Axis Rule in Occupied Europe by
link to first edition on hathitrust; "From the series Foundations of the Laws of War, General Editor Joseph Perkovich. The Book that Introduced and Defined the Concept of Genocide. In this pathbreaking study Polish emigre Raphael Lemkin [1900-1959] coined the term "genocide" and defined it is a subject of international law. While the term has come to mean the extermination of a people, Lemkin used it to describe all programs that sought to increase "Aryan" birthrate while working to exterminate the social, cultural and economic independence of non-Germanic peoples. This study was an elaboration of ideas he first proposed in 1933 in his address to the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law (1933), which argued that attacks on racial, religious and ethnic groups should be considered international crimes. Important for the prosecution of the Nazis, it helped to establish the framework for all subsequent efforts to punish crimes against humanity."
Behind Valkyrie by
While the "Valkyrie" plot by Nazi officers to kill Adolf Hitler is the best known instance of German opposition to his dictatorship, there were many other significant acts of resistance. Behind Valkyrie collects documents, letters, and testimonies of Germans who fought Hitler from within, making many of them available in their entirety and in English for the first time.
The Crime of Complicity: the bystander in the Holocaust by
Complicity is a ground-breaking examination of the legal culpability of the bystander told through the lens of the author's family experiences in the Holocaust. It provides an exploration of three distinct events: the death marches; the German occupation of Holland; and the German occupation of Hungary, all of which allow an in-depth discussion of the role of the bystander in varied circumstances. Through a narrative of his parents' stories, Amos Guiora, Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, author, and former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israel Defense Force, poses the question of whether there can and should be legal liability in deciding not to act to aid another person in distress. It draws upon a wide range of historical, psychological, sociological and archival material in an effort to determine the legal and moral responsibility of the bystander. Includes book club discussion questions!
The Fragility of Law by
The Fragility of Law examines the ways in which, during the Second World War, the Belgian government and judicial structure became implicated in the identification, exclusion and killing of its Jewish residents, and in the theft - through Aryanization - of Jewish property. David Fraser demonstrates how a series of political and legal compromises meant that the infrastructure for antisemitic persecutions and ultimately the deaths of thousands of Belgian Jews was Belgian. Based on extensive archival research in Belgium, France, the United States and Israel, The Fragility of Law offers the first detailed exploration in English of this intriguing and virtually unexplored episode of Holocaust history. Belgian legal officials did not hesitate to invoke the provisions of international law found in the Hague Convention and those guarantees of individual freedom found in the national Constitution to oppose the demands of the German Occupying Authority. However, they remained largely silent when anti-Jewish persecution was at stake. Indeed, despite the 2007 official report of expert historians on Belgian state collaboration in the persecution of the country's Jewish population, the mythology of "passive collaboration" which has dominated Belgian historiography and accounts of the Holocaust in that country, must be radically rethought.
Hitler's American Model by
How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws--the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.
Hitler's American Model by
How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws--the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.
Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich by
By presenting one horrific perversion of justice after the other, Müller effectively destroys one pious myth to be found in post-war legal literature--that judges never wavered from the positivistic tradition of German law and did no more than apply existing codes.
Hitler's Prisons by
State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of brutal legal terror. Nikolaus Wachsmann describes the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich and brings Nazi prisons to life through the harrowing stories of individual inmates. Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, he traces the series of changes in prison policies and practice that led eventually to racial terror, brutal violence, slave labour, starvation, and mass killings. Wachsmann demonstrates that ordinary legal officials were ready collaborators who helped to turn courts and prisons into key components in the Nazi web of terror. And he concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in post-war West Germany.
Hitler's Prisons by
State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of brutal legal terror. Nikolaus Wachsmann describes the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich and brings Nazi prisons to life through the harrowing stories of individual inmates. Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, he traces the series of changes in prison policies and practice that led eventually to racial terror, brutal violence, slave labour, starvation, and mass killings. Wachsmann demonstrates that ordinary legal officials were ready collaborators who helped to turn courts and prisons into key components in the Nazi web of terror. And he concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in post-war West Germany.
