Losing Trust in the World: Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture (Stephen S. Weinstein Series in Post-Holocaust Studies)

In July 1943, the Gestapo arrested an obscure member of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When his torture-inflicting interrogators determined he was no use to them and that he was a Jew, he was deported to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945, Jean Am�ry went on to write a series of essays about his experience. No reflections on torture are more compelling. Am�ry declared that the victims of torture lose trust in the world at the �very first blow.� The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture then and now. Their inquiry grapples with the euphemistic language often used to disguise torture and with the question of whether torture ever constitutes a �necessary evil.� Differences of opinion reverberate, raising deeper questions: Can trust be restored? What steps can we as individuals and as a society take to move closer to a world in which torture is unthinkable? In July 1943, the Gestapo arrested an obscure member of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When his torture-inflicting interrogators determined he was no use to them and that he was a Jew, he was deported to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945, Jean Améry went on to write a series of essays about his experience. No reflections on torture are more compelling. Améry declared that the victims of torture lose trust in the world at the "very first blow." The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture then and now. Their inquiry grapples with the euphemistic language often used to disguise torture and with the question of whether torture ever constitutes a "necessary evil." Differences of opinion reverberate, raising deeper questions: Can trust be restored? What steps can we as individuals and as a society take to move closer to a world in which torture is unthinkable? Cover Contents Prologue: The Questions of Torture PART I. WHAT IS TORTURE? 1 Torture during the Holocaust: Responsible Witnessing 2 Torture 3 Speech under Torture: Bearing Witness to the Howl PART II. IS TORTURE JUSTIFIABLE? 4 Johann Baptist Neuhäusler and Torture in Dachau 5 The Emerging Halachic Debate about Torture 6 Torture in Light of the Holocaust: An Impossible Possibility 7 The Justification of Suffering: Holocaust Theodicy and Torture PART III. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT TORTURE? 8 Assuaging Pain: Therapeutic Care for Torture Survivors 9 Torture and the Totalitarian Appropriation of the Human Being: From National Socialism to Islamic Jihadism 10 Crying Out: Rape as Torture and the Responsibility to Protect Epilogue: Again, the Questions of Torture Selected Bibliography Editors and Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z