulness for the genocide’s bones with the re-emergence of genocide trauma and suffering of the affected communities in general. It perceives political obstruction, involving German and Namibian governments, as a central factor that impedes humanitarian efforts to seek justice and dignity for the bones or descendants of the genocide’s victims.

Corpses of atonement: the discovery, commemoration and reinterment of eleven Alsatian victims of Nazi terror, 1947–52

In April 1947, a mass grave containing the bodies of 11 Alsatians executed by the Offenburg Gestapo in December 1944 was uncovered in Rammersweier. In the following days, the bodies were exhumed, placed in coffins and, after a two day vigil by local residents, solemnly and publically reburied after a two confessional service in the presence of school children and a wide cross-section of local and state authorities. A roadside memorial was constructed for the victims in 1948. The bodies of the murdered Alsatians played a central symbolic role throughout the process of exhumation, commemoration, and response to the later vandalism of the erected monument in their name. This chapter argues that the meticulous attention to the remembrance activities surrounding the reburial and memorialisation of the Alsatians and the intensity of the vandalism investigation demonstrates that Badenese officials were convinced that their responses contained a symbolic resonance beyond giving eleven more victims of Nazi terror a proper burial. In effect, contemporary Badenese authorities and their Alsatian counterparts came to view the dead bodies as representative of the larger crimes of the Nazi regime, particularly those perpetrated against the population of Alsace.

Exhumations in post-war rabbinical responsas

Proper burial, according to Jewish tradition, is one of the most esteemed, important and respected traditions; it is considered to be the only "Mitzva"i>, that is, more important than the study of the Torah. Due to the extent of the corpses, human remains, ashes and mass graves in post-Holocaust European, rabbinic authorities therefore increasingly faced the issue of how to deal with their appropriate commemoration following WWII liberation. One of the most common questions in rabbinical discourse was the question of post-war reburial from mass graves to provide proper burial for each of the deceased individuals. Later rabbinic writing provides a more systematic approach to the reality of post-war reburial of mass graves, dealing with the fact that many of the bodies were incinerated and oftentimes the only things present were hair, teeth, bones, dirt and ashes. In many of the rabbinical deliberations a complex process of ruling is evident forcing the rabbis to base their final ruling on earlier Talmudic citations rather than later responsas. Due to the lack of academic literature the field, this chapter will provide a descriptive presentation of various rabbinical responsas to the vast amount of Jewish human remains after the Holocaust, exploring the themes, language, context, historical background and approach.

Chained corpses: warfare, politics and religion after the Habsburg Empire in the Julian March, 1930s–1970s

The chapter deals with the role of corpses in public memory during the Age of the World Wars in the North Adriatic borderland, where human remains had a momentous role in the clash among the area’s main collective identities: Italian, Slovenian and Croatian nationals, Habsburg authorities, Communists, Nazis, Fascists and new Fascists, and the Jewish community. In particular, corpses were actors in political-religious representations and a driving force in the period’s war propaganda. After 1945, human remains were contentious among conflicting factions and later became involved in trials against Nazi war criminals – regular public opinion has since underlined their fate. The analysis begins by recalling the public display and long spanning funeral of the mummified corpse of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his spouse, on the brink of the Great War in July 1914. The paper then explores other examples in use of corpses in the public discourse and pays careful attention to three case studies: the Redipuglia WW1 shrine, the pictures shot in winter 1943–44 of exhumed partisans’ enemies, and the victims’ ashes of the San Sabba Rice Mill lager.

The unburied victims of Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion: where and when does the violence end?

This chapter outlines the circumstances by which the bodies of over four hundred and fifty individuals killed during the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya came to be deposited in the Osteology Department stores at Kenya’s national museum in Nairobi, where they currently serve as that institution’s primary human osteology reference collection accessed by local and international researchers. The history of this collection is then discussed against the wider and ongoing context of memorialisation of the Mau Mau insurgency as a founding process in Kenya’s struggle against British colonialism and the birth of nationhood. It also explores some of the remaining divisions between Mau Mau supporters and so-called ‘loyalists’, and efforts at achieving peace and reconciliation involving these different constituencies and the role that this specific collection of human remains could play in such processes. The chapter concludes with a series of more general observations on commemorating victims of mass violence and the treatment of human remains in post-conflict situations.