The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law by
The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law explores the challenge posed by the Holocaust to legal and political thought by examining issues raised by the restitution class action suits brought against Swiss banks and German corporations before American federal courts in the 1990s. Although the suits were settled for unprecedented amounts of money, the defendants did not formally assume any legal responsibility. Thus, the lawsuits were bitterly criticized by lawyers for betraying justice and by historians for distorting history. Leora Bilsky argues class action litigation and settlement offer a mode of accountability well suited to addressing the bureaucratic nature of business involvement in atrocities. Prior to these lawsuits, legal treatment of the Holocaust was dominated by criminal law and its individualistic assumptions, consistently failing to relate to the structural aspects of Nazi crimes. Engaging critically with contemporary debates about corporate responsibility for human rights violations and assumptions about "law," she argues for the need to design processes that make multinational corporations accountable, and examines the implications for transitional justice, the relationship between law and history, and for community and representation in a post-national world. Her novel interpretation of the restitution lawsuits not only adds an important dimension to the study of Holocaust trials, but also makes an innovative contribution to broader and pressing contemporary legal and political debates. In an era when corporations are ever more powerful and international, Bilsky's arguments will attract attention beyond those interested in the Holocaust and its long shadow.
The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law by
The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law explores the challenge posed by the Holocaust to legal and political thought by examining issues raised by the restitution class action suits brought against Swiss banks and German corporations before American federal courts in the 1990s. Although the suits were settled for unprecedented amounts of money, the defendants did not formally assume any legal responsibility. Thus, the lawsuits were bitterly criticized by lawyers for betraying justice and by historians for distorting history. Leora Bilsky argues class action litigation and settlement offer a mode of accountability well suited to addressing the bureaucratic nature of business involvement in atrocities. Prior to these lawsuits, legal treatment of the Holocaust was dominated by criminal law and its individualistic assumptions, consistently failing to relate to the structural aspects of Nazi crimes. Engaging critically with contemporary debates about corporate responsibility for human rights violations and assumptions about "law," she argues for the need to design processes that make multinational corporations accountable, and examines the implications for transitional justice, the relationship between law and history, and for community and representation in a post-national world. Her novel interpretation of the restitution lawsuits not only adds an important dimension to the study of Holocaust trials, but also makes an innovative contribution to broader and pressing contemporary legal and political debates. In an era when corporations are ever more powerful and international, Bilsky's arguments will attract attention beyond those interested in the Holocaust and its long shadow.
Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law by
A great deal of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length scholarly work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of thelaw; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. It provides the history of the Holocaust as a legal event, and sets out how genocide has become known asthe "crime of crimes" under both international law and in popular discourse. It goes on to discuss specific post-Holocaust legal topics, and examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, whichthe author Michael Bazyler labels "Post-Holocaust Law."
Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law by
A great deal of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length scholarly work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of thelaw; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. It provides the history of the Holocaust as a legal event, and sets out how genocide has become known asthe "crime of crimes" under both international law and in popular discourse. It goes on to discuss specific post-Holocaust legal topics, and examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, whichthe author Michael Bazyler labels "Post-Holocaust Law."
The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law, 1940-1945 by
From 1940-1945 the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to fall under German occupation. During that period, local courts continue to function and to apply Island law. Lawyers, judges and government officials in Jersey and Guernsey continued to swear oaths of allegiance to the British Crown. But German anti-Semitic laws and other measures were introduced and became part of the legal system. This book examines the ways in which officials co-operated in the inmplementation of legal measures against the Islands' Jewish community and their property. Resident Jews were registered by Island authorities and lists of Jewish property were compiled and submitted to the Germans by local lawyers and bureaucrats. Jews were banned from employment and from appearing in public. Businesses were Aryanized. Wereless sets were confiscated because their owners were Jewish, and many residents were deported. Throughout, the daily implementation of these anti-Semitic measures was placed in the hands of local Islanders. Based on a thorough review of Island archival material and previously unknown evidence, this book offers the first jurisprudential and legal analysis of the moral and legal failures of law and lawyers to combat Nazi legality on British soil. Cases in which Jewish interests and individuals were protected by the intervention of locals are recorded, and throughout the factual record is compared and analyzed in light of the ethical norms which lawyers and government officials themselves claimed to be upholding. A study is also made of the ways in which the collective memory in the Islands has been constructed so as to ignore and obfuscate the fate of Jews in order to combat more general assertions of collaboration. This conflation of collaboration and the issue of fate of the Jews has not just distorted the historical record, but also echoes many of the elements which may have led to the ease with which Island officials implemented legalized anti-semitism.
