Juridical Testimonies after 1945 – Expectations, Contexts and Comparisons

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Juridical Testimonies after 1945 – Expectations, Contexts and Comparisons

Veranstalter
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow
Veranstaltungsort
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow Goldschmidtstraße 28, 04103 Leipzig
Ort
Leipzig
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
08.04.2019 - 09.04.2019
Deadline
29.03.2019
Website
http://www.dubnow.de/veranstaltungen/workshops/
Von
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow

Bearing witness to the Holocaust was integrally related to the prosecution of the perpetrators after 1945. Many survivors who testified to their experiences did so in conscious support of the prosecution of perpetrators. Lamentations for the dead and indictments of the crimes blended together, as did demands for justice, truth, and occasionally vengeance.
Later, the realms of prosecution of and bearing witness to the Holocaust increasingly diverged. The legal testimony of survivors became a controversial issue, characterized by contradictory expectations and demands. Federal German criminal lawyers as well as a part of the general public demanded by reference to constitutional principles that the trials against perpetrators of and collaborators in the state-organized mass murder be conducted as completely ordinary criminal trials. From this perspective, the survivors, with their deep traumas, were dubious witnesses, too biased and emotional. Witness credibility was assessed not least of all in the extent to which they exhibited signs of hatred or feelings of revenge.
Former concentration camp inmates and Holocaust survivors continued using the trials to publicly proclaim their knowledge of the crimes within the frameworks enabled by criminal law. Their motives and concerns were manifold; their ability to make themselves understood in court varied. Legal testimony concerning the Holocaust was a transnational phenomenon; the origins of the witnesses in different, often shifting communities of remembrance and the languages that were spoken on the witness stand significantly shaped the contents and reception of the testimony. This workshop will discuss the legal testimony of Holocaust survivors from various disciplinary perspectives and with regard to various chronologies and countries.

Programm

Monday, 8 April 2019

13.30
Registration

14.00
Welcome
Jörg Deventer / Elisabeth Gallas

Introduction
Katharina Stengel / Dagi Knellessen

14.30
Early Testimonies – Early Trials
Chair: Dominique Trimbur

Natalia Aleksiun
Survivors and Witnesses – Early Jewish Testimonies at Collaboration Trials in Poland

Axel Doßmann
Testifying Outside the Courtroom – Accusation, Revenge and Reflections on mankind by European DPs in David P. Boder´s interviews from 1946

Anna Hájková
Narrative Agency of Theresienstadt Survivors

16.00 Coffee Break

16.30
Keynote
Gabriel Finder
Jewish Witnesses and Postwar Justice in Communist Poland

19.45
Movie Screening: Zeugin aus der Hölle / Gorke Trave / Witness out of Hell
Germany/Yugoslavia 1966, Director: Zika Mitrovic; Producers: Artur Brauner, Aleksandar Krstic; Actors: Irene Papas, Daniel Gélin, Heinz Drache. 83 min., German with English subtitles
Introduction: Katharina Stengel

Tuesday, 9 April 2019

9.30
Multiple Expectations – Functions of Witnessing
Chair: Nicolas Berg

Achim Saupe
Historical Method, Victim Testimonies, and Existential Authenticity

Aurélia Kalisky
Refusal to Testify – Testimony, Denial, and the Violence of the Law

Yehudit Dori-Deston
“The Podium of Law and the Podium of History”– the Multifunctional Position of the Survivors Testimonies in the Eichmann and the Demjanjuk Trials

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30
Multiple Expectations – Justice and Revenge
Chair: Werner Konitzer

Katarzyna Person
Reactions to Postwar Collaboration Trials in Transnational Perspective

Katharina Stengel
Revenge and Resentment in West German Nazi Trials

12.30 Lunch

14.00
Transnational Witnessing
Chair: Elisabeth Gallas

Peter Davies
Knowledge, Testimony, Translation – Interpreters at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

Dagi Knellessen
The Barriers of Transnational Witnessing – German Sobibor Trials in the 1960s

15.00
Concluding Discussion

16.00 End of Conference

Kontakt

Julia Roos
Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow Goldschmidtstraße 28, 04103 Leipzig

antwort@dubnow.de

http://www.dubnow.de/veranstaltungen/workshops/