(Re)cognising the corpse: individuality, identification and multidirectional memorialisation in post-genocide Rwanda

Given the lack of individualised corpses, how do Rwanda’s principal memorial sites-Nyamata, Nyarubuye and Murambi – function as commemorative grounds? Should each corpse be named to combat the facelessness with which genocidal perpetrators paint their victims? How do perceptions of the corpse shift with the endowment of individuality. There is the possibility that the resistance to discussing the corpse in studies of genocide and mass violence is the result of its being largely understood as inhering within a post-violence landscape, as a product of violence rather than representing violence itself. The chapter will examine a number of texts detailing the Rwandan genocide – both fictional and autobiographical – and the way in which they describe corpses of victims being literal parts of the landscape. Through literary depictions of the corpse by Jean Hatzfeld, Boubacar Boris Diop and Philip Gourevitch, this chapter will suggest that the significance of the corpse has shifted within national consciousness; while constantly being a symbol of death and a call to mourning, the corpse has, in spite of its anonymity at commemorative sites, become the means by which the Rwandan community have begun to come to terms with their loss.

Introduction. Corpses in society: about human remains, necro-politics, necro-economy and the legacy of mass violence

The introduction outlines the book’s scope and addresses the central questions raised by the included chapters: when, how and why are bodies hidden or exhibited, and what is their effect, either desired or unintended, on various political, cultural or religious practices? With explicit reference to each chapter, a historic and disciplinary background will be presented, raising issues such as the increased application of forensic sciences on the discovered dead body, the emergence of debates surrounding necro-political strategies by states and political communities, and the economy and chain of custody over human remains resulting from historic and contemporary forms of violence.

‘Earth conceal not my blood’: forensic and archaeological approaches to locating the remains of Holocaust victims

It is estimated that around 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. However, compared to the overall number of missing persons, very few searches for the corpses of victims have been carried out. In fact, thousands of burials and deposition sites remain unlocated and unmarked and few of the burials found have been examined by specialists. Certainly, very few have been examined using techniques now commonly used in forensic investigation and archaeology in relation to other periods of history. This paper will address this paradox between the ever-present and physically illusive corpse in relation to the Holocaust. It will consider the circumstances and sensitivities that have impacted upon searches for the remains of Holocaust victims in the past, given the sites’ symbolic and scientific resources for victims and their descendants as well as archaeologists, and as such create sites of conflict between different religious and political authorities within a necro-economy. Ultimately it will argue that, providing the sensitivities surrounding the investigation of this period are accounted for, forensic and archaeological techniques can be utilised in the future to locate previously unmarked sites, characterise burial environments, analyse corpses and shed new light on practices of killing and body disposal.

A Beothuk skeleton (not) in a glass case: rumours of bones and the remembrance of an exterminated people in Newfoundland – the emotive immateriality of human remains

This chapter tells the story of the Beothuk people in Newfoundland, hunter-gatherers indigenous to this northern island. The Europeans, mostly English and Irish, came in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the coming of the settlers the Beothuk dwindled and finally, in 1829 they were declared extinct. The exact cause of this extinction is still debated, but there is no doubt that the ancestors of many of those still living in Newfoundland were the agents of extermination of a people, whether by disease or genocidal violence. Since their extermination Beothuk bones emerged from the earth and were sometimes taken away and stored and displayed in museums in Newfoundland, Edinburgh and elsewhere. These bones still exist, now withdrawn from display, but intermittently receiving the attention of oesteoarchaeologists and physical anthropologists, as well as a handful of activists petitioning for their return. This chapter addresses the capacity of bones to speak, to give testimony and, in giving testimony, to make “old acts indelible”. How do these bones trouble and haunt contemporary articulations of settler identity and our ethical engagement with the absent presence of those who have been violently dispossessed?

(Re)politicising the dead in post-Holocaust Poland: the afterlives of human remains at the Bełżec extermination camp1

This chapter will focus on three extermination camps – Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka – to understand the cultural and social importance of burial for the processes of mourning performed in post-catastrophic contexts. Often referred to as the most deadly and, at the same time, most forgotten camps, these sites in many respects differ from the other National Socialist camps erected in Nazi-occupied Poland due to their ceasing to operate and being dismantled as early as autumn 1943. They thus left a relatively small number of camp survivors and the absence of any material traces, as well as a lack of press coverage at the time of liberation. The chapter will analyse the transformation of former camp sites into landscapes of memory and focus on the ethical and political motivations for and implications of the archaeological research and its role for reshaping the commemorative activities at the camp locations. It will be argued that the new commemorative idioms developed at and for the sites of former extermination camps not only reflect important changes in the approach to the Holocaust in post-1989 Poland, but can also be interpreted in terms of ‘commemorative reburial’: a politically and ethically charged effort aimed at performing the ‘buriability’ of the victims of the camps.