Justifying Injustice: Legal Theory in Nazi Germany by
Post-war legal scholars commonly consider the Third Reich's judicial system to be the paradigm of 'evil law'. By examining how crucial parts of this distorted normative order evolved and were justified by regime-loyal legal theorists, we can appreciate how law can bend to a political ideology and fail to keep state power from transgressing elementary standards of humanity and the rule of law. From 1933 to 1939, a flood of publications reflected on the question of how to adapt law to the political ends of National Socialism, debating both the normative and constitutional foundations of the National Socialist state, and the proper form and content of criminal and police law in this new political framework. These debates, the main threads of which are central to this book, reveal the normative ideas driving the Führer state and the legal subtext to the Nazi regime's escalating atrocities.
Konrad Morgen: the conscience of a Nazi judge by
Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge is a moral biography of Georg Konrad Morgen, who prosecuted crimes committed by members of the SS in Nazi concentration camps and eventually came face-to-face with the system of industrialized murder at Auschwitz. His wartime papers and postwar testimonies yield a study in moral complexity.
Konrad Morgen: the conscience of a Nazi Judge by
Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge is a moral biography of Georg Konrad Morgen, who prosecuted crimes committed by members of the SS in Nazi concentration camps and eventually came face-to-face with the system of industrialized murder at Auschwitz. His wartime papers and postwar testimonies yield a study in moral complexity.
Law in Nazi Germany by
While we often tend to think of the Third Reich as a zone of lawlessness, the Nazi dictatorship and its policies of persecution rested on a legal foundation set in place and maintained by judges, lawyers, and civil servants trained in the law. This volume offers a concise and compelling account of how these intelligent and welleducated legal professionals lent their skills and knowledge to a system of oppression and domination. The chapters address why German lawyers and jurists were attracted to Nazism; how their support of the regime resulted from a combination of ideological conviction, careerist opportunism, and legalistic selfdelusion; and whether they were held accountable for their Nazi-era actions after 1945. This book also examines the experiences of Jewish lawyers who fell victim to anti-Semitic measures. The volume will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers with an interest in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the history of jurisprudence.
Law in Nazi Germany by
While we often tend to think of the Third Reich as a zone of lawlessness, the Nazi dictatorship and its policies of persecution rested on a legal foundation set in place and maintained by judges, lawyers, and civil servants trained in the law. This volume offers a concise and compelling account of how these intelligent and welleducated legal professionals lent their skills and knowledge to a system of oppression and domination. The chapters address why German lawyers and jurists were attracted to Nazism; how their support of the regime resulted from a combination of ideological conviction, careerist opportunism, and legalistic selfdelusion; and whether they were held accountable for their Nazi-era actions after 1945. This book also examines the experiences of Jewish lawyers who fell victim to anti-Semitic measures. The volume will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers with an interest in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the history of jurisprudence.
The Law under Swastika by
In the Law under the Swastika, Michael Stolleis examines the evolution of legal history, theory, and practice in Nazi Germany, paying close attention to its impact on the Federal Republic and on the German legal profession. Until the late 1960s, historians of the Nazi judicial system were mostly judges and administrators from the Nazi era. According to Stolleis, they were reluctant to investigate this legal history and maintained the ideal that law could not be affected by politics. Michael Stolleis is part of a younger generation and is determined to honestly confront the past in hopes of preventing the same injustices from happening in the future. Stolleis studies a wide range of legal fields--constitutional, judicial, agrarian, administrative, civil, and business--arguing that all types of law were affected by the political realities of National Socialism. Moreover, he shows that legal traditions were not relinquished immediately with the onset of a new regime. For the first time we can see clearly the continuities between the Nazi period and the postwar period. The law under National Socialism did not make a complete break with the law during the Weimar Republic, nor did the law of the Federal Republic nullify all of the laws under National Socialism. Through a rich and subtle investigation, Stolleis shows how the legal profession and the political regime both reacted to the conditions of the period and molded the judicial system accordingly. Breaking the conspiracy of silence held by the justices in the postwar period, Stolleis stresses the importance of researching Nazi law in order to confront ethical problems in today's legal profession.
Lawyers Without Rights by
Lawyers Without Rights captures the story of the occupational bans on Jewish lawyers and jurists in Berlin, the capital city and home to 3,400 attorneys. Of those, 43 percent were of Jewish origin, the largest group of any city in Germany in 1933. This story was first told in German two decades ago and updated in 2007. The book includes more than 1,600 bios of lawyers in Berlin who could no longer practice law after 1938 because of their Jewish ancestry, and notes the fate of 1,404 of them.With original Forewords by The Honorable Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court; Benjamin B. Ferencz, sole surviving Nuremberg prosecutor; and philanthropist Ronald Abramson
Legislating the Holocaust: the Bernhard Loesener memoirs and supporting documents by
From April 1933 to early 1943, Bernard Loesener served as the official ?Jewish Expert? in the German Third Reich's Ministry of the Interior, the government body responsible for the Nazi's legislative assault on German Jewry. In that role, he personally drafted much of the legislation, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 preeminently, that gradually dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized the Jews of Nazi Germany. During the first six years of Nazi rule, the seminal period of government-sponsored anti-Semitism, Loesener kept the minutes of many crucial, high-level, inter-ministerial conferences concerned with the ?Jewish Question.' As observer and participant, his experiences were virtually unparalleled. In 1950, Loesener penned a memoir that sought to explain, and justify, his actions during the ten-year escalation of Nazi oppression that resulted, to Loesener's professed horror, in the Final Solution. It was published in 1961, in German, by the journal Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte. It has never before appeared in English, until now - in Legislating the Holocaust.
Seeking Justice for the Holocaust by
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial has become a symbol of justice, the pivotal moment when the civilized world stood up for Europe's Jews and, ultimately, for human rights. Yet the world, represented at the time by the Allied powers, almost did not stand up despite the magnitude of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Seeking justice for the Holocaust had not been an automatic--or an obvious--mission for the Allies to pursue. In this book, Graham Cox recounts the remarkable negotiations and calculations that brought the United States and its allies to this point. At the center of this story is the collaboration between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert C. Pell, Roosevelt's appointee as U.S. representative to the United Nations War Crimes Commission, in creating an international legal protocol to prosecute Nazi officials for war crimes and genocide. Pell emerges here as an unheralded force in pursuing justice and in framing human rights as an international concern. The book also enlarges our perspective on Roosevelt's policies regarding European Jews by revealing the depth of his commitment to postwar justice in the face of staunch opposition, even from some within his administration. What made the international effort especially contentious was a debate over its focus--how to punish for aggressive warfare and crimes against humanity. Cox exposes the internal contradictions and contortions behind the U.S. position and the maneuverings of numerous officials negotiating the legal parameters of the trials. Most telling perhaps were the efforts of Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, to circumscribe the scope of new international law--for fear of setting precedents that might boomerang on the United States because of its own racial segregation practices. With its broad new examination of the background and context of the Nuremberg trials, and its expanded view of the roles played by Roosevelt and his unlikely deputy Pell, Seeking Justice for the Holocaust offers a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how the Allies came to hold Nazis accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Under the Shadow of the Swastika by
This incisive study of the ethics of war is the only work to focus on the moral dilemmas of resistance and collaboration in Nazi-occupied Europe. Rab Bennett provides a comprehensive guide to the harrowing ethical choices that confronted ordinary citizens as they tried to survive the Nazi onslaught. Bennett explores how the Resistance responded to German security policy that had at its foundation the doctrine of collective responsibility. He shows how Nazi tactics, including the systematic taking and killing of hostages, reprisal killings, and the destruction of entire villages, complicated the attempts of the Resistance to fight back. He also includes a detailed discussion of the controversial role of the Jewish police. Under the Shadow of the Swastika analyzes morally questionable methods of resistance, such as torture, the mutilation and killing of German prisoners of war, and guerrilla warfare. By assessing their conduct in relation to the laws of war and the just war tradition, Bennett mounts a revisionist challenge to longstanding myths about the Resistance.
The Unfree Professions German Lawyers, Teachers and Engineers, 1900-1950 by
How could educated professionals have supported the Nazi movement and collaborated with Hitler's inhuman policies? Jarausch examines this fascinating and largely unexplored subject, tracing the social, ideological, and political development of three representative German professions--law, teaching, and engineering--from the late Empire to the early Federal Republic. Based on a reformulated professionalization theory and on authoritative statistics, he describes professional prosperity and prestige in the Second Reich and analyzes the social crisis brought on by hyperinflation, stabilization, and Depression during the chaotic Weimar years. Threatened with the loss of livelihood and frightened by cultural disorientation, many experts embraced neo-conservative ideas and cooperated in Hitler's seizure of power. Welcoming the apparent restoration of their authority in the early Third Reich, professionals collaborated in the racial purges and warping of ethics, practices, and organizations under Nazi rule. During the Second World War, the radicalization of SS terror threatened the very survival of the professions so that most practitioners were only too happy to be rescued by Allied victory. Exploring the reluctant democratization of the post-war professions, Jarausch concludes with a reflection on the lessons of the German experience for the relationship between professionalism and liberty.
Unlikely Heroes by
Classes and books on the Holocaust often center on the experiences of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, but rescuers also occupy a prominent space in Holocaust courses and literature even though incidents of rescue were relatively few and rescuers constituted less than 1 percent of the population in Nazi-occupied Europe. As inspiring figures and role models, rescuers challenge us to consider how we would act if we found ourselves in similarly perilous situations of grave moral import. Their stories speak to us and move us. Yet this was not always the case. Seventy years ago these brave men and women, today regarded as the Righteous Among the Nations, went largely unrecognized; indeed, sometimes they were even singled out for abuse from their co-nationals for their selfless actions. Unlikely Heroes traces the evolution of the humanitarian hero, looking at the ways in which historians, politicians, and filmmakers have treated individual rescuers like Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler, as well as the rescue efforts of humanitarian organizations. Contributors in this edited collection also explore classroom possibilities for dealing with the role of rescuers, at both the university and the secondary level.
Vessels of Evil by
Two profound atrocities in the history of Western culture form the subject of this moving philosophical exploration: American Slavery and the Holocaust. An African American and a Jew, Laurence Mordekhai Thomas denounces efforts to place the suffering of one group above the other. Rather, he pronounces these two defining historical experiences as profoundly evil in radically different ways and points to their logically incompatible aims. The author begins with a discussion of the nature of evil, exploring the fragility of human beings and the phenomena of compartmentalizing, unquestioning obedience to authority, and moral drift. Citing compelling examples from history and contemporary life, he characterizes evil acts in terms of moral agency, magnitude, and intent. With moving testimony, Thomas depicts the moral pain of African Americans and Jews during their ordeals and describes how their past as victims has affected their future. Without invidious comparison, he distinguishes between extermination and domination, death and natal alienation, physical and mental cruelty, and between being viewed as irredeemable evil and as a moral simpleton. Thomas also considers the role of blacks and Jews in the Christian narrative. In Vessels of Evil, Thomas also considers the ways Jews and blacks have gone on to survive. He analyzes the relative flourishing of Jews and the languishing of blacks in this country and examines the implications of their dissimilar tragedies on any future relationship between these two minorities.
Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France by
The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France is taking more responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 of its Jewish citizens, Richard Weisberg here provides a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with Hitler's genocidal campaign during the dark period known as Vichy. As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period formalized institutional anti-semitism. In Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France, Weisberg pulls back the curtain on the ways in which the legal community responded to these laws. Private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of religious exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Anti-Jewish laws slipped easily and with little resistance into the legal canon and French lawyers often enlisted the laws as a means of career advancement. Examining the work of lawyers and judges, policy makers and administrators, prosecutors and defenders, reporters and academics, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level. For a discussion about this book at the Amgot web site, please go tohttp://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm
Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France by
The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France is taking more responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 of its Jewish citizens, Richard Weisberg here provides a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with Hitler's genocidal campaign during the dark period known as Vichy. As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period formalized institutional anti-semitism. In Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France, Weisberg pulls back the curtain on the ways in which the legal community responded to these laws. Private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of religious exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Anti-Jewish laws slipped easily and with little resistance into the legal canon and French lawyers often enlisted the laws as a means of career advancement. Examining the work of lawyers and judges, policy makers and administrators, prosecutors and defenders, reporters and academics, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level. For a discussion about this book at the Amgot web site, please go tohttp://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm
