International Symposium

Nazi Camps in the Occupied Soviet Territories

September 19–20, 2011

Paris, France

Program :

Dekulakisation as mass violence, Nicolas WERTH

1) Context

Dekulakisation, or the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”, was part of Stalin's “second revolution” (or “revolution from above”), launched at the end of 1929 with the decision to collectivise millions of peasant households. The economic backwardness and political estrangement of the peasantry, which comprised the vast majority of the population of the Soviet Union, was the Achilles' heel of Soviet power. The peasant's support for the Bolshevik revolution, spured on by the 8 November1917 Decree on Land, granting the peasants' demands for ownership of the land and fulfilling the dreams of rural Russia since the peasant uprisings of the 17th century, was short-lived. As early as 1918, as the Bolsheviks desperately needed to collect grain to secure their power and fight the civil war, forced grain collections by armed groups of Red Army soldiers and hastily armed workers' detachments alienated the same peasant producers who had helped bring down the old tsarist order with their violent rebelliousness. The civil war in the countryside was brutal and lethal. Millions of peasants died in the conflict, some fighting on one side or the other, many simply caught in between the back and forth of the competing White and Red armies. The forced expropriation of grain and attempts to collectivise the countryside led to pitched battles between peasants and the new representatives of Soviet power. Peasant uprisings broke out in Ukraine, in the Tambov region, along the Volga and in Western Siberia. By the beginning of 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had no choice but to retreat to the countryside. In March 1921, they introduced what was called the New Economic Policy (NEP), which called for a halt to the requisitionning of grain and allowed the peasants to accumulate and trade in grain products. Many historians consider the NEP period as simply a pause, a “truce” between the first major Bolshevik war against the peasantry (1919-1921) and the second and final one to follow (1929-1933) (Graziosi, 1996).

However, the context was different: whereas in 1920-21 large segments of the peasantry had actively resisted Boshevik policy, in 1929-30 it was the pacified peasant society that was the target of the Stalinist revolution from above. To justify his attack, Stalin referred to the “threat” that ”rich peasants”, labelled “kulaks”, posed to the very survival of the Soviet regime, which was supposedly being strangled by the kulaks' deliberate refusal to sell their grain to the state. Stalin and many Party leaders were still traumatised by the threat of starvation experienced by many town dwellers during the civil war and wanted to ensure that such a possibility would never again recur.

The “dekulakisation” campaign begun in January 1930 had in reality a twofold objective: to “extract” (the term used in secret police directives) “elements” likely to resist the collectivisation of the countryside being undertaken at the same time; and to “colonise” the vast, inhospitable areas of Siberia, the Northern Region, the Urals and Kazakhstan. The first objective corresponded to the view, clearly expressed by the Bolsheviks when they took power, that peasant society contained “exploitative elements” that were irremediably hostile to the regime and that would sooner or later have to be “liquidated as a class”. In fact, Stalin merely repeated Lenin's famous diatribes against the “kulaks”: since 1918, “kulaks”, an artificially constructed group, had been subjected to stereotyping and deshumanisation; they had been designated, in the press and propaganda, as “cockroaches”, “blood-suckers”, “vampires”, or just plain “scum”, “vermin” and “garbage” to be cleansed, crushed and liquidated (Colas, 1995). The official policy of “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”, adopted by the Stalinists at the end of 1929, did not, however, imply physical liquidation of all “kulaks”. The great majority of them were to be expropriated and deported, thus fulfilling the second objective of “dekulakisation”: to provide cheap labour for the colonisation and economic development of the country's inhospitable areas, which were rich in natural resources. In three years (1930-1932), more than 5 million “kulaks” were either expropriated or reduced to poverty after having had to sell, hurriedly, their property (the authorities called this process “self-dekulakisation”); 2.3 million men, women and children were deported (of whom approximately half a million died untimely deaths); over 300,000 were arrested and interned; between 20,000 and 30,000 were sentenced to death by extra-judicial courts.

2) Decision-making processes and implementation of the dekulakisation campaigns (1930-1932)

On 27 December 1929, Stalin publicly demanded “the eradication of all kulak tendencies and the elimination of the kulaks as a class”. A commission from the Politburo, chaired by Viatcheslav Molotov, was tasked with pursuing all measures needed to achieve this goal. On 30 January 1930, the commission issued a secret resolution defining three categories of “kulaks”:

those “engaged in counterrevolutionary activities” (“first category”) were to be arrested and transferred to work camps or executed if they put up any resistance. Their families were to be deported and all their property confiscated. The resolution set a limit of 63,000 household heads in the “first category” (in fact, 284,000 persons were to be arrested during the first six months of the dekulakisation campaign as ”kulaks of the first category, 20,000 of whom were sentenced to death by troïki, extra-judicial commissions);

those “who manifested less active opposition to the Soviet state but were arch-exploiters and naturally supported counter-revolution”, placed in the “second category”, were to be arrested and deported with their families to remote areas of the Northern region, Siberia, the Urals and Kazakhstan. All their property – except the most essential domestic goods, a minimum amount of food and up to 500 rubles per family – was to be confiscated. The Molotov commission set, for a number of regions and republics, quotas of “second-category kulaks”: the total number was 154,000 households (in fact, 400,000 families were to be deported in 1930-1931);

the remainder of the kulaks, described as “loyal to the regime” and classified in the “third category”, were to be expropriated and resettled on “land requiring improvement, outside the limits of the collective farm lands but within the administrative district in which they lived” (Davies, 1980; Ivnitskii, 1996; N.Werth, 1997).

It is important to note that the so-called “kulaks” were first and foremost defined in terms of families, not as individuals. Thus, not only were the head of the family and his wife considered “kulaks”, but also their children and, more broadly, all their relatives, young and old (elderly persons, children and infants constitued in fact the majority of the deported, and the majority of those who died untimely deaths, see section III).

Coordinated in each district by a troika (three-man commission) composed of the First Secretary of the local Party committee, the president of the local Soviet Executive Committee, and the head of the local GPU, operations were carried out, from the first days of February 1930, by special dekulakisation commissions and brigades.

These bodies comprised a mix of people: Communist Party activists from large factories mobilised and sent to the countryside especially for the occasion, local Communist functionaries, GPU (secret police) functionaries and various village “activists”. Sergo Ordjonikiidze, one of Stalin's closest advisers, explained in the following terms who these “activists” were: ”Because there are almost no Party activists in most villages, we generally install a komsomol (member of the Communist Youth movement) in the village and force two or three poor peasants to join him, and it is this aktiv that personally carries out all of the village business of dekulakisation” (Graziosi, 1996).

True, the lists of first-category kulak households were drawn up exclusively by the GPU. The target figure of 63,000 first-category kulaks was met in less than two weeks. By 15 February 1930, according to a report adressed to Genrikh Iagoda, the GPU Deputy-Chief, 64,589 “kulaks in the first category” had already been arrested. Most of the victims appear to have been on index-cards catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the GPU (Danilov & Berelowitch, 2003). Lists of kulak in the other two categories were made on the spot at the recommendation of local authorities and village “activists”. The dekulakisation brigades had to meet the required quotas and, if possible, surpass them. This opened the door to all sorts of abuses and settling of old scores. Dekulakisation often became generalised plundering and ravaging (Lewin, 1966). Everyone in the village understood that “kulak” belongings were at the disposal of those willing to come forward and grab them. As noted in many GPU reports, this pushed “the villages' criminal elements to join a nucleus of young and more or less enthusiastic believers”. According to a GPU report from Smolensk, “the brigades took from the wealthy peasants their winter clothes, their warm underclothes, and above all their shoes. They left the kulaks standing in their underwear and bare feet. They took everything, even old rubber shoes, women's clothes, tea worth no more than 50 kopeks, water pitchers and pokers (…) They confiscated everything, even the pillows from under the heads of babies, and stew from the family pot, which they smeared on the icons they had smashed” (Fainsod, 1969). Dekulakised properties were usually simply looted or given away at auction: wooden houses were sold for 1 ruble, cows for 20 or 30 kopeks each, a hundredth of their real value. The violence perpetrated by the dekulakisation gangs was horrific. “These people”, noted one GPU report, ”drove the dekulakised naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking-bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, money, etc. (Graziosi, 1996).

Deportations of “second-category kulaks” began as early as the second week of February 1930. According to a plan approved by the highest Communist Party authority, the Politburo, chaired by Stalin, 90,000 families were to be deported as part of a first phase that was to last until the end of April. The Northern region was to receive 45,000 families, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan 15,000 each. In fact, during this first phase, which lasted until the end of May, over 99,000 families (510,000 people) were deported (Danilov & Berelowitch, vol.3/1, 2003). To carry out these arrests and deportations, military logistics, unprededented in peacetime and mobilising hundreds of rail convoys and tens of thousands of special troops provided by the GPU, were set up. However, the vast scale of the project led to huge problems in coordinating the militarised deportation operations carried out by the GPU and the settlement of the deportees, which was left to the initiative of local authorities, which were overwhelmed by the task or simply indifferent to the fate of the dekulakised peopl. To transport the “dekulakised”, the GPU allocated, for the “first phase”, 280 convoys of 50 cattle trucks, each of them transporting between 1,500 and 2,000 men, women and children, and a limited amount of the deportees' tools, food and personal belongings (each family was in theory allowed to take 25 puds – or 400 kg – of luggage, but many “dekulakised” had practically nothing to take with them after their homes had been looted). As the rather acerbic correspondence between the GPU and the People's Commissariat of Transport demonstrates, the formation and progression of the convoys was invariably a painfully slow process. In the great depots, such as Vologda, Kotlas, Rostov, Sverdlovsk or Omsk, convoys would remain for weeks, filled with their human cargo. When railway convoys finally arrived at their destination, the interminable journey often continued for several hundred more kilometres on sledges (in winter), carts (in spring), or even on foot. In accordance with official instructions, deportees were to be “settled some way distant from any means of communication” (Danilov & Berelowitch, 2003). As the authorities in the district of Tomsk (Western Siberia) reported on 7 March 1930, “the deportees arrived on foot, since we have no spare horses, sleighs or harnesses. (…) In view of the present situation, it has been impossible to transport the two months' supplies that the kulaks are entitled to bring with them” (Danilov & Krasilnikov, vol.1, 1993). It was therefore without provisions or tools, and often without any shelter, that the deportees had to begin their new lives. One report from the province of Arkhangelsk in September 1930 admitted that of the planned 1,641 living quarters for the deportees, only seven had been built. Hundreds of thousands were left to their fate on the steppes or in the middle of marshy pine forests without regular food supplies or work. The fortunate ones who had been able to bring some tools with them could build some sort of rudimentary shelter, often the traditional zemlianka, a simple hole in the ground covered with branches.

Epidemics and acute shortages (and even, in some cases, famine) decimated the deportes, first of all the children and the elderly (see section III, Victims). Amidst this deadly chaos, the strongest and most resolute escaped (for example, 15% of the 230,000 “dekulakised” deported to the Northern region had escaped by December 1930). GPU reports mentioned another serious problem: by the end of 1930, fewer than 10% of adult deportees had been put to work (Viola, 2007). A few days before the launching of a second wave of “dekulakisation”, aimed at “totally cleansing the kulaks from all agricultural regions” (secret telegram sent by G. Iagoda to all republican and regional GPU plenipotentiaries on 15 March 1931, in Danilov & Berelowitch, vol. 3/1, 2003), the Politburo established, on 11 March 1931, a special commission chaired by V. Andreev, member of the Politburo, with G. Iagoda playing a key role. The first objective of the Andreev commission was to “halt the dreadful mess of the deportation of manpower” and to “organise a rational and effective management of the deported workforce”. Preliminary enquiries by the commission revealed that the productivity of the deported workforce was almost zero. Of the 200,000 “dekulakised” people deported to the Urals, a mere 8% were detailed to “productive activities” in April 1931. All other able-bodied adults were “just trying to survive”. The Andreev commission reorganised the management of the deportees by granting the GPU power over the organisation and supervision of all the stages of the deportation and settling of the deportees. A whole network of komandatury, run by the GPU, was set up to supervise and organise all aspects of the everyday life and working conditions of the deportees. Deportees, known in the police jargon as spetzposelentsy (“special displaced persons”) were stripped of their civil rights, forced to reside in designated areas (called spetzposelki, or “special settlements”) and subjected to a veritable forced labour in agricultural, industrial or mining structures controlled by the GPU. The GPU also rented the deportees under its control, in exchange for a commission, to a number of state-run industrial enterprises, such as Urallesprom (forestry), Uralugol, Vostugol (coal mining) and Tsvetmetzoloto (non-ferrous minerals, gold), exploiting the various natural ressources in the northern and eastern parts of the USSR. These companies were to provide living quarters for their workers, schooling for children, and a regular supply of food for all. In reality, their managers usually treated this slave workforce as a source of free labour. The deportees were expected to produce 30-50% more than the free workers, and their pay (when they were paid at all) was pitiful (Danilov & Krasilnikov, 1994).

While the Andreev commission was trying to rationalise the economic exploitation of the deportees, the Politburo was drawing up grandiose plans for the deportation of 200,000 to 300,000 kulak families, mainly to Western Siberia and Kazakhstan (Danilov, 2001, vol.3). This second wave of deportation began in early May 1931, and lasted for nearly five months. According to a GPU report dated 30 September 1931, 265,795 “kulak families” (1,243,860 persons) were deported, more than twice as many as in 1930, which was, until recently, seen as the apex of the “dekulakisation” campaign. True enough, the second-wave deportations appear to have been carried out more efficiently than those of the first wave in 1930: there were fewer cases of deportees being simply abandonned in the taïga or the steppe; most of them were allocated to construction sites, mines or forestry (Danilov & Berelowitch, 2003).

Deportations continued in 1932-1933, but at a slower pace. The 1932 plan for deportations of kulaks, discussed by the Politburo in April 1932, foreshadowed the banishment of 38,000 families in May-August. This plan was, however, not “fulfilled”: only 71,000 people were registered as “newcomers” in the 1932 registers of the GPU-run spetzposelki. A further 268,000 peasants were deported the following year, in 1933 (V.Zemskov, 2003) The number of people deported to distant regions during the 1930-1933 dekulakisation campaigns accordingly works out at about 2.3 million. On top of this, we must add those who were shipped directly to the gulags (the so-called first-category kulaks): approximately 300,000 to 350,000 people (Danilov & Berelowitch, 2003).

3) Victims

During the 1920s, Party theoricians and state officials tried hard to define criteria to identify the “kulaks”. A few months before the launching of the dekulakisation campaign, the Sovnarkom (the Council of People's Commissars, i.e. the Soviet government) suggested the following five features by which a kulak farm might be identified (a single one of these features was sufficient for people to be categorised as “kulaks”):

1- A farm that regularly hires waged labour;

2- A farm possessing an “industrial undertaking”, such as a mill, a butter-making establishment, a wool-combing installation, etc.;

3- A farms that hires out power-driven agricultural machinery;

4- A farm that hires out premises;

5- A farm whose members are involved in commercial activities or who have income not deriving from work (Lewin, 1966).

Several of the definitions were disquietingly vague, above all “other income not deriving from work”. Given the context of the dekulakisation campaign, especially the effects of a frantic propaganda campaign that constantly exaggerated the enemy's cunning, treachery and skill in concealing himself, it was easy for zealous and vigilant executants to find “kulaks” wherever they chose to look. Dekulakisation brigades resorted to outdated and often-incomplete tax returns kept by the rural soviets, information provided by the GPU, and denunciations by neighbours tempted by the possibility of gain. Peasants were arrested as “kulaks” and deported for having sold grain on the market or for having had an employee to help with the harvest back in 1925 or 1926, for possessing two samovars or for having killed a pig in September 1929 “with the intention of consuming it themselves and thus keeping it away from socialist appropriation”. Peasants were labelled “kulaks” on the pretext that they had “speculated”, when all they had done was sell something of their own making. Peasants were deported on the pretext that some of their relatives had fought in the White Army or because of their “numerous visits to the church”. Many people were labelled “kulaks” simply on the grounds that they resisted collectivisation (Fainsod, 1969; Davies, 1980; Lewin, 1966). In fact, dekulakisation often turned into social cleansing of all “socially alien elements”, among whom featured “police officers of the Tsarist regime”, “White officers”, former landlords and shopkeepers, members of the “rural intelligentsia” (among them many teachers), many of whom had joined the SR (socialist-revolutionary) party in 1917-18. One of the few GPU reports giving details on the socioprofessional occupations of dekulakised people during the first stage of the campaign (Volga region, February 1930) shows that the so-called kulaks represented only 55% of the total; the “middle peasants” (seredniaks) accounted for 15%; shopkeepers 15%; priests, monks and nuns 6%; teachers and other members of the rural intelligentsia 4%; and “others” 5% (Danilov & Berelowitch, 2003).

How many “kulaks” died in the course of “de-kulakization”? On 1 January 1932, the GPU carried out a general census of all deportees: it listed 1,317,022 people. We know, by the same police sources, that nearly 1.8 million “kulaks” were deported during the two main deportation waves in 1930 and 1931. Losses accordingly numbered close to half a million people, or nearly 30% of all deportees. Undoubtedly, a not insignificant proportion of those had escaped. In 1932, the GPU komandatury, which actually managed to keep accurate records of the deportees they were supposed to keep watch over, counted no less than 207,000 escapes (38,000 runaways were recaptured); in 1933, the number of escapes was 216,000 (54,000 recaptured). Considering a number of local GPU reports (for different periods in 1930 and 1931) on the flights of deported “kulaks”, we can extrapolate that around 200,000-250,000 deportees managed to escape in 1930-31. This still leaves us with approximately 250,000-300,000 deaths. A number of local reports confirm the very high mortality rates among the deportees, especially among children and elderly people. In 1931, the mortality rate was 1.3% per month (16% per annum) among the deportees to Kazakhstan, and 0.8% per month (10% per annum) for those to western Siberia. Infant mortality oscillated between 8% and 12% per month, and peaked at 15% per month in Magnitogorsk. From June 1931 to June 1932, the mortality rate among deportees in the region of Narym, in Western Siberia, reached 11.7%. In 1932, the overall number of deaths among deportees was over 90,000 (annual death rate: 6.8%); in 1933, it was 151,600 (annual death rate: 13.3%). Altogether, more than half a million deportees died in 1930-33, or 22% of the 2.3 million people deported during those years. Most of them died untimely deaths, of general exhaustion and hunger (Zemskov, 2003; Danilov & Krasilnikov, 1993, 1994, Viola, 2007).

4) Dekulakisation: “class genocide”?

Was dekulakisation “class genocide”? This classification was first proposed in 1997 by Stéphane Courtois, in his introduction to The Black Book of Communism. “The death from starvation of the child of a Ukrainian kulak is ‘equivalent' to the death from starvation of a jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto”, he writes (Courtois et. al, 1997). Is this process of equating “class genocide” with “racial genocide” really sustainable? It is important to note that, in Courtois's argument, two very different forms of mass violence are lumped together: the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” (1930-32) and the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, which affected all the peasants in the collective farms of that Soviet republic. A number of factors lead us to be very doubtful about the applicability of the term “class genocide” when applied to the kulaks. Although the kulaks, as an artificially designated and constructed group, were subjected to the kind of dehumanisation and stereotyping that was common for victims of genocide throughout the 20th century, the regime did, from the outset, introduce distinctions within the victim group (first, second and third categories). “Liquidation of the kulaks as a class” did not imply physical liquidation of all kulaks, even though the terrible conditions in which the deportation took place and the “settlement” of the kulaks, who, at least in the first stages of the dekulakisation operations, were often abandoned in the middle of the taïga or the desert steppes, caused a very high rate of mortality that sometimes reached 15% per annum (and much higher in the case of children). It is also clear that the sociological defining lines of the “kulak” group are not just flexible, but in fact are not definitions at all. Genocide is said to occur when a group is targeted in terms of what essentially defines it: the criterion of the group's stability must be existent for the qualification of genocide be applicable, and in the case of dekulakisation, this is manifestly not the case. Moreover, contrary to Soljenitsyn's assertion (“children of kulaks carried the mark of Cain throughout their lives”), the pariah-status of the dekulakised was not carried forward to the next generation: from 1938 onwards, children of kulaks who reached the age of 16 were allowed to leave their place of deportation if they continued their schooling beyond the required age. Three years later, hundreds of thousands of children of kulaks were mobilised into the Red Army. Such integration into the army ipso facto removed all the legal discrimination that had been imposed on children of kulaks, even though their parents continued to be second-class citizens (Zemskov, 2003). There was clearly some commitment to the idea of “nurture” over “nature” in the Stalinist social engineering project (Weiner, 2003). On the other hand, we should not forget that several hundred thousand “former kulaks” – many of whom had fled from the “special settlements” to which they had been deported – were arrested during the “Great Terror” of 1937-38. The largest “mass secret operation”, launched by NKVD Order N°00447 dated 30 July 1937, specifically targeted, among other categories, “former kulaks, deported in previous years, who have escaped from the special settlements”. In the course of this “secret operation”, which lasted 15 months (August 1937-November 1938), over 800,000 people were arrested and sentenced, of whom over 400,000 were executed. It is generally believed that former kulaks (both those who had fled from the “special settlements” and those who were still living there) contributed to approximately one quarter of the victims of Order N°00447. In many ways, this “mass operation” was the last blow against the hated “kulaks”, the last act of the dekulakisation launched eight years earlier (Shearer, 2009; Werth, 2009).

5) Selected bibliography

Colas, Dominique, Le Léninisme, Paris: PUF, coll. Quadrige, 1995.

Conquest, Robert, The Harvest of Sorrow. Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, University of Alberta Press, 1986.

Danilov, Viktor.P & Berelowitch, Alexis (eds), Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VCK, OGPU, NKVD, vol.3/1, 1930-31, Moscow: Rosspen, 2003.

Danilov, Viktor P. & Krasilnikov, Serguei (eds), Spetzpereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, Novossibirsk: Iz. Ekor, 1993 (vol.1, 1), 1994 (vol.2).

Danilov, Viktor.P (ed.) Tragedia soevtskoi derevni, vol. 3, 1930-1933, Moscow: Rosspen, 2001.

Davies, Robert W, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia. The Socialist Offensive. The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929-1930, London: MacMillan, 1980

Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk à l'heure de Staline, Paris: Fayard, 1969.

Graziosi, Andrea, The Great Soviet Peasant War, Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917-1933, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Ivnitskii, Nikolaï, Kollektivizatsia i raskulacivanie, Moscow: Iz. Magistr, 1996.

Lewin, Moshe, La paysannerie et le pouvoir soviétique, Paris: Mouton, 1966.

Naimark, Norman, Stalin's Genocides, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Shearer, David, Policing Stalin's Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010

Viola, Lynne, The Unknown Gulag. The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Weiner, Amir (ed), Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Werth, Nicolas, “Un Etat contre son peuple. Violence, répressions, terreur en Union soviétique”, in Courtois, Stéphane, Werth, Nicolas & al, Le Livre Noir du Communisme, Paris: R. Laffont, 1997, p. 45-360.

Werth, Nicolas, L'ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Autopsie d'un meurtre de masse, 1937-1938, Paris: Tallandier, 2009 Zemskov, Viktor, Spetzposelentsy v SSSR, 1930-1960, Moscow: Nauka, 2003.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

“Babi Yar in History and Memory: Seventy Years After a Mass Murder”

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

2:00 – 6:00 pm

International Lounge, Usdan Student Center

Babi Yar was the name of a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where the single largest mass murder of Soviet Jews occurred on September 29-30, 1941. This symposium explores four aspects of the event through different lenses: Babi Yar in history, Soviet responses to Babi Yar after the reoccupation of Kiev by the Red Army, representations of Babi Yar in Jewish literature, and its symbolic meaning for the Russian intelligentsia.

For details: http://www.brandeis.edu/tauber/events/babi_yar_conference.html

Japanese mass violence and its victims in the “Fifteen Years' War” (1931-45)

Overview

From the end of the 19th century until 1945, Japan positioned itself among the world's great powers as a colonial nation. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, there was clearly a desire to transform Japan into a nation capable of competing with, as well as resisting, the Western powers. Subsequently, following a number of war victories, neighbouring territories were gradually turned into colonies. By the end of the 1930s, and apart from China, most of Northeast Asia had come under Japanese domination. The Kuril Islands (1875, acquired through the signature of a treaty), Taiwan (1895), the Southern half of Sakhalin (1905), the Kwantung Leased Territory (1905), Korea (1910) and the Pacific islands under Japanese mandate (1919) had been integrated into the emerging sphere of Japanese influence. This shows that Japan's expansion followed three different directions: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with islands taken from Germany.

This context served the interests of the military and political elites in Tokyo: nationalism was on the rise in Japan, and the victories attained in the recent past served as reminders that Japan had a mission to fulfil in extending and securing its newly acquired overseas territories. With this aim, the Kwantung Army (関東軍 kantô gun) was established in 1919 to protect Japanese interests on the continent. Korea (annexed in 1910) and Southern Manchuria (where Japanese economic interests were increasingly significant) were subsequently presented to the Japanese population as a sort of Eldorado after the Great Depression of 1929 in a major propaganda campaign by the government. The nationalists presented further colonisation of the Asian continent as the only available option to ensure the survival of the Japanese Empire, notably through achieving economic autarky. Even though Japan was expanding in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Tokyo elite believed that this objective would only be attained if Tokyo managed to control Northeast Asia.

The Japanese colonial authorities were grimly aware of growing tensions between local populations (harassed by Japanese ultranationalist movements) and newly arrived Japanese settlers in Manchuria. These tensions were a pretext for the Japanese military stationed on the continent to increase the pressure on the Chinese authorities in Southern Manchuria, where a local warlord, Zhang Zuolin, only eliminated in 1928, held sway. On 18 September 1931, the Kwantung Army sabotaged railway lines owned by the South Manchuria Railway Company and immediately blamed China for the deed. It is therefore clear that one cannot consider the Japanese army as a whole, acting in the same way everywhere. Indeed, this episode demonstrates the level of autonomy possessed by this specific structure: the Kwangtung Army played a major role in triggering the conflict.

This affair is known today as the “Manchuria Incident“ (満州事変 manshû jihen) and retains very special significance in Japan, not only as a sign of Japanese imperialism and aggression, but also as the starting point of a military campaign to gain control over China (Matsusaka, 2001: 349-387). Less than a year later, the whole of Manchuria had come under Japanese control and the puppet state of Manchukuo had been created by the ultranationalist leaders of the Kwantung Army, under the supervision of the government in Tokyo. On 28 January 1932, another event, this time staged by the Japanese Army in Shanghai, triggered the “First Shanghai Incident” (上海事変 shanghai jihen), which was to last until 3 March of the same year. In 1934, following the refusal of the League of Nations to recognise the legitimacy and independence of Manchukuo, Japan withdrew from the body, thereby exacerbating its diplomatic and political isolation.

It was in this context that began for Japan what is, from a contemporary Western perspective, known as World War II, but which Japanese specialists know as the “Fifteen Years' War” (十五年戦争 jûgo nen sensô). This expression was coined by historian and philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke (鶴見俊輔) in 1956. From the Japanese point of view and a posteriori, not only is the timeframe different, but also the very denomination of the conflict changes. Today, the war that began in 1931 can be understood as a long-term experiment in mass violence against an Asian, mainly Chinese, enemy; it acquired another dimension only in December 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor, triggering a war against the Americans as well. A few days later, the war had become known in Japan as “The Greater East Asia War” (大東亜戦争 daitôa sensô – the use of this term was prohibited by the occupying powers on 15 December 1945), and was seen as a means of “liberating” Asian countries from Western imperialism and replacing it with Japanese leadership. This shifted the emphasis to the Asian experience of the war (Narita, 2005: 10-11). Indeed, since the first ten years of the war are considered almost exclusively as a conflict between China and Japan, it is hardly surprising that they are often omitted from Western narratives of the Second World War. Conversely, and although the war ended for the Japanese population in August 1945, some historians contend that World War II did not really end in 1945, but in 1952, with the end of the Allied forces' occupation of the Japanese archipelago (Dower, 1999: 25). Another good example of such nuances in historical perspective can be found in the way the “Nanking Massacre” of 1937-38 (see below) began to be discussed by scholars in the West only during the 1990s – some 20 years after the topic emerged in Japan as an historiographical debate (Fogel, 2000, Iwasaki & Richter, 2005: 367-70). Regarding medical atrocities and biological weapons, see Nie and al (2010) for the most recent study available in the West, and Williams & Wallace (1989) for the oldest.

Today the conflict is also known in Japan as the “Asia-Pacific War” (アジア・太平洋戦争 ajia-taiheiyô sensô), but one can also identify this series of events as the “Sino-Japanese War” (日中戦争 nicchû sensô), which preceded the “Pacific War” (太平洋戦争 taiheiyô sensô). An overview is not the place for large interpretative analysis of events; however, the distinctions between the various ways of understanding the war (as irrelevant as they might seem to the untrained eye) are essential in order better to grasp its mechanisms, for the following reasons.

First, the very denomination “Fifteen Years' War” is a statement that identifies one's perspective on World War II as being after the events, and a Japanese one, as it reflects an experience predominantly centred on Asia and, especially, Japan. For the Western reader, this represents an interesting focal point, different from what is commonly observed in Europe, which tends to concentrate on Nazi Germany as the main “enemy”.

Second, it is impossible to grasp the extent of Japanese mass violence from a purely Western perspective. For the serious historian working on this topic, sources in the Japanese language are essential, not only to understand facts and access archives written almost exclusively in Japanese, but also to situate the extent to which Japanese scholars and citizens have investigated acts perpetrated by their own fellow citizens. As such, it removes the debate from the realm of clichés, and particularly the common assertion that the “duty of memory” carried out in Europe is still a taboo topic that has been left untouched in Japan. As we shall see, this is not the case.

The attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of a spiral of hostility against Western powers, but, as we shall demonstrate below, a chronology of mass violence needs to begin with the experience of the conflict in China if one is truly to understand the impact of events in the Asia-Pacific area. Given that the vast majority of the victims were Asian (mostly Chinese), a summary starting in 1939 or 1942 would simply not take into account the numerous cases of brutality that occurred and would therefore give a reduced sense of their very plurality. Is it also necessary to add that while 15 August marks the end of the war from a “standard” – read: Western – perspective, the conflict only ended on 22 August from Moscow's point of view?

It is therefore clear that this timeframe differs from what is considered standard in the West. Not only because the Sino-Japanese War is not directly linked to Western countries, but also because it is justified by the Japanese perspective. This may go without saying, but nevertheless must be clarified in order better to understand a perspective on mass violence and the very notion of a “Second World War” that does not really dovetail with conventional European view. This does not, however, make the case of Japanese mass violence in Asia and the Pacific unique, as is often implied in Western historiography on the subject. There is no need for superlatives or the use of a “sensational” wording in an attempt to quantify and qualify the supposed specificity said to make Japanese exactions different from those of other nations. Nor is there an intrinsic sense or definition of Japanese violence per se, even though the specificities of the topic will be approached chronologically below, in an attempt to highlight their emergence and recurrence along a specific timeline (Fujitani, White and Yoneyama, 2001).

As with many cases of mass violence, the number of victims poses serious problems of historiography that need to be addressed. A timeline is not the place to debate such a question, but it must nevertheless be said that most of the cases examined below present problems, whether of conflicting viewpoints that negate the death toll or augment it in order to politicise it, or of contradictory or incomplete sources, both preventing the historian from establishing a clear and precise number. Our decision to rate an event with one, two or three stars stems not so much from whether or not it took place, but rather indicates conflicting sources and a lack of concurrent detailed testimonies. In other words, it is certain that the vast majority of episodes set out here did occur; what is less certain is their precise corroboration due to the unstable nature of war testimonies, reflected here in the classification given.

Beyond this matter also lies the decision of whether to enter into a debate regarding the total number of victims. This carries the risk of classifying and quantifying events and the number of deaths they entailed, thereby giving some of them precedence on the basis of their death toll. It also places a localised event and a number on the same line. Worse, the danger of entering into a debate on numbers (数の論争 sû no ronsô as used by Japanese scholars) is that it can lead the historian astray, involving him in the politicisation of the event itself, where his true role is to contextualise and explain. When necessary, a summary clarification will be given concerning the estimated number of victims of specific events (or the absence of estimates). The chronology of Japanese mass violence during the “Fifteen Years' War” can therefore be subdivided into the following three periods:

1) From the birth of Manchukuo to the Second Sino-Japanese war (1931-37);

2) War against China (1937-41)

3) War in the Pacific (1941-45)

1) From the birth of Manchukuo to the Second Sino-Japanese war (1931-37)

On 1 March 1932, the independent State of Manchukuo (満州国 manshûkoku) was proclaimed by the Kwantung Army. Its independence was recognised by the Japanese government and Emperor Hirohito (昭和天皇 shôwa tennô) on 15 September of the same year. Although the country was a puppet state subordinated to Japanese authorities, its foundation signalled, from an Asian perspective, the beginning of the war. In this context and notwithstanding the case of China, not a Japanese territory, it goes without saying that mass violence was first and foremost colonial violence, and the vast majority of the victims of Japanese troops were of different nationalities and/or origins. It must be said at this point that, although cases of mass violence were recorded during this period, these first seven years of the war are not the main focal point of our work. The war is not continuous and total (as it is in the case of the next two periods), but there is no durable peace. One must of course take into account the numerous Chinese casualties of the war, going back to 1931, but this chronological segment must above all be understood as the starting point of what was to become recurrent mass violence and exactions of all kinds, rather than as a period of indiscriminate killings in Manchuria.

While violence seems to be limited in this context to general war exactions, it is however essential to note that mass brutality was then beginning to become systematic throughout the Japanese empire. It was notably through the creation of bacteriological and chemical (hereinafter referred to as BC) warfare units that such a system first emerged in Manchukuo, but invariably controlled from Tokyo. The very selection of Manchuria as the area where BC warfare was first developed is an interesting indication of how it was perceived in Japan. Twice prohibited by international treaties (The Hague, 1899, and Geneva, 1925), BC research could not legally be conducted by signatory countries. Although some research and production centres were located in Japan, the puppet state of Manchukuo, technically independent but in reality controlled by Tokyo, represented a unique opportunity for Japanese scientists to experiment on what theoretically “[could] not be done in the home islands” (内地で出来ないこと naichi de dekinai koto, Aoki, 2005: 76).

Thus, countless political detainees or prisoners of war of various nationalities, not to mention kidnapped civilians, were interned in Japanese BC warfare camps and submitted to medical, bacteriological and chemical experiments. They become the first victims of the institutionalisation of mass violence by the Japanese Army during World War II. A global estimate of the number of victims is extremely difficult to provide for five main reasons.

First, available testimonies by victims and perpetrators alike do not so much contradict each other as show the extent of the phenomenon. Experiments were conducted throughout Manchuria, and later throughout the rest of Asia in various research centres. It is therefore virtually impossible to encompass them all, as the experiments varied depending on the timeframe, climate, and location. Only the most representative or well-documented cases will therefore be included in this chronology.

Second, archives and documents have survived for some experiments, but Japanese troops and scientists destroyed most of the documented research in 1945, for fear of legal action or reprisals by the Allied forces. Other sources exist in archives that have still not been made available to historians.

Third, experiments were also conducted on civilians in densely populated areas, making it difficult fully to grasp the extent to which they were exposed to bacteria and the overall effect on them.

Fourth, the long-term effects on the environment must also be taken into account (with their attendant on people). Wells, rivers and plants, as well as animals, were used for experiments and contaminated throughout Manchuria, causing damage that cannot necessarily be quantified.

Fifth, and as mentioned above, when studying this period, historians are confronted not with a massacre that occurred during a specific timeframe and which is therefore immediately identifiable as a particular event, but instead is faced with the implementation of a system that, in the long run, generated cases of mass violence in various locations. For Japanese scientists involved in BC research at that time, the results and tests were all that mattered, not the nationality or the number of victims.

Furthermore, the close collaboration of these units also prevents us from assigning precise responsibilities to specific research groups. For example, as units 731 and 100 both participated in the 1939 “Nomonhan Incident” described below, it is impossible to know exactly which unit was to blame for what.

However, although we do not possess exact numbers, we can establish that, because Japanese BC warfare units were organised into a network, they were not isolated cases or individual actions, and one can justifiably talk of mass violence. One example suffices to confirm this idea: the first BC research camp was built to have a capacity of 1,000, with 500-600 prisoners held inside (Harris, 2002: 32).

Chronology

March 1932 Following the “First Shanghai Incident”, 223 cases of rape by Japanese soldiers are reported in the area. Lieutenant-General Okamura Yasuji (岡村寧次) subsequently demands the creation in Shanghai of the first “comfort station” (慰安所 ianjo) for naval troops, an initiative immediately imitated by the Imperial Army. The number of Chinese as well as Japanese women rounded up is unknown (see the rest of the chronology for available numbers and estimates.) *** (Soh, 2005: 360, Hicks, 1994: 45, Yoshimi, 2000: 43-44)

August 1932

The Tôgô Unit (東郷部隊 tôgô butai, also known as 加茂部隊 kamo butai) is created in Manchukuo under the supervision of Major Ishii Shirô (石井四郎). Its aim is to set up a Japanese BC warfare research programme. In the same month, the first experimentation site is founded, again under his supervision, in the village of Beiyinhe (背陰河 Haiinga in Japanese), near the city of Harbin (哈爾浜). Experiments undertaken in this context include, but are not limited to, injections of anthrax, plague, typhoid fever and cholera into human guinea pigs. The victims are mostly Chinese, but sometimes Korean or Russian, and also include communists or guerrilla fighters opposed to the Japanese regime in Manchuria. When required, the Japanese Military Police (憲兵隊 kempeitai) also round up random civilians in villages and cities in the area. Since victims need to be treated as non-human guinea pigs, they are from then on referred to as “logs” (丸太 maruta) and assigned an identification number. After the experiments are conducted, and when the results have been analysed by Japanese scientists, the bodies are dissected and cremated. The destruction of the Beiyinhe facility is ordered in late 1937, in order to build a bigger one. *** (Morimura, 1983: 16-36, Tsuneishi, 1995: 26-29, 82-86, Tanaka, 1996: 135-39)

March 1933

According to testimonies, organised prostitution sections are gradually established under the name of “Young Women Auxiliary Corps” (若年女子補助部隊 jakunen joshi hojo butai) and set up by the Imperial Army Staff in Manchuria for the benefit of Japanese troops. (Some former victims claim that the corps dates back to 1931-32.) The total number of women abused is unknown. ** (Soh, 2005: 364-65)

1933

Chemical warfare production (initiated in 1929) is expanded between 1933 and 1935 in a facility situated on the island of Ôkunoshima (大久野島), in the Hiroshima prefecture. Due to the lack of protective measures, an estimated 350 Japanese and Korean workers die during this period after being exposed to chlorine gas, mustard gas and tear gas, among others. Other sources mention a total of 1,600 victims, countless deaths having occurred during the ten years after the end of the war. *** (Buruma, 1994: 109-11, Ienaga, 1978: 187, Okano, 1987: 13, Tanaka, 1988: 14)

1 August 1936

The Tôgô Unit is officially incorporated into the Kwantung Army under the direction of Ishii and called the “Water Epidemic Prevention Unit of the Kwantung Army” (関東軍防疫給水部 kantô gun bôeki kyûsui bu). The order is sanctioned by the Emperor himself. BC weapons, their production and medical experiments are thus endorsed by the Kwantung Army Staff as well as the Imperial Army Staff in Tokyo, and continue to be carried out on a larger scale with an ever-increasing budget. *** (Aoki, 2005: 76, Bix, 2000: 364, Tsuneishi, 1995: 82-86)

August 1936

A BC research centre is set up near the city of Changchun (長春 Chôshun, also known as 新京 Shinkyô, the capital of Manchukuo from 1932 to 1945) under the supervision of Major Wakamatsu Yujiro (若松有次郎). Contrary to its name, the Kwantung Army Horses Epidemic Prevention Facility, also known as Unit 100 (kantôgun gunba bôekishô 関東軍軍馬防疫廠), not only works on BC weapons targeting plants and animals, but also takes part, alongside other BC units, in experiments on humans until 1945. The total death toll is unknown, but the “research” was devoted primarily to anthrax, plague, opium, heroin and glanders (an infectious disease affecting horses). *** (Documents, 1950: 121-22, Harris, 2002: 119, Morimura, 1983: 193-200)

2) War against China (1937-41)

The period between 1937 and 1941 marked the beginning of an all-out war against China (although it was never formally declared, as sanctions and embargoes would have been imposed on Japan), as well as serious clashes with Soviet forces. It was also during this period that Japan signed its tripartite pact with Italy and Germany on 27 September 1940. On 7 July 1937, an armed incident between Chinese and Japanese forces, today known as the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident” (盧溝橋事件 rokôkyô jiken), sparked a full-scale invasion of China. Beijing fell on 8 August, and Shanghai was in Japanese hands by the end of November of the same year, with over 9,000 Imperial soldiers dead. The Imperial Army was moving towards Nanking, hoping that the capture of the Chinese capital would strike a blow to the government, undermine enemy morale and result in capitulation. As has often been the case in large-scale conflicts, and particularly during world wars, cases of mass violence erupted against civilians, soldiers and prisoners of war in a multitude of circumstances, making it impossible to estimate the total number of cases.

As opposed to the previous period, which mainly witnessed the creation of structures (both events and processes) allowing for the later emergence of mass violence, the second Sino-Japanese war resulted in a multitude of atrocities as well as greater systematisation of brutality. As a result, the cases presented here are no more than a selection based on two main criteria.

First, it is fundamental to recall that while some incidents and phenomena have been studied by historians or documented sufficiently to be presented here, there is no doubt that others remain unknown to this day, and it is not certain that they will ever be brought to light by scholars.

Second, the recent politicisation of some events in the media, or disputes between historians and revisionist/negationist movements (which are a very small minority in Japan) around issues such as “comfort women”, the “Nanking Massacre” or the visits of certain Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, has led to their acknowledgement and/or discussion in the public sphere. However, this has not been the case for all situations of mass violence in the context of the “Fifteen Years' War”, which are far too numerous to be taken into account in an historical chronology. For example, countless atrocities occurred against civilians, some spontaneous, some planned, as the Japanese Army continued its conquest of China in 1937 and subsequent years; others remain unknown today (for specific cases, see Bix, 2000: 364-67, Ishikawa, 1999, JIMT, 1948).

Furthermore, one cannot equate violence with death, as brutalities do not invariably result in the victim's death. During the two periods studied here and below, numerous cases of brutality that cannot be anchored into a specific timeframe, and as such cannot be quantified with precision, nevertheless need to be addressed in order to facilitate an understanding, in hindsight, of the extent of the violence exerted. Three examples come to mind.

The first case concerns a type of brutality within the Japanese Army that became commonplace between 1937 and 1945. As this type of violence did not necessarily obey a specific pattern and took place at different levels, it is difficult to categorise or insert into a chronological index. It should, however, be presented here as an example of the very plurality of the concept of mass violence. Some examples of this type of violence include violent acts done to Korean/Taiwanese draftees in the Imperial Army, themselves victims of Japanese brutality (Fujitani, 2006: 182-196), soldiers bullying their comrades should they refuse to rape, pillage or kill on the battlefield, and the brutal treatment of Korean workers enslaved in Japanese factories on the home islands. The latter numbered 670,000 between 1939 and 1945, but close to 60,000 of these workers died due to harsh working conditions on Japanese soil (Dower, 1986: 47, Utsumi 2006: 102-05).

The gradual toughening of living conditions for Japanese civilians is another good example of mass violence; violence should not be seen merely as a purely external phenomenon, and Imperial subjects were still subjected to structural hardships. The 1937 “Principles of National Polity” (国体の本義 kokutai no hongi), followed by the “National Mobilisation Law” (国家総動員法 kokka sôdôin hô) of 1938, clearly reflect this situation: the Japanese population was subjected to rationing, forced mobilisation and government control of production, not to mention the outlawing of trade unions and other measures drastically limiting freedom of expression. While such situations do not necessarily result in the violent deaths of the people subjected to them or to other atrocities on a large scale, none of these examples are specific to a precise moment in time and all of them represent physical as well as mental mass violence, the latter only having recently begun to be deemed a valid research subject by historians (Yamashita, 2006: 262-63).

The third example is the specific case of “comfort women” (従軍慰安婦 jûgun ianfu, also known as “Special Personnel” 特要員 tokuyô in in the Navy) and the institutionalisation of sexual slavery throughout the Asia-Pacific region by the Japanese state, Army and Navy. The exact date of the establishment of the first “Comfort House” is unknown (Tanaka, 2002: 8), and it is probable that organised prostitution did exist beforehand. In the war context, and in order to prevent the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases among Japanese troops on the front, as much as to limit incidences of rape, Japanese military authorities thought that they could avoid the problem by setting up a system of government-sanctioned brothels populated with women from Korea, China and Japan, as well as the Netherlands, Malaysia and the Philippines, not to mention other countries. The vast majority of them were not prostitutes, and were mostly abducted or misled into “working” in brothels spreading from Sakhalin to Indonesia (attracted by jobs as laundresses or housemaids). Initially, some of these women were prostitutes sent abroad from Japan, the karayuki san (唐行きさん). One must add that although Japanese authorities set up this system in order to suppress the two abovementioned problems – rape and STDs – rapes did occur in comfort stations; as there is no indication that their number diminished on the field, the policy was ultimately a failure. This is also true of sexual diseases (Yoshimi 2000: 66, 69-72). As with BC warfare victims, it is almost impossible to give a precise number of the women involved, but an estimated total of 50,000 to 200,000 women (one woman for every 40 soldiers for the latter figure) were brought into the system and forced to have intercourse with an average of ten soldiers a day (Hicks, 1994: 19, Ônuma, 2007: I, Soh, 2008: 119-25, Tanaka, 1996: 99, Yoshimi, 2000: 93). Some revisionists/negationists in Japan (Nanta, 2001) assert that the Army and the state had no responsibility in this matter. Yet, while forced prostitution and mass rapes in wartime is not an intrinsically Japanese phenomenon (Yamashita, 2006: 261), the fact that this systematisation was managed at the highest levels of government makes this case of mass violence worth mentioning here. As with BC warfare, these types of violence were not only spontaneous, but were structured and endorsed by the government. The difference with the previous example was the type of brutality experienced by the victims, where a precise death toll cannot be estimated because the aim was not the destruction of bodies but their transformation into a sexual commodity through mass rape and violence.

Chronology

24 November 1937

Two hundred and twenty-two Chinese villagers and refugees “ranging from infants to old people” are killed by Japanese soldiers marching towards Nanking in the village of Dongliang (near Wuxi, 無錫 Mushaku in Japanese). ** (Honda: 1999, 68)

November 1937

Three hundred and fifty-one Chinese civilians are executed, and 120 women raped by the Imperial Army in the commune of Shanyang (near Hangzhou, 杭州 Kôshû in Japanese). [These two examples, out of so many others, are only quoted here to show the extent of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops on the continent, but go largely unnoticed by Western scholars today.] ** (Honda: 1999, 22-23)

13 December 1937

The city of Nanking falls to Japanese troops under the command of General Matsui Iwane (松井石根). Rape, pillaging and executions by Japanese soldiers take place over the following six weeks, until January 1938, in the city and neighbouring area, making the precise localisation of the event a source of dispute. However, most reasonable historians today accept that what constitutes the incident is the plurality of cases of mass violence exerted first on the road to Nanking, and then in and around the city, whereas revisionists tend to reduce the area in which acts of violence were committed, in order to minimise the number of victims. Chinese civilians and soldiers alike are killed, either individually in sporadic acts of violence or machined-gunned and thrown into mass graves. The female population is subjected to mass rape by Japanese troops. The total number of victims is still the main source of public disagreement today. The Nanking Memorial Museum claims a total of 300,000 deaths and 20,000 rapes. Some revisionists/negationists in Japan still maintain that what is known today as “The Great Nanking Massacre” (南京大虐殺 nankin dai gyakusatsu) or “The Nanking Incident” (南京事件 nankin jiken) did not take place in these proportions and that there was a maximum of 50 Chinese victims. The vast majority of historians today put the death toll at over 200,000. *** (Brook, 1999, Fujiwara, 1997: 54-74, Ishida, 2006: 170, Kasahara, 1997: 201-232, Rabe, 1998, Yamamoto, 2000: 234-281, Yoshida, 2006: 11-26)

December 1937

The (first?) Japanese military brothel (in China) is set up by the Army in the city of Nanking, a few days after its fall, marking the beginning of the systematisation of this practice. Military police round up an unknown number (over a hundred) of Chinese women to serve as forced prostitutes. It is estimated that more than 1,200 women, a minority of them prostitutes, had been transformed into sex slaves by the Japanese Army by 1939. It is also widely believed that brothels had already been established in Manchuria, by and under the responsibility of the Kwantung Army, and had been in use by Imperial troops stationed there since 1931. If the Nanking “comfort station” is not technically the first such institution of its kind, it does, however, mark the beginning of their extremely rapid increase. *** (Imai & Iwasaki, 2010, Soh, 2005: 360-65, Tanaka, 2002: 12-19, Yoshimi, 2000: 53-54)

18 February 1938

Following the 1937 air raids against civilian populations in Shanghai and Nanking, the Japanese Air Force bombs the city of Chongqing (重慶 Jûkei in Japanese) until 1943. In the first two days of air raids alone, the death toll is put at more than 5,000 Chinese civilians. The overall death toll is incalculable. *** (Bix, 2000: 364, Shimokawa, 2006, 147-50)

End-1938

Following Ishii's orders, a new BC warfare facility is constructed in the village of Pingfan (平房 Heihô in Japanese), 24 kilometres south of Harbin. The size and structure of the centre are far superior to those of Beiyinhe, covering more than six square kilometres and with a staff of 3,000. (Construction work was completed in 1940.) Although the exact death toll is unknown for the abovementioned reasons, at least 3,000 people died as the result of experiments in Pingfan alone between 1940 and 1945. Furthermore, not only does this number not take into account experiments conducted before 1940, but the number of deaths as a result of experiments carried out on the civilian population outside BC warfare facilities cannot be fully measured. Following the completion of the Pingfan Research Facility as its headquarters, the Japanese BC research programme can be divided into five branches: 1) dissections and surgical experiments; 2) experiments to discover unknown pathogens; 3) experiments testing the strength of contagion of known pathogens; 4) experiments to discover new sources of treatment (including research into frostbite); and 5) experiments for the production of vaccines and drugs. *** (Harris, 2002: 53-73, Kasahara et al, 1997: 29, Documents, 1950: 118, Tsuneishi, 1995: 105)

1938

In order to cut costs and focus on the war effort, the Japanese government makes drastic public health cuts until 1945. Due to food shortages, the Japanese civilian population on the home islands suffers particularly from tuberculosis. Between 1938 and 1943, more than 5,000 Japanese in the archipelago die of the disease. *** (Ienaga, 1978: 193)

18 April 1939

A BC research facility is set up in the city of Nanking in a hospital, with Unit 1644 (also called 多摩部隊 tama butai) created in the same city. From the beginning until the end of the war, more than 300 Japanese scientists receive BC warfare training in Nanking each year. To undermine Chinese resistance, Japanese troops are ordered to spread typhoid fever in the wells and springs of neighbouring areas, using infected bottled water. Other BC facilities are installed in the same year in Beijing (Unit 1855, 9 February) and Canton (Unit 8604, 8 April), creating a network of operations on Chinese territory (North, Centre, South). Beyond field operations, it is estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 Chinese people are murdered in BC facilities. The total death toll is unknown. *** (Aoki, 2005: 80-81, Harris, 2002: 87, 136-150, Documents, 1950: 58, 73-74, Tsuneishi, 1995: 12, 167-71, Yoshimi & Ikô, 1995: 2)

11 May 1939

The battles of Khakkhin-Gol, or the “Nomonhan Incident” (ノモンハン事件 nomonhan jiken), oppose Soviet, Mongolian and Japanese troops until September. The 11 May incident is the most famous of a numbers of clashes between the USSR and Japan in the 1930s, and ends with a crushing defeat for Japan. On 16 July, and following orders from the Kwantung Army Staff, bacillary dysentery bombs are spread into rivers in order to cover the Japanese forces' retreat and to slow the Soviet advance. In this episode only, and notwithstanding Soviet casualties, an unknown number of Imperial troops die after being exposed to germs spread by their own army. *** (Harris, 2002: 95-98, Documents, 1950: 62-64, Takemae, 2002: xxxi, Tsuneishi, 1995: 136-37, Yoshimi & Ikô, 1995: 15-6)

4 October 1940

Until 1942, numerous Japanese military operations (some BC) are conducted on Chinese territory to annihilate the communist resistance. On this date, orders are given to Japanese aircraft to drop cereals infected with bacteria onto the city of Quzhou (衢州 Kushû in Japanese) in order to crush guerrilla groups. Fifty thousand Chinese are thought subsequently to have perished. These systematic acts of mass violence orchestrated by the Japanese Army are labelled the “Three Alls Policy” (三光作戦 sankô sakusen or 三光政策 sankô seisaku) or “burn all, kill all, steal all” (灼き尽くし yakitsukushi, 殺し尽くし koroshitsukushi, 奪い尽くす ubaitsukusu), a term later used by the Chinese Communist Party. The total death toll of this single campaign is estimated at between 25 million and 44 million. *** (Bix, 2000: 365, Dower, 1986: 43, Harris, 2002: 102, Ishida, 2006: 16-69, Li, 2003: 292-97, Tsuneishi, 1995: 169-70)

3) War in the Pacific (1941-45)

This period is usually, and with good reason, seen as a time of conflict with the Allied/Western powers. However, it is interesting to note that, prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tokyo signed a neutrality pact with Moscow on 13 April 1941, even though fighting and large-scale skirmishes continued on the border between Manchukuo and the USSR (and Mongolia). On 7 December 1941, the Japanese Navy launched a large-scale attack on the United States forces at Pearl Harbor, marking the beginning of a war against the Allies (United States, British Commonwealth, Netherlands, also known as the ABCD Powers – Americans, British, Chinese and Dutch). A few days later, the conquest of the Asia-Pacific region had started. By mid-December, Borneo was under Japanese domination. The Philippines fell to Japanese troops in January 1942. By May of the same year, most of Southeast Asia was under Imperial control: Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Indochina, the Dutch East Indies and the islands of the Pacific as well as Papua New Guinea. This blitzkrieg was considered essential by Tokyo, as war resources (notably the oil of the Dutch East Indies, with the American embargo imposed after Japan's invasion of Indochina) were considered a priority in order to support the war effort. Symptomatic of this “total war” situation was the appointment of General Tôjô Hideki (東条英機) as Prime Minister, as well as Army Minister, on 18 October 1941.

However, the Japanese defeat in the naval Battle of Midway in June 1942 also marked the beginning of the Allied counter-offensive. In August of the same year, Allied troops landed on Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands), fighting their way to victory in February 1943 in a major setback for Imperial troops. On 6 July 1944, the island of Saipan fell to Allied forces in a move to isolate the enemy and cut its communication lines, signalling a crucial strategic loss for Japan. In December, the Philippines also fell, as Allied armies closed in on the Japanese archipelago. In March 1945, the island of Iwo Jima (硫黄島 iôtô) suffered a similar fate, while Okinawa was attacked by American troops in April. Although these islands were small, their possession was crucial for control of the Pacific Ocean theatre: Japan was now an attainable destination for US bombers. This chronology focuses solely on Japanese atrocities; to give a single example of enemy brutalities, however, on 17 November 1944, the first of a series of air raids on Japanese cities took off from Saipan, dropping incendiary and explosive bombs on the archipelago. On 9-10 March 1945, between 80,000 and 100,000 civilians died from US incendiary bombs. By August, 66 cities had been hit, and 40 percent of them had been reduced to ashes.

On 6 August, and following Tokyo's decision to reject capitulation as outlined in the Potsdam Proclamation, the first atomic bomb was dropped, on the city of Hiroshima. Two days later, the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan and began a full-scale invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin/Karafuto (サハリン/樺太). On 9 August, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki. On 14 August, under growing pressure, Japanese authorities agreed to capitulate and accepted the Potsdam Proclamation, leading to Emperor Hirohito's declaration the next day, officially putting an end to the conflict on 15 August 1945.

These events constitute what is today known as the “Pacific War”, but it is important to remember that the attack on Pearl Harbor did not mean the end of the conflict with China. Until 1945, Japanese troops were engaged on the continent, and continued their campaign, although it was in reality limited to major cities and adjacent areas. Chinese resistance, as well as the size of the country, constituted the main obstacles for Japanese troops involved in two very different theatres of war.

Furthermore, as noted above, a chronology of mass violence cannot be limited to Japanese military actions against enemy civilians or troops. Abandoned or mismanaged by their leaders and due to poor logistics planning (sometimes no plans at all were drawn up to supply them), Imperial troops succumbed not only to enemy fire, but also to dehydration, malnutrition and disease on the battlefield. These were not isolated or exceptional cases. On the continent, it is currently estimated that the vast majority of the 450,000 Japanese casualties faced disease and starvation, leading them to commit acts of violence against civilians in order to get food. In the Pacific, up to 95 percent of some units caught malaria, due to a shortage of treatments (Fujiwara A., 2001: 33, 127-129, 146, 233). Certainly, acts of large-scale brutality were recurrent throughout the three periods presented here, and it is certain that, due to the radicalisation of the conflict and the involvement of the Allied Powers, 1941-45 can be considered as the timeframe with the most casualties. However, violence against civilians, regardless of their nationality, must be added to this account. In Japan, the period saw a continuation of the restrictions imposed on the population in 1937-38. Experiments on undernourishment were conducted in Japanese prisons, in about 1943, to assess the level of limits and resistance of the individual (Tsuneishi & Asano, 1982: 118-125). Opposition at home, whether from intellectuals, communist sympathisers or religious movements, was silenced through imprisonment or torture. In addition, in 1942-43, over 100 Japanese Christians were jailed by their own government for not obeying the orders of the Imperial hierarchy (Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 23).

Outside Japan, a type of physical violence that is impossible to situate, precisely because of its quasi-ubiquity, continued unabated throughout the period. In Southeast Asia, for example, in 1942-43, over 350,000 men were forced to work on the construction of the Burma-Siam railway line, and it is believed that 60,000 of them died of malnutrition and disease (Dower, 1986: 47, Utsumi, 2006: 93-96). In what is now Indonesia, an estimated 300,000 Javanese were drafted as forced labourers; more than half of then perished before 1945 (Sato, 2005: 129). Similar events occurred throughout Asia. In Manchuria alone, over 2.5 million people were put into forced labour in 1944 (Tucker, 2005: 51).

The number of cases of mass violence can therefore be considered in this period to be the culmination of a process dating back to 1931. This is not only valid for the abovementioned cases of forced labour, but also for most of the following: acts of cannibalism, famines or the extension of the “comfort women” system following the occupation of Indonesia. Some of these specific acts of violence represented isolated cases that cannot always be recorded individually, but mentioning the most significant or early occurrences is nevertheless necessary in such a timeline: it allows for them to be understood, either in a context of systematisation or as confirmation that similar incidents have occurred.

The very number of these acts of violence makes it impossible in this context to locate or record them all. A simple look at Chapter 8 of the judgment of the “International Military Tribunal for the Far East” lists over 100 occurrences of mass brutality (IMFTE, 1948). Furthermore, the selection of sources for these cases raises yet another difficulty, namely the importance given to the victims. Aside from linguistic issues (and the need for historians to access sources in Chinese, Korean or other languages) and well-documented events such as the Nanking Massacre, most of the recorded acts of violence come from English-language archives, namely American, British and Australian (Japanese documents excepted). From a purely Japanese perspective, military deaths between 1937 and 1945 amounted to over 2.3 million, out of which 1.4 million caused by hunger, thirst or disease (Fujiwara A., 2001: 3, 133, 138). Together with civilian casualties, the total is close to 3.1 million (Dower, 1986: 297-98). Moreover, some have estimated that a total of 15 million Chinese perished in the conflict, along with 20 million Southeast Asians (of which 1 million Indonesians) (Fujiwara A., 2001: 133, Gruhl, 2003: 243-58). These numbers are of course subject to debate, and are only given here to illustrate the difficulty to quantify the phenomenon.

This raises one last interesting point, namely the danger of reducing our analysis to a narrative of Japanese brutality. The main focus of this timeline is to present significant cases of mass violence exacted by the Japanese state, Army and Navy. However, one does not wage war against oneself. For the subject at hand, we also need to take into account the role played by the enemy. Beyond the oft-cited notion that the winner gets to write history, a chronology of Allied mass violence (or mass violence perpetrated by Asian collaborators) in the Asia-Pacific War still has to be written in order to render the complexity of these phenomena in a multi-faceted war whose very denomination represents a challenge.

Chronology

July 1941

In preparation for war with the Soviet Union, an estimated 10,000 Korean women are brought to Manchukuo to serve as “comfort women” for the Kwantung Army, and large numbers of brothels are set up throughout the area. ** (Yoshimi, 2000: 57)

25 December 1941

Japanese troops force their way into a British hospital in Hong Kong, using grenades and bayonets to kill wounded British soldiers being treated there. Chinese and British nurses are raped. The total number of victims is unclear, but certainly exceeds 50. ** (Tanaka, 1996: 82-83)

8 February 1942

As part of the anti-communist campaign throughout China beginning in 1940, the 36th Brigade of the First Army uses 300 tonnes of mustard gas against the Chinese Communist Army over eight days in Shanxi Province (山西 Sansei in Japanese). “A few thousand were poisoned and half of them died.” *** (Tanaka, 1988: 17)

15 February 1942

After Britain's surrender of Singapore, it is estimated that several thousand Chinese (suspected of belonging to communist guerrilla movements and/or of anti-Japanese activities), mostly males between 18 and 50 years of age, are executed in a few days by Imperial troops, in a number of different ways ranging from drowning and machine-gunning to beheading. An exact death toll is unavailable, but the number of victims is estimated at between 5,000 and 50,000 during the event now known as the “Singapore Chinese Massacre Incident” (シンガポール華僑虐殺事件 shingapo-ru kakyô gyakusatsu jiken). *** (Dower, 1986: 43-44, Fujiwara K., 2001: 180-86, Ishida, 2006: 170-71)

26 March 1942

BC Unit 9420 is set up in Singapore by Naitô Ryôichi (内藤良一). Experiments on malaria and the plague are carried out in order to expand Japanese BC warfare capacities. (For obvious climatic reasons, frostbite-related research can only be done in Manchuria and malaria can only be studied in the south.) Unit 9420 also specialises in catching and breeding rats, with subunits in Thailand. The total number of victims is unknown. ** (Gold, 1996: 53-57, Tsuneishi, 1995: 12, Yoshinaga 2001: 243)

April 1942

After the fall of the Philippines to the Japanese Army, a total of 78,000 people, both soldiers and civilians (including American troops) are forced to march a 100 kilometres, with no preparation and no equipment, to the prison camp where they are to be interned. Countless numbers are brutalised, bayoneted or executed on the way. More than half those who survived the march died in prison camps after their arrival. The exact death toll is unknown, but estimates range from 6,000 to 20,000 dead in what is today known as the “Bataan Death March” (バターン死の行進 bataan shi no kôshin). *** (Dower, 1986: 51-52, Tenney, 2003: 81-106, Tanaka, 1996: 15)

15 May 1942

The recruitment of auxiliary guards (軍属 gunzoku) to watch over Allied prisoners of war begins in Korea and Taiwan, underlining the racial hierarchy imposed at the time. Japanese officers dominate Asians, who in turn subjugate Western captives (army conscription of non-Japanese nationals is already in place from 1938). Three thousand Koreans are integrated into this structure and become the victims of Imperial military violence, as well as the oppressors of Allied prisoners. In September 1945, plans are made to execute 800 Korean guards along with Allied prisoners, and while the orders are changed at the last minute, this demonstrates the extremely low hierarchical position of these colonial guards. The number of Taiwanese enrolled is subject to debate (possibly over 200,000), as is the final death toll, but 148 Koreans are condemned for brutality at the subsequent International Military Tribunal for the Far East trials conducted by the Allied countries. *** (Hui-Yu, 2005: 117, Michelin, 2000: 263-96, Tanaka, 1996: 38-40, 71-72, Utsumi, 2006: 92-93, Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 194-97)

June 1942

The Japanese naval police fear that the Chinese population on the island of Borneo may be plotting an armed rebellion with the complicity of former colonial authorities. It therefore arrests the Dutch governor of the Kalimantan provinces and his wife, and accuses them of anti-Japanese activities. They are subsequently executed, along with 257 other people. An estimated 1,500 people, Europeans as well as Chinese, Indonesians and Indians, are tortured and killed over the subsequent months. In April 1943, another case of mass violence erupts, known as the “Mandor (or Pontianak) Massacre” (マンドール事件 mandor jiken, ポンティアナック事件 pontianak jiken): several thousand people, including the Sultan, colonial officers, intellectuals and nobles, are killed by Japanese troops. Certain points remain obscure to this day, but, although the total death count remains unknown, it is estimated that over 20,000 Dutch prisoners and civilians died of malnutrition, under torture or by execution in Japanese camps all over the Dutch East Indies before 1945. ** (Hayase, 2006: 32-35, Tanaka, 1996: 27-28, NIOD: IKA, 2010)

7 August 1942

Start of the battle of Guadalcanal. Until its end in February 1943, about 5,000 of the 34,000 men of the Japanese Imperial Army die in combat. Another 15,000 (three times the number of casualties) die of starvation, and/or the effects of disease or malnutrition (malaria, dysentery, beriberi). *** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 22)

12 August 1942

Six hundred and ten crimes, the majority of them rapes, are committed by Japanese troops against civilian populations in Southeast Asia, and listed. As a result, and by September of the same year, 400 “comfort stations”, populated by (mostly) Asian women, are set up throughout the Asia-Pacific region in a matter of months in an attempt to contain rapes and STDs. In the Dutch East Indies alone, an estimated 300 Dutch and 20,000 Indonesian women (many not forced into prostitution but victims of rape and violence) are affected. As mentioned above, the exact total number of women enslaved or subjected to mass violence is still unknown. ** (Imai & Iwasaki, 2010, Tanaka, 2002: 61-83, Yoshimi, 2000: 80, 86)

11 November 1942

Over 2,000 Allied prisoners (Americans, Britons, Australians, etc.) are deported to Manchuria and housed in prison camps. Some sources mention experiments (injections and dissection) on these men, whereas others insist that nothing was done to Western prisoners (not including Russians). The death toll up to 1945 is unknown and remains a source of debate today. ** (Harris, 2002: 163-176, Documents, 1950: 273, Powell, Gomer, Röling, 1981: 44, 48, Tanaka, 1996: 158-59)

January 1943

The Japanese 18th Army loses over 135,000 men in Papua New Guinea, after having been sent to the front by their chiefs of staff without proper knowledge of the local situation or the strength of enemy forces. Due to inadequate planning and carelessness, most of these men die of starvation and disease. *** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 52-53)

17 March 1943

Sixty civilians – German and Chinese missionaries and nuns – are being evacuated from several Pacific islands on the Japanese destroyer Akikaze (秋風) when the order is given, for reasons unknown, by the 8th Fleet Headquarters to execute them. All are shot and thrown overboard, including two children. Three hours later, the officers of the ship conduct a funeral ceremony for the deceased. *** (Tanaka, 1996: 171-78)

September 1943

A total of 2,500 Australian and British prisoners of war have been interned in the Sandakan camp (Borneo) since the previous year. A resistance movement initiated in 1942 is discovered by the Japanese, and a series of escapes triggers a spiral of violence. Living conditions deteriorate, causing prisoners to die of disease and malnutrition. By the end of 1944, more than 400 of them are dead. In January 1945, any survivors fit to walk are taken on a forced march under extreme conditions, and the vast majority do not survive, while prisoners left at the Sandakan camp are executed by Japanese troops over several months. The survival rate is 0.24 percent: in August of the same year, only six prisoners remained alive. *** (Rees, 2001: 81-91, Tanaka, 1996: 11-66, NIOD: IKA, 2010)

End-1943

Individual testimonies by Allied soldiers about acts of Japanese cannibalism start to emerge. One witness claims that over 100 prisoners were killed and eaten by starving groups of Japanese troops near Manokwari, New Guinea. The practice, for survival purposes (Japanese troops were abandoned on Pacific islands without food or means of subsistence), seems to have been extended to killing and eating locals as well as dead Japanese soldiers. An order issued by the Imperial chiefs of staff, dated 18 November 1944, confirms this hypothesis and states that cannibalism is punishable by execution, except if the flesh consumed is of the enemy. ** (Rees, 2001: 93-96, Tanaka, 1996: 120-29)

6 July 1944

The Americans invade Saipan. The next day marks one of the largest collective suicides in the war. In a counter-attack effort, all Japanese forces die on the battlefield. Of the 23,811 troops present, only 3 percent survive. Civilians living on Saipan and attempting to surrender to the enemy are killed on the spot. As a result, 10,000 Japanese, over 1,000 Koreans and 3,000 islanders and “comfort women” perish at the hands of Japanese troops, following Tokyo's orders, which proclaims that Allied troops will rape, torture and kill any Japanese taken alive, and that it is therefore preferable to die than to surrender. While this could be seen as propaganda, it should be borne in mind that more than 12 percent of Japanese settlers were indeed slaughtered by Soviet troops in Manchuria in 1945. *** (Bix, 2000: 475-76, Dower, 1986: 298, Takemae, 2002: 23)

September 1944 (the exact date of the beginning of the experiments is unknown, it may have been earlier) Around 130 Allied prisoners serve as human guinea pigs for members of the Military Police in Rabaul and Ambon in Papua New Guinea until 1945. Some of them are starved in order to study the effects of malnutrition, while others are used for research on malaria or injected with various poisons. Only two survive. ** (Tanaka, 1996: 150-58)

25 October 1944

Vice-Admiral Ônishi Takijirô (大西瀧治郎) creates the first kamikaze corps (神風 divine winds, also known as “Special Attack Forces” 特別攻撃隊 tokubetsu kôgeki tai, often abbreviated as 特攻隊 tokkôtai) during the battle for the Philippines in order to slow the Allied victory in the Pacific. Young Japanese pilots or recruits, often presented as “volunteers”, accept or are forced aboard aircraft destined to crash into American warships, and are subsequently treated as martyrs (and symbols of purity) to the fatherland. It is now estimated that their success rate in hitting their targets ranged between 1 and 3 percent, with total casualties probably numbering around 5,000 pilots. In November of the same year, the “Marine Unit of the Chrysanthemum” (菊水隊 kiku sui tai), a reference to the symbol of the Imperial House, is the first of the suicide submarine squads (回天 kaiten), set up along the same principle, but with a lower death toll of 106 among the Japanese. On 18 January 1945, kamikaze attacks become official government policy. From then on, the entire civilian Japanese population is expected to sacrifice itself and die like the kamikaze pilots, as per the slogan “The shattering of the hundred million like a beautiful jewel” (一億玉砕 ichioku gyokusai). To facilitate the identification process, kamikaze units are often presented in pictures in the Japanese press between 1944 and 1945. *** (Dower, 1986: 232-33, Hosaka, 2009: 93-98, Ienaga, 1978: 183-84, Nakamura, 2006: 304-311, Tokyo Shinbun, 2006: 86-93)

February 1945

While under siege by Allied forces in Manila (February-March 1945), 20,000 Japanese soldiers kill, rape and torture more than 1,000 Filipino civilians held as hostages, before engaging in another suicide counter-attack. Over a period of two months, another 100,000 die in street fights at the hands of Imperial troops. *** (Dower, 1986: 44-45, Fujiwara A., 2001: 112-113, Takemae, 2002: 28-29)

9 March 1945

The Japanese ambassador to Indochina orders the immediate surrender of French forces in the territory. Subsequently, and after a delay in their surrender, French civilians as well as officers are tortured, executed and/or decapitated. A few days later, Imperial authorities announce an increase in the mobilisation of resources. Food has been requisitioned in Indochina since 1944 to feed Japanese troops; as of 1945, larger stocks of rice are confiscated. American bombings (starting in 1943) of local railway lines make the delivery of resources impossible across the territory. Outbreaks of cholera and typhus appear as a result of generalised starvation. The death toll for both events is unclear, but it is thought that between 400,000 and 2 million people died. The number of French people falling victim to the Japanese Army is not specified in the available references. ** (Dalloz, 1987: 62-66, Fujiwara A., 2001: 133, Van 1996: 286, 308-09)

26 March 1945

Allied troops land on the island of Tokashikijima (渡嘉敷島), marking the beginning of the invasion of Okinawa. Japanese civilians are ordered by the garrison commander to kill themselves rather than meet an even more terrible fate at the hands of the American troops, and grenades are distributed among the population. When these fail to explode, sickles, razors and stones are used. Two days later, the death toll amounts to 329. A month later, 1,200 children (aged 11 to 14) drafted into “defence battalions” by the Japanese Army, are either killed by the enemy or commit suicide in accordance with Imperial orders. Okinawans who speak the local dialect but not standard Japanese are executed as suspected spies. By the end of the war, it is estimated that one-third of the island's population (150,000–160,000) has perished. *** (Dower, 1986: 298, Ienaga, 1978: 185, 198-99, Takemae, 2002: 32-35, Yakabi, 2006: 149-177)

March 1945

Japanese troops stationed on Mili atoll, in the Marshall Islands, are cut off from supplies by constant Allied air raids, and gradually starve. Food from the local population is requisitioned, and a subsequent uprising is crushed by the Japanese army, leaving over 200 people shot dead. This case is far from unique, and similar large-scale incidents (including victims such as Korean auxiliaries) occur throughout the Pacific, notably in the Philippines, until the end of the conflict. *** (Fujiwara A., 2001: 92-93, 106-107)

9 August 1945

The order is given by the Japanese Army chiefs of staff to destroy the Pingfan BC warfare facility. Over 400 surviving prisoners are given food dosed with potassium cyanide or shot to dispense with any surviving witnesses who could testify to illegal activities. The remaining staff fail to dispose of all the bodies, which cannot be cremated due to their great number. On 14 August, the 120 technical staff still working there are ordered to commit suicide with cyanide pills to avoid being taken alive by Soviet troops. *** (Harris, 2002: 245, Ienaga, 1978, 188-89, Documents, 1950: 43, 61, Morimura, 1983: 277-81)

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YOSHINAGA, Haruko (吉永春子), 2001, 七三一：追撃・そのとき幹部達は。。。 Nana san ichi: tsuigeki, sonotoki kanbutachi ha… [The Hunt for 731 Unit: What the Leaders were up to…], Tokyo: 筑摩書房 Chikuma shobô.

Websites

Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation), (NIOD) (accessed July 2010), http://www.niod.nl/

Archives and sources

1950, Documents relatifs au procès des anciens militaires de l'armée japonaise accusés d'avoir préparé et employé l'arme bactériologique, Moscou: Editions en langues étrangères.

Indische Kamparchieven (Dutch East Indies Camp Archives), (IKA) (accessed July 2010), http://www.indischekamparchieven.nl/

Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Chapter 8 (accessed July 2010), http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/IMTFE-8.html

Biographical notices

Emperor Hirohito/Shôwa (裕仁/昭和天皇 shôwa tennô) 29 April 1901-7 January 1989: From his accession on 25 December 1926, Hirohito remained in power until his death on 7 January 1989. He enjoys an uninterrupted reign before, during and after the “Fifteen Years' War”. Before and during the conflict, Hirohito was an informed, participative and enthusiastic leader of Imperial military operations, notably sanctioning the (secret) institutionalisation of the Japanese BC warfare project and, as the top of the military chain of command, reading each official telegram and piece of news. After 1945, Hirohito was protected and kept in place by the occupying powers, who saw him as a necessary element in keeping Japan from Communist influence. He was subsequently reinvented as the peace-loving, harmless sovereign who ended the war. His absence at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, followed by his complete absolution from any war-related responsibilities, is still a source of dissension in the Japanese memorial landscape today, and for the people who fought in his name between 1931 and 1945. Source: Bix, 2000

International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) (極東国際軍事裁判 kyokutô kokusai gunji saiban), 19 January 1946-12 November 1948: The IMTFE was a body composed of 11 judges (from the Allied powers as well as neighbouring countries), located in the former Ministry of War headquarters in Tokyo, created to try the leaders of Imperial Japan. Following the Nuremberg Trials and the intention to eliminate “irresponsible militarism”, as stated in the Potsdam Declaration (article 6), 28 Japanese military leaders were tried for crimes against peace and for conspiracy to wage war as “Class A War Criminals” (A級戦犯 A-kyû senpan) alongside “B and C Class” defendants. Seven of the 28 were hanged; by 1958, all of the surviving defendants had been freed, some resuming positions in government. The role and legacy of the IMTFE is still the subject of debate, largely because of dissenting opinions among the judges, the absence of representatives of the Imperial House – starting with the emperor himself – and representatives of colonised countries (Indonesian, Vietnamese) or the fact that BC warfare and, to a lesser extent, the question of sexual enslavement of Asian women (evidence was brought at the early stages of the IMTFE; subsequently, 13 Japanese defendants were brought before a military court in Batavia in 1948 for crimes against Dutch women only) were swept under the carpet at the trials. Source: Takemae, 2002, Yoshimi, 2000

Ishii Shirô (石井四郎) (25 June 1892-9 October 1959) Born in the Chiba (千葉) area, Ishii was the fourth son of a wealthy family. He was a brilliant pupil and, upon completion of his studies in 1921, embarked on a career as a doctor in the Japanese Army. Ishii was convinced that the future of Japan lay with the military, and that BC warfare, although forbidden internationally, had a critical role to play in the process. With this aim, in 1932, he became director of a research laboratory that would later be expanded in Manchukuo. Although he was not alone in his interest for BC warfare, and received support from the highest authorities in Japan, he can be considered a pioneer in the field, particularly after the setting-up of BC facilities (not necessarily under his guidance) across the Asia-Pacific region. After 1945, Lieutenant-General Ishii was never tried by the IMTFE, in exchange for his collaboration with the American government on BC-related matters. It must be noted that most works in Western languages (unlike sources in Japanese) tend to describe him as a “mad scientist” with a strange character, “obsessed” with women and drinking, so as to minimise his “genius”. Source: Harris, 2002

Kwantung Army (関東軍 kantô gun) 1906-1945 After its victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), Japan expanded its sphere of influence in the Liaodong peninsula and gained control over the southern segment of the South Manchuria Railway by way of international treaties. To protect its interests, a military garrison is set up in the area in 1906, subsequently renamed “Kwantung Army” and restructured in 1919. Although technically under the control of the Japanese Army chiefs of staff, it was relatively independent vis-à-vis Tokyo. Notably, the Kwantung Army engineered the 1931 “Manchuria incident” and gained control over the area before creating the State of Manchukuo, with the Army's Chief of Staff serving as Japanese plenipotentiary ambassador, de facto becoming the puppet state's leader. It was also ultimately responsible for managing and partly funding the Japanese BC warfare programme in the area. Although it benefited from a reputation of prestige and success, it suffered greatly during the battle of Nomonhan and surrendered to Soviet troops in August 1945. Source: Matsusaka, 2001

Matsui Iwane (松井石根) 27 July 1878-23 December 1948 A general in the Imperial Army, Matsui was a commanding officer in the Russo-Japanese War. Upon his retirement from the Army in 1935, he became active in pan-Asian associations to suppress communism in China. Called out of retirement to command the Shanghai Expeditionary Force and later the Central China Area Army in 1937, he favoured taking Nanking to mark a symbolic victory. Matsui was not present in the city when atrocities began (he was aware of some of them to a certain extent, mostly looting and rapes, which he strongly opposed), and only arrived for a formal ceremony on 17 December 1937. On 15 February 1938, he was recalled to Japan, where he ultimately retired. In 1946, he was arrested by the IMTFE and found guilty of incapacity to control his troops. Wrongly sentenced to death, he was hanged along with six other Japanese leaders. His diary today is widely used and abused (by some revisionists) as a source on the event. Source: Yamamoto, 2000

Naitô Ryôichi (内藤良一) 26 December 1906-7 July 1982 Naitô was a lieutenant-general of the Japanese Army. He graduated from the Kyoto Imperial University before becoming assistant professor at the Imperial Army School of Medicine (陸軍軍医学校助教授 rikugun guni gakkô jokyôju) in 1939. A year later, he filed a patent application with Ishii for his “method of dry plasma blood transfusion” (輸血用乾燥血の製造法 yuketsuyô kansôketsu no seizô hô). In 1942, he was appointed Head of Unit 9420 in Singapore, where BC research and experiments were conducted under his supervision. From 1942 until the end of the war, Naitô resumed his position as a professor at the Imperial Army School of Medicine. From 1947 and in exchange for complete immunity, Naitô became a leading informant for US military personnel looking for the results of Japanese research on BC warfare. In 1950, he was the co-founder, under the patronage of Japanese and American bodies, of the Japanese Blood Bank（日本ブラッドバンクNihon Buraddo Banku), which on 28 August 1964 was renamed “The Green Cross Corporation” (株式会社ミドリ十字 kabushigaisha Midori Jûji), implicated in a tainted-blood transfusion scandal in 1983. Source: Yoshinaga, 2001

Okamura Yasuji (岡村寧次) 15 May 1884-2 September 1966 Born in Tokyo, Okamura was a Japanese general in the Kwantung Army. In the 1920s, he was sent to Europe, subsequently taking command of a Japanese battalion that had returned from Siberia with a high rate of STDs, incapacitating officers and soldiers alike. In 1932-33, as Vice-Chief of Staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, and to avoid the spread and debilitating effects of venereal diseases, he ordered both the Imperial Army and Navy to set up brothels in Shanghai after the Japanese intervention of 1932. Okamura demanded that the Nagasaki prefecture create and send “military comfort women corps” for Imperial troops stationed in China. The women were to be recruited among Japanese prostitutes in Nagasaki, with the aim of eradicating not only STDs among the Imperial forces, as well as rape. Condemned for war crimes in China in 1948, he was however able to return to Japan in 1949. His diary is a source on the “comfort women” question. Source : Yoshimi, 2000

Ônishi Takijirô (大西瀧治郎) 2 June 1891-16 August 1945 Vice-Admiral in the Imperial Navy, Ônishi was appointed as Chief of the General Affairs of the Aviation Department in the Ministry of Munitions in 1944, after a brilliant career as commander of an aircraft carrier. This position made him aware of a certain lack of Japanese aircraft production capacity, leaving his country at a disadvantage against the enemy. With few planes left, Ônishi felt that suicide attacks had a better chance of success than conventional warfare. Determined to keep fighting to the bitter end, the Vice-Admiral refused to consider surrendering to the Allies and committed suicide in the night of 15 August 1945. He wrote an apology note before his death, dedicated to kamikaze pilots and to their families. Source : Inoguchi, Nakajima, Pineau, 1958

Tôjô Hideki (東条英機) 30 December 1884-23 December 1948: A general in the Japanese Army, Tôjô was transferred to the Kwantung Army early in his career. In 1938, he was recalled to Japan to serve in various pivotal positions. He then became prime minister from 1941 to 1944, becoming Chief of Army Staff in 1944. Tôjô attempted suicide in 1945, just before he was captured by the occupying forces, but was kept alive and tried by the IMTFE as one of the main war criminals, due to the several senior positions he held before and during the conflict. He was hanged in 1948. Tôjô is often considered a scapegoat executed in order to save the Emperor and keep him on the throne. According to some sources, he remained devoted to Hirohito until the end; Hirohito reportedly wept upon hearing the news of his death. Source: Bix, 2000

Keywords

Japan (日本), World War II (第二次世界大戦), Asia-Pacific War (アジア・太平洋戦争), Fifteen Years' War (十五年戦争), Atrocities (残虐), Mass Violence (暴力), Comfort Women (従軍慰安婦), Biological Weapons (生物兵器), Japanese Army (日本軍), Colonies (植民地)

Three centuries of violence and struggle in East Timor (1726-2008)

Introduction

Incidents of mass violence have on many occasions made East Timor a focus of attention. Those that received the greatest media coverage were perpetrated during the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, which saw the death of 20-25% of a population that totalled 700,000 in 1975. During that period, the capacity of the East Timorese, in half an island the size of Belgium, to resist an archipelago with a population two hundred times greater stunned the international community.

But earlier periods were also marred by violence, such as the struggle against Portuguese colonisation in the 19th century and the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945. Since its independence in late May 2002, the country has continued to face serious violence, especially during the 2006-2008 crisis, prompting the return of an international peacekeeping force. These events must be put into perspective, as a means of understanding the complexity of the motivations and issues at stake.

Doing so will require us to raise two fundamental questions, regarding the 1975-1999 period in particular. First, how was it that a numerically much smaller people, in a relatively small area and with much less sophisticated weapons, could withstand – for almost 25 years– an Indonesian army equipped with modern and destructive combat equipment such as napalm? Second, can Indonesia's mass violence be characterised as “crimes against humanity” or attempted “genocide”?

I. Minor episodes of violence before the early 18th century

I.1. Initial contacts encouraged by trade

The date of the first contacts between the Timorese and the Portuguese is not known precisely, aside from the fact that it was a few years after the conquest of the Sultanate of Malacca on the Malay Peninsula in 1511. At that time, the Portuguese had started moving into in the trade of sandalwood, controlled by the Chinese since the mid-13th century (Eccles, 2004). Trading contacts were limited and non-violent. Even after the 1550s, when Dominicans priests started evangelising the inhabitants of the Sunda Islands, Timor remained a marginal destination, with the Portuguese preferring the nearby island of Solor (Oliveira, 2004). In 1613, the Dutch seized the port of Kupang, on the western side of the island, where a Portuguese settlement was located. By that time, the “Portuguese” community totalled only 89 whites and 450 mestizos (Durand, 2006-a: 87). This reflects the limited nature of their one-century presence on an island that had a population of several hundred thousand at that time. In 1642, after converting a number of local monarchs to Catholicism, the Portuguese embarked on their first real military operation in the interior. Their own forces numbered only 90 soldiers, but they obtained the support of many Timorese warriors. The same process, which entailed using the forces of local kingdoms against neighbouring realms, would later be used systematically during the colonial wars of the 19th century. In 1642, Timorese forces allowed the Portuguese to conquer the kingdom of Waiwiku-Wehale. This was not, as is sometimes written, an “empire”. But Waiwiku-Wehale did have a spiritual authority acknowledged by dozens of other kingdoms (Therik, 2004, Durand, 2009). This victory enhanced Portugal's prestige beyond its borders, and fostered the spread of Catholicism (Thomaz, 2008: 396).

The Dutch, who were tightening their grip on Southeast Asia, sought to dislodge the Portuguese from Timor. In 1651, their forces again seized the town of Kupang on the western side of the island, forcing Portuguese Dominicans monks to establish their main base in what is today known as the Oecusse District. In 1661, with a view to stabilising the situation, the Portuguese signed a treaty with the Dutch. The VOC recognised Portugal's sovereignty over most of the island of Timor, in return for its acceptance of the Dutch presence in Kupang (Durand, 2002: 50).

I.2. The rise of the Topasses in the second half of the 17th century

The 17th century saw the strengthening of the Topasses. The name referred to mestizos of Portuguese and Timorese ancestry, also known as the “black Portuguese”. There were two large Topasses families: the Hornay family, descending from a Dutch deserter, and the da Costa family, of Portuguese origin (Boxer, 1947). Between 1673 and 1693, António de Hornay, a Topasse, controlled the Sunda Islands. With the rank of Capitão-mor, he has been described as “virtually the uncrowned king of Timor”. A few years later, in 1695, Domingos da Costa, another Topasse, deposed the first envoy of the Portuguese viceroy of the Indies, António Pimentel de Mesquita. He was considered the king of Timor from 1693 to 1722, alternately allying himself with or opposing the Portuguese.

William Dampier, an English explorer who stopped on the island in 1699, noted that the natives acknowledge the King of Portugal as their sovereign and that they allowed the Portuguese colony to build a fort, which they call Lifau, and the Dutch to have a counter called Kupang. But they would never allow either to intervene in the government of their country. According to Dampier, the people of Lifau spoke Portuguese and were Catholic. They prided themselves on their religion and their Portuguese descent, and would have been very angry if anyone dared to tell them they were not Portuguese. Yet, while there, he never saw more than three whites, two of whom were priests. (Dampier, 1981)

This analysis illustrates both the pride of the East Timorese in having established links with Portugal and their rejection of all forms of imposed interference, which continues to the present day.

In fact, it was only in 1702, after two centuries of contacts, that Portugal dispatched its first “governor”, António Coelho Guerreiro, to Timor. He set up two systems that were to have a lasting effect on relations between the Portuguese and the Timorese, one promoting trust and the other sparking conflict, namely the granting of military ranks and the levying of the finta (Gunn, 1999). The assignment of Portuguese military ranks such as “colonel” ensured the support of many chiefs. However, while initial relations were built on symbolic alliances, trade and commerce, the introduction of the finta system was not welcomed by the Timorese leaders. The finta was a tribute in kind that allied kingdoms were obliged to pay the Portuguese governor. The new constraint sparked numerous wars. António Coelho Guerreiro had only been in Lifau for three years when he was forced to flee in the face of repeated attacks by the Topasses. This goes to show just how fragile Portugal's position remained. However, the recurrent attacks did not stop Portugal from sending governors.

II. Violence from the 18th to the mid-19th centuries

II.1. The Battle of Cailaco in 1727

Mass violence began largely in the 18th century, when the Portuguese tried to tighten their grip, and the Timorese kingdoms joined forces in opposition. The first major war began under the command of Topasse leader Francisco de Hornay. In 1726, 15 kingdoms from Oecusse to Ermera united against the Portuguese. Meanwhile, the governor managed to obtain the support of most of the kingdoms of the very eastern part of the island. Thus, the two sides covered a major part of the territory of today's Republic of Timor-Leste. The Battle of Cailaco lasted six weeks, from 23 October to 8 December 1726. It mobilised 5,500 men loyal to Portugal, and probably at least as many on the opposing side. Some fighting was of exceptional violence, as evidenced by drawings of attacks and destroyed villages on a map made at the time (Durand-a, 2006: 133-138). The start of the wet season in early December put an end to the conflict, without a real winner. The Battle of Cailaco nevertheless testified to the power of action and mobilisation of the Portuguese. In 1733, more than 40 kingdoms agreed to pay the finta, and recognised the Portuguese crown.

II.2. The Battle of Penfui in 1749 and European setbacks

Relations with the Europeans remained ambivalent. The Topasses welcomed the opening of a Catholic seminary by Portuguese Dominicans in Oecusse. But they sought to get rid of the Dutch. In 1749, Topasse mestizos met in the plain of Penfui, east of Kupang, with a force estimated at 50,000 men. Facing them, the VOC had only 23 European soldiers, a few hundred former slaves and warriors from around Kupang or neighbouring islands. Despite the imbalance, the Dutch won the battle. At least 2,000 Topasses and their allies were killed in the fighting.

Strengthened by the psychological advantage of this victory, the VOC launched a series of military expeditions in the 1750s (Gunn, 1999: 95). At the same time, the Dutch negotiated new agreements, and in 1756 signed the Treaty of Paravicini, which extended their influence to 15 kingdoms on the island's southwest. In 1759, Dutch commander von Plüskow attempted to extend the Dutch conquest by destroying a Topasse stronghold in Animata, before attacking their fort in Noemuti, where he took 400 prisoners and captured 14 cannons. This feat prompted seven more western chiefs, formerly Topasse allies, to sign a treaty with the VOC. Having the upper hand, von Plüskow proposed the establishment of a tripartite treaty between Portugal, the VOC and the Topasses. But he was killed in 1761, by Francisco da Costa and António Hornay, descendants of the two former rival Topasse families, who had decided to join forces. Subsequently, apart from taking Atapupu, in the middle of the northern coast in 1818, the Dutch scaled down their interference in internal Timorese affairs until the mid-19th century. Meanwhile, the Topasses continued their attacks on the Portuguese settlement in the current Oecusse, managing to kill the governor, Dionísio Gonçalves Rebelo Galvão, in 1766. The Timorese blockade became so threatening that his replacement as governor, António Teles de Menezes, decided to transfer the colony to the east. On 11 August 1769, the population loyal to the Portuguese (1,200 people) departed in boats to settle in the city of Dili, leaving the region of Oecusse to the Topasses. II.3. Slavery until the late 19th century

Precise figures are lacking to quantify the participation of the Portuguese in the “slave” trade in East Timor. Indeed, the practice was officially abolished in 1858, at which time we begin to have reliable statistics (Castro, 1867). Traditional forms of slavery in Timor have been documented, but they were often akin to systems of “dependency” or “temporary captivity”. These “slaves” were mainly prisoners of war or persons convicted by the local courts, particularly for witchcraft. In traditional societies, most of these “dependent people” were relatively well treated and became part of the family. They could buy their freedom, or even be ennobled when emancipated by a member of the local aristocracy. Moreover, their master could not ship them off the island.

In the 18th century, under the European influence, slavery became harsher. For instance, rules were changed to enable masters to ship their slaves off the island, reversing the previous prohibition of that practice, although shipments of slaves to Batavia or Macao were apparently limited to a few hundred people a year. Despite its abolition in 1858, forms of slavery were observed until the 1890s, before disappearing in the early 20th century (Gunn, 1999: 134).

III. Violence and military campaigns from the 1860s to 1912

III.1. The second half of the 19th century was a turning point

Governor Affonso de Castro, stationed in East Timor from 1859 to 1863, played a major role in the changes ushered in as of the mid-19th century. He was behind the political and administrative division of the territory into 11 military districts, which encroached on local powers and foreshadowed contemporary partitions. Facing a critical financial situation with the depletion of sandalwood resources, Affonso de Castro also took decisions that were not welcomed by the Timorese. He increased the amount of the finta, and introduced forced labour. A supporter of the controversial system of forced cultivation introduced by the Dutch in Java, Affonso de Castro forced the Timorese to plant coffee and to give 20% of their harvest to the Portuguese authorities. Those who could not plant coffee were required to hand over 10% of their rice crop. It was only at this time that the Portuguese presence can be described as “colonisation”, in comparison with previous practices based on alliances or the payment of symbolic tributes. These requirements triggered a new round of insurrections in the kingdoms of Timor. Seeking to ignore these skirmishes, and aware of the fragility of Portuguese settlement, de Castro set himself up as an advocate of respect for local traditions and limited intervention (Roque, 2010).

The revolts continued after the departure of Affonso de Castro, culminating in the assassination of Governor Alfredo de Lacerda e Maia in 1887. However, the Portuguese were starting to import modern weapons, giving them a clear advantage over people armed with only bows and arrows, spears, hunting rifles and old cannons. Severe repression ensued. At the same time, this period was marked by a willingness to modernise the region to a degree: creation of the first library in Lahane (1879), construction of a lighthouse in Dili (1881), installation of street lighting in Dili using oil from Laclubar (1884) and the opening of the first public schools. But the Portuguese influence was pretty much limited to Dili and the “assimilated” minority. A census of Catholics in 1882 listed 23,000 worshipers, or about 8% of the population, with the rest remaining true to their animist rituals (Durand, 2004: 52).

III.2. More than 20 military campaigns under Governor Celestino da Silva (1894-1908)

After 1702, most of Timor's Portuguese governors spent barely two or three years in office – sometimes their tenure did not exceed a few months. José Celestino da Silva, who took office in 1894, showed exceptional longevity, occupying his post for 14 years until 1908. A former member of a squad in which he had served King Dom Carlos I of Portugal, Celestino da Silva enjoyed the support of the monarch, despite criticism prompted by his actions, both economically and militarily. He was the first governor to have regular access to modern weapons: machine guns, grenades and even the support of a naval gunboat. This enabled him to conduct more than 20 military campaigns (Pélissier, 1996). Again, the desire for independence of many Timorese kingdoms manifested itself regularly and forcefully, some local kings preferring to die than to surrender. The Portuguese victories were only made possible by the ambivalence of some Timorese chiefs or liurais, who opted to join forces with Portugal, either because they feared retaliation, or to raid their neighbours during military operations. In general, the governor had only 200 Portuguese soldiers and 1,500 moradores (Timorese soldiers recruited in Dili). Without the support of local kings, who provided combined forces exceeding 10,000 men, the Portuguese would not have been able to overcome these rebellions.

The best known of Celestino da Silva's campaigns were those against the kingdom of Manufahi. Located on the southern coast, a hundred kilometres from Dili, Manufahi had a population of over 42,000. In 1895, the king refused to pay the finta or to provide men for forced labour. While the governor was putting together a force to compel him to surrender, the king seized the offensive with several allies, managing to destroy a Portuguese column of several hundred soldiers and to capture their weapons. After 50 days of fighting, the two sides, both weakened, had to part with no real winner. Five years later, governor Celestino da Silva put together unprecedented forces: 100 officers and NCOs, 1,500 moradores, 12,300 East Timorese warriors and 650 bearers. The Timorese accounted for 99% of the forces available to the governor. Divided into three columns, they moved south in late September 1900, fighting with difficulty against the hostile kingdoms. The Portuguese only achieved victory thanks to their modern weaponry. Celestino da Silva admitted being impressed by the resilience of the Timorese. After two months of fighting, the governor realised that victory was out of reach. So as not to lose face, he promised to pardon those who surrendered. He returned to Europe in 1908, after the death of his patron, King Dom Carlos I, without having been able to bring the Manufahi to heel.

Governor Celestino da Silva was also behind a plan to transform the finta into a poll tax (1906), the introduction of which, in the 1910s, had serious consequences. Da Silva's main objectives were to subdue the local kingdoms and to increase revenues by taxing trade and encouraging the cultivation of coffee. His doctrine consisted of two main strategies. The first was to maintain alliances with the Timorese kingdoms, while at the same time dividing to conquer. The second was to set up a military and legal administration based on traditional rights, but under an umbrella of Portuguese authority and law. To achieve these objectives, Celestino da Silva built many forts linked by a network of tracks and connected by telephone. He was also behind more positive changes (education, drinking water and a modern hospital in Dili in 1906), although they were the result of forced labour.

III.3. The Great War of 1911-1912

Governor Filomeno da Câmara, who served from 1911 to 1913 and from 1914 to 1917, finally vanquished the Manufahi, after huge efforts. After the departure of Celestino da Silva, relations between the Timorese and the Portuguese had continued to deteriorate. In 1910, the abolition of the monarchy in Portugal and the advent of the Republic had undermined the symbolic link that had previously existed between the liurais and the king of Portugal. In more concrete terms, the finta's transformation into a poll tax and the increased use of forced labour for public works and coffee plantations had put much more pressure on the population. At the end of 1911, the new ruler of the Manufahi, Dom Boaventura, joined forces with the kings of Camenasse and Raimean (Pélissier, 1996). Timorese incursions forced the Portuguese to evacuate Same, Hatolia, Maubisse and Ermera. Governor Filomeno da Câmara took fright, arming civilians in Dili and calling urgently for reinforcements from Macao, Goa and Mozambique. Pátria, a gunboat, and two vessels loaded with troops arrived in February 1912. Filomeno da Câmara then launched offensives in the west and south. After many battles, it was only in late March 1912 that the Portuguese managed to overcome the kingdoms of Fato Berliu, Turiscain and Bibissuço. In the west, in Atabaé and Cailaco, some local kings declared that they would prefer to die rather than submit. On many occasions, the governor expressed his admiration for the mobility and pugnacity of the Timorese, their skill in the art of guerrilla warfare, and their ingenuity in using the military equipment they captured.

Heavy fighting continued in many areas: Ambeno, Maubisse, Deribate, Leimão and Atsabe. But the arrival of two steamers with troops from Mozambique, in April and July 1912, tipped the scales in favour of the Portuguese. Through the use of artillery, machine guns and grenades, and with the gunboat Pátria shelling coastal areas, the governor's troops managed to take Aituto and Riac, a mountain where some Timorese forces had taken refuge. There remained one last fortified area, Leo Laco, where Dom Boaventura had retreated with more than 12,000 men. After a two-week siege, the king of Manufahi decided to try to force his way out on 10 August 1912, after getting word of the arrival of new troops from Mozambique. He breached the Portuguese lines and escaped with a few thousand men. The next day, a second wave of besieged soldiers fled in turn. The others perished or were forced to surrender on 11 August. Sporadic attacks continued until October 1912 until May 1913, even in the enclave of Oecusse, despite the fact that the scales of military force were so clearly tipped in favour of the Portuguese.

The fighting in 1911-12 left 15,000 to 25,000 dead among the Timorese population, which at that time accounted for more than 5% of the total population (Durand, 2009: 73). After centuries of fighting, the Timorese kingdoms had been seriously weakened, and this demonstration of force engendered a degree of resignation in respect of the colonial presence. At the time, ties between East Timor and the Dutch East Indies were very loose. Accordingly, the Indonesian nationalist movements that emerged in Java and west of the island in the years 1920-1930 had no impact in East Timor.

IV. Troubles at the end of the colonial period: 1942-1975

IV.1. The Japanese occupation (1942-1945)

On 17 December 1941, ten days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 1,100 Australian and Dutch soldiers landed in East Timor, despite Portugal's neutrality in the conflict. They wanted to prevent Timor from serving as a base for an invasion of Australia. At the time, East Timor was deemed “pacified”, and only 150 Portuguese soldiers were stationed there. The Japanese bombed Dili for the first time on 8 February 1942. They then invaded the city on 20 February, with up to 20,000 troops (Borda d'Água, 2007). The Allied soldiers had retreated into the mountains. From there, they organised sabotage missions. The Australians could only resist Japanese forces 20 times as great thanks to the help of the Timorese. The Timorese gave them information and allowed them to hide in areas where they could not have survived without assistance. The Allies started a bombing campaign in May 1942, targeting strategic objectives in Dili: the telegraph station, the power station, the customs warehouses and the hospital. The main victims were local people. In September 1942, the Japanese army set up “black columns” (columnas negras). Largely comprising people from the western part of Timor under Dutch rule, these columns of militiamen sowed violence and destruction. Here again, the East Timorese were the main victims. In November 1942, the Japanese placed the bulk of the remaining Portuguese community (600 people) in camps. In December 1942, the Australians decided to evacuate their troops, which were coming under increasing pressure. They boarded the bulk of their men between January and February 1943, as well as 540 Portuguese and mestizos, but left the Timorese defenceless. The Japanese reprisals against people suspected of having helped Western soldiers were particularly harsh. The Japanese occupation continued under American and Australian bombing, while famine-related requisitions of food and the forced labour of men and women had a serious impact on the population. The damage was considerable, with 90% of buildings destroyed. The casualties were also very severe. In 1946, the Australians set up a commission to examine war crimes committed by the Japanese army. But investigators only looked into deaths in the Allied ranks, and not among the Timorese population (Gunn, 1999: 237), despite the fact that losses among the belligerents were much lower. The Australians lost 40 men, Portugal 75 and Japan 1,500. By contrast, estimates of casualties among the local population indicate that between 45,000 and 70,000 East Timorese were killed during this period, 10-15% of the pre-war population, estimated at 450,000. James Dunn, a former Australian consul in Dili (1962-1964), has expressed the view that “East Timor was one of the great catastrophes of World War II in terms of relative loss of life” (Dunn, 1983).

On the western side of the island, between 1945 and 1949, Indonesian nationalists, including President Sukarno, faced with the Netherlands' refusal to recognise their 17 August 1945 declaration of independence, had opted for the principle of maintaining colonial boundaries. They accordingly pledged never to claim East Timor (Defert, 1992: 39). IV.2. The 1959 Viqueque uprising and the 1966 attack on Oecusse At the end of 1958, 14 Indonesians fled their country and sought political asylum in Dili. They claimed to be members of Permesta, a regionalist movement fighting against Sukarno's centralising government. The Portuguese governor allowed them to settle in the eastern part of the colony. In March 1959, rumours circulated about the involvement of the Indonesian consul in Dili in fomenting troubles. In 1959, an uprising broke out in the southeast of the island, lasting from 7 to 20 June. The death toll is estimated at between 500 and 1,000 (Gunn, 1999: 260). It also led to the arrest of 65 suspects among the Timorese. Those who were considered leaders were exiled to Angola.

The motives and the role in these events of the Indonesian leaders of the time remain unclear. Some have interpreted the uprising as an early attempt to destabilise East Timor. Others see in it the beginnings of the first post-war nationalist movement. However, it is clear that it had a big impact on the political awareness of the East Timorese. Seven years later, in August 1966, when General Suharto took power in Jakarta, the burning of several villages and a mortar attack on the Oecusse District by the Indonesian army showed that Indonesia's new leader considered using force to seize the territory very early on. At that time, swift reaction by the Portuguese army discouraged the Indonesian military to take their attack further. Aside from these two events, the situation in East Timor remained relatively calm during the post-war period. Some young people were exiled in Africa for declarations deemed subversive against the colonial regime, including a future president, José Ramos-Horta. Others were introduced to Marxism in the course of their studies in Portugal, but there were no violent protests or colonial wars, as there were in Angola and Mozambique.

IV.3. The start of peaceful decolonisation: 1974-1975

In April 1974, the Carnation Revolution ended the regime of Marcelo Caetano, the successor of the dictator Salazar. This movement also prompted a measure of political awakening in East Timor, where the echo of the struggles in the Portuguese-speaking African colonies had fostered the emergence of national consciousness among the literate minority. The Timorese took advantage of this to form political parties, previously banned (Ramos-Horta, 1987: 29). Three parties were formed in May 1974, the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT, which would become later in the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, FRETILIN) and the Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI). The first two came out in favour of independence, although the UDT envisaged a period transition under Portuguese supervision. APODETI, which observers painted as a small minority, declared itself in favour of integration with Indonesia (Hill, 1978; Jolliffe, 1978; Nicol, 1978).

Upon his appointment in November 1974, the new governor of East Timor, Mário Lemos Pires, was able to measure the commitment of the population to Portugal, and at the same time the existence of a strong East Timorese identity (Lemos Pires, 1994). Despite differing standpoints within the leadership in Lisbon, Portugal began a process of decolonisation, which was confirmed at the Macao conference in May 1975. Two months later, Portugal promulgated a decree on the decolonisation of East Timor, foreshadowing the election of a constituent assembly in October 1976.

In preparation for the vote, the UDT and FRETILIN, East Timor's two biggest political parties, formed a coalition in January 1975. The Indonesian military deemed this liable to compromise their plans, and took action on several fronts (Defert, 1992: 76). They held talks with the Portuguese, in London in March 1975, in Hong Kong in May 1975, in Jakarta in August 1975 and in Rome in November 1975. The Indonesians tried to persuade Portugal to transfer sovereignty over East Timor to Jakarta, or at least to prevent Lisbon from seeking UN intervention. Meanwhile, General Suharto sought the support of US president Gerald Ford during a visit to the United States in July 1975. He obtained it easily, by arguing that FRETILIN was a communist party that would destabilise the region. The Americans had lost the war in Vietnam in April 1975, and feared the spread of communism in Asia. IV.4. The 1975 civil war

The Indonesian intelligence services also undertook to break up the UDT-FRETILIN coalition. In May 1975, they told the leaders of the UDT that they would never accept the formation of an independent government including FRETILIN members. This resulted in the UDT unilaterally terminating the coalition. In early June 1975, Portugal did not respond to a brief foray by the Indonesian military into the Oecusse District. In late July 1975, the Indonesian intelligence services told the leaders of the UDT that an armed invasion would be launched in the absence of decisive action on their part. The UDT concluded that they had no other option than to organise a coup. On 11 August 1975, UDT leaders seized weapons from the police, with no reaction from the Portuguese administration (Defert, 1992: 77). The governor could easily have responded, as the UDT coup participants numbered less than 200, whereas the government had more than 1,700 troops. In the absence of clear instructions from Lisbon, he opted to leave Dili and to settle on the island of Ataúro. By contrast, FRETILIN was quick to rally a majority of the East Timorese. Most Timorese soldiers deserted with their weapons to form the Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor (FALINTIL). On 27 August, FRETILIN took Dili. By mid-September, it controlled most of East Timor.

These disorders caused fighting and excesses on both sides, including summary executions of prisoners. They cost between 1,500 and 3,000 lives, while approximately 10,000 refugees flocked, along with the UDT leaders, to the western part of Timor, where they were taken hostage by the Indonesian military.

The Indonesian army could have used this brief civil war as an excuse to justify its invasion, but General Suharto hesitated. Indonesia had over-estimated its leverage, namely the capture of 26 Portuguese officers and civilians. The Indonesian military had allowed them to cross the border in August 1975, before putting them in camps. But the Portuguese government refused to allow the Indonesian military to enter East Timor in exchange for their release. Meanwhile, between September and early December 1975, the International Committee of the Red Cross and many Western journalists were able to testify to the record of the East Timorese leaders in their management of economic and social affairs.

V. Twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation (1975-1999)

V.1. The December 1975 invasion

The “official” military invasion of 7 December 1975 was preceded by numerous attacks. Starting in September 1975, Indonesia launched a succession of military offensives on border towns, including Balibo, where five Western journalists died on 16 October. On 24 November, FRETILIN called in vain on the UN to send a peacekeeping force. On 27 November, the city of Atabae fell. Faced with the inevitability of a massive Indonesian offensive, FRETILIN unilaterally decided to declare the independence of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste on 28 November 1975. Its leaders hoped to provoke a reaction from the international community (Defert, 1992: 89). Only a handful of countries recognised the new republic, including China, Cuba, Vietnam and the former Portuguese colonies, but neither the UN nor any Western power was to follow suit. On 30 November 1975, representatives of the UDT and APODETI, virtual prisoners in West Timor, were forced to sign the so-called “Balibo declaration” requesting the annexation of East Timor by Indonesia.

On 7 December 1975, 20 warships and 13 aircraft attacked the city of Dili. Ten thousand Indonesian soldiers were involved in the offensive. On 8 December, two corvettes left Ataúro, evacuating the last Portuguese. This demonstrates that, contrary to what has often been written, the Indonesian military did not invade East Timor “after” Portugal's departure, although the corvettes apparently did not seek to oppose the invasion.

Resistance proved to be greater than expected by the Indonesian army command, and the East Timorese of 1975 put the same determination into fighting the invaders as their ancestors had done against Portuguese colonial manoeuvres. Fighting continued in Baucau on 10 December, then a fortnight later in Liquiça, Suai, Aileu and Manatuto. According to Martinho da Costa Lopes, the apostolic administrator of Dili, at least 2,000 people were killed in the early days of the invasion, including Australian journalist Roger East (Lennox, 2000).

V.2. Military campaigns and internment camps in the late 1970s

On 12 December 1975, in response to these attacks, the General Assembly of the UN strongly deplored the “military intervention of the armed forces of Indonesia in Portuguese Timor” (Resolution N°3485 (XXX)). It also called on the “government of Indonesia to desist from further violation of the territorial integrity of Portuguese Timor and to withdraw without delay its armed forces from the territory in order to enable the people of the territory freely to exercise their right to self-determination and independence”. This call was reiterated and adopted unanimously by the Security Council on 22 December 1975 (Resolution N°384). However, no intervention force was sent. Vittorio Guicciardi, a special envoy of the UN Secretary General, went to East Timor in January 1976, but returned two days later, stating that the occupying army had not allowed him to meet representatives of FRETILIN. Deceived by its own propaganda and blinded by visceral anti-communism, the Indonesian army thought it could gain control of the country in less than a fortnight. But by late December 1975, in view of the extent of resistance, it had to lift the number of troops to 25,000, or one soldier for 28 inhabitants. FALINTIL could count on 30,000 people very familiar with a country where bad roads and the start of the rainy season slowed the enemy's progress. The behaviour of the Indonesians also provoked massive rejection, even from those who could have been favourable to the invasion. By the end of 1976, most of the population had fled into the mountains. The Indonesian army controlled only the main roads and had been forced to increase its presence to 40,000 men. In August 1977, it attacked FALINTIL's headquarters in the mountains, forcing the resistance movement to abandon centralised management of its activities and to call on its 450,000 East Timorese followers to return to the plains. The following month, the occupying army decided the internment of civilians and to strike a decisive blow by launching a military campaign of encirclement and annihilation (Budiardjo and Liong, 1984; Taylor, 1991). The campaign consisted of an attack on the border area and the north coast, aimed at forcing FALINTIL to retreat to the east and the south coast. From September 1978 to March 1979, Indonesian army guns pounded away at the two great bastions of resistance, Natarbora plain and Matabéan mountain. By the end of 1979, after the death or capture of key leaders, not to mention the loss of 80% of its soldiers and 90% of its equipment, the resistance movement appeared to be crushed. All that remained were small groups scattered across the country, Xanana Gusmão being one of the last remaining leaders to have avoided capture by the army of occupation (Niner, 2000).

In December 1978, the Indonesian military admitted to having interned 372,900 Timorese people (60% of the population) in 150 camps. Confined, and with very little land to cultivate, the prisoners experienced a famine that the International Committee of the Red Cross said was “as bad as Biafra and potentially as dramatic as Cambodia” (Defert, 1992: 121). The situation did not improve in subsequent years. Three other famines occurred, in 1981-1982, 1984 and 1987.

But it was perhaps the tactic known as the “fence of legs”, conducted from May to September 1981, that constituted the Indonesian army's most critical strategic error. In an attempt to round up the last remaining resistance groups, all men aged 15 to 55 were sent to either side of the territory to form human shields on the front lines, preceding the Indonesian troops. This inhumane treatment confirmed to the Timorese that no mercy was to be expected from the occupying forces. A great deal of violence against women, ranging from harassment to rape, was also confirmed by many witnesses (Conway, 2010; KPP-HAM-TimTim, 2000; Turner, 1992). Accordingly, despite the imbalance between forces and the absence of reaction from international institutions, and faced with military campaigns, the camp policy and a system of day-to-day oppression, Xanana Gusmão had little difficulty in convincing most Timorese of the need to continue their struggle.

V.3. The reshaping of the armed struggle in the 1980s

In the early 1980s, the Timorese forces were too small to wage a frontal war. Instead, they took the form of a mobile guerrilla. Two main areas of action were established: in the centre, in the quadrangle formed by the cities of Ermera, Liquiça, Aileu and Dili, surprise operations were carried out, such as the attack on the Indonesian broadcasting service in Dili in January 1980. But the mainstay of the resistance forces was located in the eastern part of the country, where most of military offensives were conducted (Budiardjo and Liong, 1984; Defert, 1992). It was in this context that the resistance held its first “national conference” in March 1981 (Mattoso, 2005: 90). It endorsed the new strategy and formalised the system of clandestine organisations in the camps and towns: the clandestine resistance networks (NUREP). This meeting also resulted in the formation of the first East Timorese platform: the Revolutionary Council of National Resistance (CRRN), which became the National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM) in 1988, then the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) in 1998. Faced with the failure of its large military offensives, the Indonesian army asked Colonel Purwanto to negotiate with the resistance in March 1983. The positions were irreconcilable. The Indonesian military wanted to negotiate the surrender of the guerrillas. The FRETILIN delegation, led by Xanana Gusmão, was only willing to accept the principle of a “transitional” Indonesian government, with a UN peacekeeping force, until a genuine referendum on self-determination could be held. But the negotiations allowed the declaration of a double-edged temporary ceasefire. On the international front, the Indonesian government could argue that the problem was in the process of being resolved. But it also allowed the resistance, still relatively weak, to re-establish contacts between dispersed groups and to rethink its organisation.

The Indonesian army unilaterally broke the ceasefire in August 1983, with the launch of an operation aimed at mopping up the remnants of the rebel forces. Highly mobile by that stage, the armed resistance, comprising 6,200 fighters divided into ten units, was able to avoid clashes. It even managed to reverse the situation by attacking several Indonesian convoys, enabling it to rearm and prompting the army chiefs of staff in Jakarta to abandon large-scale operations for two years. Pushing its advantage, the resistance carried out multiple attacks in late 1985. In the space of ten months, FALINTIL carried out 50 attacks. In response, the Indonesian military launched an operation aimed at definitively suppressing the resistance. Forty thousand troops were ordered to capture Xanana Gusmão. Despite massive air support, attacks on the Matabéan and Kablaki mountains failed to result in his capture. Meanwhile, FALINTIL, using information provided by Timorese people infiltrated into the occupying army, had several successes, including the liberation of the town of Viqueque for a few days in October 1986. At that time, while the international community saw East Timor as a “lost cause”, Gusmão was offering the country's youth a simple choice: “a homeland or death” (Gusmão, 1994: 178). The great strength of the resistance army was never to use violence against civilians, even against the Indonesian transmigrants, who started arriving in the territory in 1980, and who numbered roughly 85,000, or 9% of the population, by the end the period of Indonesian occupation (Durand, 2002: 102). In December 1987, General Murdani, one of the initiators of the invasion, acknowledged to reporters that it would take years to defeat such a well-established guerrilla movement.

V.4. The “openness” of 1989 and change in the resistance movement

In 1989, the resistance was not in a position to achieve a military defeat, and – a handful of support groups aside – most of the players in the international community continued to close their eyes to the situation (Carey and Bentley, 1995; Gunn, 1997 and 2006). Mário Carrascalão, who had accepted the post of governor under the Indonesian occupation, denounced poor living conditions in the Indonesian parliament. He also highlighted the contradiction in banning foreigners from travelling to East Timor when the territory had been occupied for 14 years and the army was claiming that the situation had been “normalised”. The all-out closure was all the more difficult to maintain that Pope John Paul II was set to visit Indonesia at the end of the year. Preventing him from visiting what Jakarta claimed as its most Catholic “province” would have been to acknowledge the magnitude of the East Timorese resistance. General Suharto therefore accepted a partial opening of half of the country's districts. This change offered new means of action for the population – and especially young people. In October 1989, despite massive police presence, protesters unfurled nationalist banners in front of the international press during the papal visit to Dili, leading to the arrest of about 40 young people. Three months later, in January 1990, further protests were dealt with harshly during the visit to Dili by John Monjo, US ambassador to Indonesia, initiating a systematic practice marring all visits by foreign delegations, at the risk of demonstrators' lives. But most East Timorese people were holding out for the arrival of a Portuguese parliamentary delegation, scheduled from 4 to 16 November 1991. Back in 1989, Xanana Gusmão had ordered people to restrict military operations to avoid being compromised. Aware of the difficulty in keeping control of the situation, the Indonesian military tightened its conditions to the point where they became unacceptable, prompting Portugal to suspend the delegation's visit.

V.5. The 1991 Santa Cruz massacre and the “reawakening” of the international community

On November 12, 1991, several thousand East Timorese gathered for the funeral of a young separatist killed during the visit of Pieter Kooijmans, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the question of torture. Three thousand five hundred protesters marched through the streets of Dili, waving flags, en route to the Santa Cruz cemetery. Thinking that it could act with impunity, the Indonesian army fired on the crowd, unaware that journalist Max Stahl was filming the scene. Images broadcast on Western TV provoked protests from countries including Canada and the Netherlands, and prompting the United States to freeze military assistance. Under international pressure, and after initially having denied the significance of the event, General Suharto was forced to set up a commission of inquiry, which worked under the control of the army. It reported an official death toll of “about 50”, whereas Human Rights advocacy organisations had published a list naming 271 dead, 382 wounded and 250 missing (Durand, 2002: 184). The Santa Cruz incident sparked a new wave of international support. In March 1992, the Lusitania Expresso ferry left Portugal with a former president of the Portuguese Republic and journalists from 20 countries on board (Durand, 2006: 428). However, faced with the threat of Indonesian navy fire, the vessel had to stop at the edge of East Timorese territorial waters.

The capture of Xanana Gusmão in a hiding spot in Dili on 20 November 1992 constituted another major event that year, given that the Indonesian military had been hunting him for over 10 years. Subjected to torture, he was forced publicly to call on his comrades to give up the fight. A military court sentenced him to life in prison, before commuting his sentence to 20 years. Xanana Gusmão had to start a hunger strike to compel the Indonesian authorities to transfer him from a jail for common-law criminals to an institution for political prisoners. Ironically, Xanana Gusmão's arrest gave a new lease of life to East Timorese nationalism. Inspired by their imprisoned leader, young East Timorese studying in Indonesia manifested their desire for independence on many occasions. Many were imprisoned and tortured for protesting publicly or for their involvement in clandestine activities, such as Fernando de Araújo, aka Lasama, the general secretary of the RENETIL student network (Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste). It should be noted also that despite the very strict rules imposed by the regime of General Suharto, several Indonesian intellectuals dared to denounce their country's occupation and oppression of East Timor in the early 1990s (Aditjondro, 1994; Mubyarto et al., 1990).

V.6. The turning point of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize and the Asian crisis of 1998

In the mid-1990s, more than 20 years after the military invasion, the awakening of the international community was not mirrored by the leaders of the major international institutions or the global political powers. Even the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in October 1996 to Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Bishop of Dili, and José Ramos-Horta, East Timor's representative at the UN, did not prompt any reaction from the UN Security Council or force Indonesia to end its illegal occupation.

It was ultimately the Asian crisis that would trigger a profound change in the situation, starting in 1997. In May 1998, ten months after the start of this crisis, the Indonesian economy, weakened by corruption and nepotism, showed the extent of its fragility, when it was revealed that two-thirds of Indonesians were living below the poverty line. After being fired upon by the military, Indonesian students occupied the parliament in Jakarta, forcing General Suharto to resign after 33 years in power. His vice president, Jusuf Habibie, succeeded him on 20 May 1998. On 9 June, the new president proposed a “special status” for East Timor. Six days later, 15,000 East Timorese students took to the streets of Dili to demand a genuine referendum on self-determination and the release of Xanana Gusmão. During the following month, 65,000 Indonesians, mostly transmigrants, fled the country.

VI. The August 1999 referendum and achievement of independence

VI.1. 1998-1999: the bad faith of the Indonesian authorities

In 1998, Indonesia resumed talks with Portugal. However, as in 1975, the occupying army sought to divide the East Timorese and to intimidate pro-independence fighters in order to impose its will. In August 1998, Indonesian military leaders assembled the Timorese militias they had formed, calling on them to “protect integration”. These anti-independence militias had won logistics and financial support that had seen their ranks swell from 1,200 to about 9,000 men in 1999 (Durand, 2002: 116). In November 1998, faced with rising violence, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his concern. Portugal suspended the talks. However, the ball was rolling. In January 1999, the Indonesian president said he would ask the National Assembly (MPR) to approve independence if his proposed “autonomy” (i.e. integration with Indonesia) was rejected. On 5 May 1999, the UN, Portugal and Indonesia signed a tripartite agreement bearing on the organisation of a “popular consultation” in which the population could vote on the proposal for autonomy within the unitary Republic of Indonesia. The term “referendum” had been avoided to allow Indonesia to save face, but the stakes were high, as rejection of “autonomy” status would automatically entail the separation of East Timor from Indonesia.

In May-June 1999, the UN team in charge of preparing the referendum (United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor, UNMISET), led by Ian Martin, was witness to intimidation and assassinations perpetrated by pro-Indonesian militia. In July 1999, 90,000 people, or 10% of the population, had to take refuge in the mountains to escape the attacks. Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for a UN peacekeeping force to be sent. Her call met with the refusal of General Wiranto, commander of the Indonesian armed forces, who was not about to let the UN run the process. Ian Martin said in turn that observers had little doubt that the Indonesian armed forces were responsible for forming and arming the pro-integration militia groups (Martin, 2001).

Despite threats and attacks, more than 98% of East Timorese voters went to the polls on 30 August 1999. The extent of the turnout made the outcome of the vote predictable. As of 1 September, before the results had been announced, militias backed by army units began the systematic destruction of public buildings. On 4 September 1999, the UN announced that 78.5% of the population had voted for independence. The announcement of this overwhelming vote triggered a spike in violence. The militias and the army continued to destroy buildings, as well as the archives that could have proven their abuse. Three hundred thousand people, a third of the population, were also forcibly displaced to West Timor, while summary executions prompted hundreds of thousands of East Timorese to flee to the mountains (Durand, 2002: 124).

The attacks against civilians and the Church were so violent that US president Bill Clinton declared on 10 September 1999 that the “proven complicity of the Indonesian army [was] unacceptable”. Two days later, president Yusuf Habibie agreed to the deployment of an international peacekeeping force, INTERFET, under Australian command, which landed in Dili on 20 September. It had secured the entire country by early October 1999.

VI.2. The human toll of 25 years of occupation

Timor-Leste is one of the greatest human tragedies of the second half of the 20th century. Despite the various commissions of inquiry, we will probably never have definitive data, because so much evidence has been destroyed. The numbers are nevertheless extremely high. According to Indonesian sources, the occupation resulted in at least 150,000 deaths, of which 80,000 victims during military operations and 70,000 dead during the famines of the 1970s (Durand, 2002: 88). Abílio Osorio Soares (1992-1999), appointed governor by the Indonesian administration, went so far in 1994 as to put the death toll from the invasion at 200,000. In October 2005, the report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) estimated the possible number of victims at 183,000 (CAVR, 2010). Many independent sources suggest that the occupation may have resulted in 250,000 deaths between 1975 and 1999 (Taylor, 1991; Defert, 1992). In any event, the number is substantial. Considering that the total population of East Timor stood at about 700,000 in 1975, one can take it that between 20% and 30% of the 1975 population perished (Defert, 1992: 147-150; Durand, 2002: 86-97).

The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation between Indonesia and Timor-Leste puts the number of deaths during the preparation of the 1999 referendum alone at more than 1,400 (CTF, 2005). The occupation of East Timor also had dramatic consequences for many young Indonesians enrolled in a war waged by the dictatorship of General Suharto. According to internal evaluations of the Indonesian army, corroborated by FALINTIL, 17,000 Indonesian soldiers perished (Defert, 1992: 101). In addition to this very large casualty list, immense trauma was caused by the conflict and the period of occupation, especially since Indonesia has refused to acknowledge the extent of its responsibility and that the risk of retaliation has left East Timorese leaders preferring to show pragmatism by withdrawing its call for the establishment of an international tribunal along the lines of those established for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

VI.3. The occupation of East Timor: “crime against humanity” or “attempted genocide”?

Faced with such figures, one may wonder whether the occupation of East Timor and its consequences can be described as a crime against humanity, or even attempted genocide. The first point was examined as early as 1999 by an Indonesian commission looking into human-rights violations in East Timor (KPP-HAM-Tim-Tim). Its report, issued in January 2000, left little doubt as to the need to explore this question in greater depth: However in the intensive investigation over 4 months, the Commission considered that what had happened was far more than gross violations of basic human rights. First, the fact was found of definite policies issued both by those in charge of security in East Timor and the local government which made possible the continuation of the criminal acts. […] Two, in the time frame which was the area of investigation by the Investigative Commission, criminal acts on a wide, massive, intensive and collective scale were seen. […] The form of the acts in 1999] fulfils conditions for the category of criminal acts against humanity. (KPP-HAM-Tim-Tim, 2000, official translation)

More structurally, can it be argued that there was an attempted “genocide”, as implied for instance in the title of the book by Gabriel Defert (1992)? The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide became effective on 12 January 1951, and has been ratified by 140 countries, more than 70% of UN member states. Article II of the Convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [or] (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” In view of these criteria, there can be little doubt that the acts and means of occupation of East Timor by Indonesian troops from 1975 to September 1999 bear all the characteristics of genocide. That said, it remains to be seen whether there was “intentionality”, i.e. whether the crimes in East Timor resulted from criminal negligence or a genuine desire to destroy all or part of a group of people.

It is difficult to answer this question categorically. However, a number of aggravating factors argue against ruling out intentionality. Aside from the military campaigns that hit civilians and resistance fighters indiscriminately, restrictions on food aid (when it had been established that populations confined in camps were experiencing severe famines), particularly intense family planning (imposed partly without the knowledge of the people affected) and, in September 1999, the forced displacement of people, including many children, suggest that some factions of the Indonesian military did indeed intend to destroy at least part of the East Timorese people between 1975 and 1999.

Only the creation of an international tribunal would allow a ruling to be made on this matter. The UN was in a position to set one up between October 1999 and May 2002, but failed to do so, leaving it up to the new state of Timor-Leste to make the request. While many human-rights advocacy groups criticise president José Ramos-Horta for having abandoned the idea in 2009, one can also understand Timor-Leste's decision. One can also ask why the UN itself failed to initiate the process before May 2002. The answer is probably to be found in the inherent contradiction of the UN, which is supposed to defend “the right of indigenous people to self-determination”, while in reality being a club of sovereign states. Furthermore, the UN itself would probably not have emerged unscathed from the trial process, as it allowed an illegal occupation to go on for 25 years, whereas it could have deployed a peacekeeping force as early as December 1975, pursuant to Security Council Resolution N°384 calling on the Indonesian government to “withdraw without delay all its forces from the territory”.

VII. The crises of independence: 2002-2008

VII.1. The first post-independence crises: 2002-2005

Since independence in May 2002, the country has experienced several periods of unrest. While the 2006-2008 crisis received the most international coverage, it was not the first that the country had gone through. In November and December 2002, anti-government protests resulted in the destruction of administrative buildings, the looting of several shops and the residences of people close to the prime minister, accused of favouritism. In April and May 2005, recurrent demonstrations took place in the capital, in protest against the government's desire to reduce the influence of religion in teaching (Cabasset-Semedo and Durand, 2009). This brought to light divisions between the population and the state. Particular tensions emerged between the two Timorese diasporas, one embracing the English-speaking world (the UN, Australia and the United States) and the other the Portuguese-speaking world (Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa). Other divisions also emerged between the “old guard” of the resistance, living in the mountains and the eastern regions, and those who had struggled against the occupier, particularly in the cities and in the western part of the country. An example of such divisions can be seen in the fact that former resistance fighters were generally taken into the army, while those that served in the police during the Indonesian occupation tended to enter the police force, fostering distrust between these two institutions. The very secular positions of some historical FRETILIN activists made for choppy relations with a population that is 96% Catholic. Similarly, the initial ban on access to the administration for non-Portuguese speaking excluded much of the youth educated during the Indonesian period.

As such, the UN certainly shares a good deal of responsibility for the political excesses of the transition. In particular, it failed to prepare East Timor's leaders for the magnitude of the task ahead, especially in terms of management. Thus, budget execution averaged roughly 95% during the transition period from 1999 to 2002, when the UN administration was doing the job, but without giving sufficient training to the East Timorese. After the departure of the UN “experts”, the figure fell to 75% in 2004-2005 and 62% in 2005-2006 (Durand, 2008: 121). The 2006 crisis can as such be ascribed in part to the growing inability of the Timor-Leste administration to keep a lid on public expenditure. Not only has the government failed to cover a third of its budget, but the promises of assistance or pensions to the poor and veterans have been slow to materialise, fuelling discontent.

VII.2. The 2006-2008 crisis

Another aspect of the problem is a lack of knowledge of the Timorese reality by experts during the period of transition. In 2001, belatedly grasping the need to establish a national constitution before independence, the UN opted for the easy way out by proposing a draft constitution modelled largely on Portugal's (Babo Soares et al., 2003; Gunn and Huang, 2006: 111). Based on the principle of a strong legislative branch, the constitution gives a largely symbolic role to the president, which is not consistent with the traditions of conflict resolution in East Timor. This feature had serious consequences in 2006.

The crisis was triggered in January 2006 by a petition of 600 soldiers (out of a total force of 1,600), led by Lieutenant Gastão Salsinha. The men claimed discrimination because of their roots in the western part of the country. Indeed, a long-standing distinction continues between populations in western Timor-Leste (Kaladi/Loromonu) and those hailing from the eastern part of the country (Firaku/Lorosae), although it is neither ethnic nor linguistic (Durand, 2002 & 2006-b: 140, Gunn, 2010: 86), and neither clearly defined nor clearly delineated in geographic terms. It was mainly forged during the colonial period between people from the west, close to Dili, who were considered more “assimilated”, and those hailing from the east, who were deemed more “rustic”. It was reinforced during the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, when most of the armed resistance (linked to FRETILIN) was based in the east. The phenomenon was central to the petitioners' claims.

President Xanana Gusmão, to whom the petition of the 600 soldiers who considered themselves the victims of discrimination was presented, could not handle the issue, because the national constitution did not empower him to do so. While the problem was relatively simple, he was obliged to pass the petition on to the government, which did not take the issue seriously enough, ordering the soldiers to return to their barracks pending an internal investigation. The petitioners refused, and deserted with their weapons, winning the support of some of the military police rallied around Major Alfredo Reinado, a hero of the resistance who quickly became an emblematic figure in the protest movement. These desertions led to serious troubles that caused the deaths of 37 people and displaced 150,000 others. The situation quickly degenerated, and President Gusmão ultimately requested the return of a multinational force, while the rebels took to the mountains. Poor management of the crisis led to the resignation of the interior minister and the prime minister (Kingsbury and Leach, 2007: 10).

Having become aware of the problem, Xanana Gusmão opted to run for the post of prime minister in the 2007 elections, leaving José Ramos-Horta to assume the presidency. But this did not resolve the 2006 crisis, largely because the elections had removed FRETILIN from power, triggering violent protests by its members that lasted several weeks. The crisis only ended with a dual assassination attempt against José Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmão on 11 February 2008. The president, although seriously wounded, recovered, while the main rebel leader, Alfredo Reinado, was killed in the attack. The subsequent amnesty process allowed the return of 100,000 people interned in camps. The last remaining camps were closed in 2009.

Elements of a conclusion

The crises that took place between 2002 and 2008 have been used by some as a pretext for presenting Timor-Leste as an immature or non-viable country. This argument, which was used to justify the invasion in 1975, is questionable, to say the least. The crises must also be analysed in the light of the lessons of history, including the shift in the country's identity, in conjunction with the trauma of occupation. In fact, the fierce desire for independence of the Timorese kingdoms, which manifested itself with the very first contacts with the Portuguese and endured through the struggle against Indonesian occupation, is now facing new constraints. The country must fit into the international community and adapt to its institutional structure. In addition, different groups, both ethno-linguistic and political, must accept a logic of reconciliation and compromise made difficult by the legacy of antagonism dating back to the years of struggle, particularly between resistance fighters and militia. Taking the problems created by France's four-year occupation during World War II, both internally and in its relations with Germany, and extrapolating the effects of this occupation as if it had lasted not four but 24 years, gives one a better measure of the challenges facing Timor-Leste today. A challenge compounded by the fact that so many of the crimes and acts of violence committed in the country will go unpunished.

Frédéric Durand is a geographer, teaching at Toulouse-Le Mirail University and specialising in environmental, historical and political issues in Southeast Asia.

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Historiography and memory of the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990

A) Introduction

The Lebanese Civil War was both an internal Lebanese affair and a regional conflict involving a host of regional and international actors. It revolved around some of the issues that dominated regional politics in the Middle East in the latter part of the 20th century, including the Palestine-Israel conflict, Cold War competition, Arab nationalism and political Islam. Conflicts over these issues intersected with longstanding disagreements in the Lebanese political elite, and in parts of the population, over the sectarian division of power, national identity, social justice and Lebanon's strategic alliances. During 15 years of fighting, around 90,000 people lost their lives, according to the most reliable statisticians, Labaki and Abou Rjeily (1994). The much higher numbers of up to 150,000 that are often given appear to have been based on international press reports from the early 1990s and subsequently repeated uncritically (Hanf 1993: 339). By contrast, Labaki and About Rjeily, supported by the second most reliable statistical source (Hanf 1993: 339-57), base their figures on information from the Lebanese army, security forces, Red Cross and various professional organisations, parties and militias, as well as reports in the Lebanese press during the war. Even so, this information was gathered under extreme difficulties, and it is possible that the real number exceeds 100,000. Of the 90,000 killed, close to 20,000 are individuals who were kidnapped or disappeared, and who must be assumed dead as they have not been accounted for. Nearly 100,000 were badly injured, and close to a million people, or two-thirds of the Lebanese population, experienced displacement (Labaki and Rjeily 1994: 20).

In addition to the large number of dead, much of Lebanon's infrastructure was shattered, as was Lebanon's reputation as an example of cross-sectarian coexistence in the Arab Middle East. The Lebanese Civil War was one of the most devastating conflicts of the late 20th century. It left a number of political and social legacies that make it paramount to understand why it involved so many instances of mass violence. The question of Civil War memory is acute for many Lebanese, who have come together in the post-war period to debate the war and create public commemoration. In their view, the war has continued through other means in the post-war period, and the periodic rounds of violent conflict plaguing Lebanon since 1990 are directly related to the Civil War. Remembering, analysing and understanding mass violence in Lebanon, therefore, is not just an academic exercise, but for many Lebanese an urgent task directly linked to political reform and reconciliation.

The Ta'if Accord that ended the war in 1989 failed to resolve or even address the core conflicts of the war, including the sectarian division of power in Lebanon, the Palestinian refugee issue, the presence of Syrian forces on Lebanese soil and Syrian tutelage, and Hizbollah's status as the only armed militia. The killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, the 2006 war between Hizbollah and Israel, and continued political instability in the country have only added to the sense among many Lebanese that political violence is endemic to their body politic. In daily discourse in Lebanon, and even in academic writings about the war, the widespread experience of being caught in recurrent cycles of mass violence can translate into descriptions of violence as “irrational”, or simply beyond belief (see Khalaf 2002: 1-22 for a discussion of the “rationality” of civil war).

Lebanon is not an anomaly, and its experience with mass violence does not defy social analysis. It does, however, require the outside observer to be aware of the deeply divisive context in which Civil War historiography is being produced. The perceived unfinished nature of the war has rendered debates about it very contentious inside Lebanon. Some historical work has been politicised under the influence of the political and physical reconstruction process that followed in the 1990s and 2000s, and, more generally, under the influence of political discourses surrounding the immediate past in reconstructing Lebanon, while other work – much of it produced by scholars of Lebanon in Western universities – maintains a high standard of objectivity. This is not to extol non-Lebanese scholars over Lebanese ones. In fact, two of the most painstaking and convincing histories of the war were written in French by Lebanese scholars (Beydoun 1993, Kassir 1994). However, as Beydoun (1984) has shown, Lebanese scholars during the war were under the heavy influence of political and ideological projects that sought to mould history in their shape. Given the vast amount of historical work on the war, this review does not pretend to be all-inclusive, but seeks to summarise some of the main debates surrounding the war.

Some of the most salient engagement with the Civil War has been produced outside the realm of academic history, in elite and popular cultural production, political discourse, urban space and mass media. It is a key point of this scholarly review that such material should be viewed as part of the historiography of the war. By making a conceptual distinction between academic history and memory culture, the review does not validate one over the other, nor claim that the two realms are hermetically sealed from one another. On the contrary, the aim of this review is to show how the different genres of memory production overlap and form part of the ongoing assessment of the war. Hence, it gives an overview of the main themes and topics in academic literature, cultural and media production, and public debate relating to the war. Finally, it examines a body of meta-historical literature analysing the production of historical memory in Lebanon.

B) Outbreak, cores issues and driving forces of the war

What is habitually referred to as the Lebanese Civil War was in fact a series of more or less related conflicts between shifting alliances of Lebanese groups and external actors, who from 1975 to 1990 destabilised the Lebanese state. The conflicts can be divided into five main periods: the two-years war from April 1975 to November 1976; the long interlude of failed peace attempts, Israeli and Syrian intervention and a host of internal conflicts between November 1976 and June 1982; the Israeli invasion and its immediate aftermath from June 1982 to February 1984; the internal wars of the late 1980s; and finally the intra-Christian wars of 1988-90, which led to the end of the war.

In each of those periods, notorious battles, massacres and assassinations took place, including the Black Saturday, Tal al-Za'tar and Damour massacres of 1975-76; the War of the Mountain between Druze and Christian forces in 1982-83; Israeli bombardment of West Beirut in August 1982, and the Sabra and Shatila massacres that followed; the War of the Camps between Palestinian and Shiite forces from 1985 to 1987; and Michel Aoun's war with Samir Ja'ja''s Lebanese Forces and the Syrian army in 1989 and 1990. Debates over these particular events intersect with a number of thematic debates, which this review will summarise.

There is agreement among historians that the war broke out as a result of a period of growing division between those Lebanese who supported the right of the Palestinian resistance to stage operations against Israel from Lebanese soil, and those who opposed it. This division intersected with other contentious issues, most prominently whether or not the system of power sharing in place since the 1943 National Pact was sustainable or due for radical reform, and whether Lebanon should orient its international alliances towards the Arab world and the Soviet Union or towards the West and its local allies. On the one hand, the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), under the leadership of Kamal Junblatt, called for an overhaul of the sectarian quota system, and for a leftist-Muslim alliance that would realign Lebanon with other “radical” regimes including Syria, Libya and Iraq. Destabilisation of the internal security situation allowed various militias to arm, not just those affiliated with the LNM, but also the Christian-conservative front. Hence, many scholars (e.g. Traboulsi 2007: 174) point to President Suleiman Franjieh's decision to dismantle the deuxième bureau security services in 1970 as a crucial turning point following the statist approach of his predecessors Fouad Chehab and Charles Helou.

The biggest bone of contention regarding the outbreak of the war is the role of the Palestinian armed presence. The historiographic debate is not just over the Palestinian question as such, and the right of the LNM to support the PLO, but over whether or not Lebanon from 1943 to 1975 had developed a viable system of consociationalism, and over the relative impact of external powers on the Lebanese state. In Breakdown of the state in pre-war Lebanon, Farid Al-Khazen (2000: 385) argues that the Lebanese system had by and large proven itself a flexible mode of power sharing between the countries' sects. From the Cairo Agreement in 1969 to outbreak of war in 1975, he points out, all but one of Lebanon's many cabinet crises revolved around the PLO. The destabilisation of the Lebanese state, therefore, must primarily be seen as an effect of the Palestinian question.

Although well argued and scholarly, Al-Khazen's book can be boxed with more simplistic attempts to place the blame with outside forces. For those who stress internal factors such as the inability of the quota system to deal with the rising numbers of Shiites, and Maronite hegemony over the state more generally, emphasis on the Palestinian issue overwrites critiques of the Lebanese system, and can even be read as part of a “Christian” or conservative historical discourse that seeks to admonish either the Christian right or the sectarian system. A famous shorthand for externalising the war by pointing to outside forces is the idiomatic term “a war of others”, or une guerre pour les autres, the title of journalist and diplomat Ghassan Tueni's renowned 1985 book (Tueni 1985). After the war, “a war of others” became shorthand for externalising collective and individual feelings of guilt associated with the Civil War. Much of public debate about the war since 1990 has revolved around the external/internal question, and critical historiography has not been immune to these debates (Khalaf 2002: 15-22).

Another group of scholars who stress the internal dynamics of the Civil War are interested in interpretations of political economy. They highlight the over-reliance of the Lebanese economy on Western capitalism from the late 19th century onwards. Inspired by dependency theory, sociologist Salim Nasr (1978), among others, shows how the penetration of foreign capital dovetailed with the social and political dominance of a both local and wider Arab bourgeoisie in Lebanon. This bourgeoisie was in collusion with the zu'ama political class of political bosses of wealthy and influential families. As Michael Johnson showed in his 1986 study Class and client in Beirut, the zu'ama were critical in maintaining a check on violence at a local level. By controlling lower-ranking political bosses, who in their turn reigned in “the street”, the zu'ama were critical both to the parliamentary system of consociationalism, and to the local negotiation of sectarian power and influence. When their influence – particularly that of the Sunni zu'ama in West Beirut – waned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Johnson argues, the wider system of social control in Lebanon began to unravel (Johnson 1986). In a later work entitled All Honourable Men, Michael Johnson returns to his earlier work and critiques it for being too based on a class reading of the roots of the Civil War. Instead, he proposes a socio-psychological reading that places emphasis on the changing relations in the nuclear family in Beirut before the war (Johnson 2002).

C) Debates over sectarian violence

The work of Marxist sociologists like Salim Nasr (1983), Fawwaz Traboulsi (1993) and Fuad Shahin (1980) presents a corrective to what they see as over-reliance on sectarianism as a catchall to explain the conflict. The sectarian explanation is even more problematic, as it dovetails with hardened stereotypes repeated in journalistic accounts of the war as a resurgence of age-old sectarian hatred. Sectarian identification and the way in which it shaped political subjectivities during the war and leading up to it, however, cannot be explained away completely. The issue of sectarianism in the war intersects with a much longer debate about sectarianism in Lebanon going back, at least, to the 1840-60 wars in Mount Lebanon (Weiss 2009). One side in the debate believes that Lebanese nationalism emerged not because of political sectarianism but despite it. As Firro (2003: 67) puts it, the French creation of Lebanon in 1920 empowered sectarian representation and the leadership of political oligarchies locally and nationally. In this view, the institutional arrangement of sectarianism has produced an idea of two separate people and coexistence between them. Critics of the sectarian system believe that only the resilience of civil society during the war saved the future existence of Lebanon as a country. Frequent sectarian bickering in the political leadership, resulting in political stalemate, inefficiency and stalled reforms, has only reinforced this view in the post-war period.

On the opposing side in the debate, proponents of the confessional system stress its historically proven ability to contain and resolve conflict (Weiss 2009: 143-4). As Samir Khalaf (2002: 327-28) has formulated this idea, despite their ungratifying social and political expressions in the recent past, communitarian roots can be stripped of bigotry and become the base for equitable forms of power sharing. The Lebanese national identity may be fragile, but it is nevertheless a well-established identification with a long history that rests on an overlap of multiple identities. The insistence on one seamless national unity led to disasters for Lebanon as well as for its proponents in the Lebanese National Movement. Lebanese nationalism in this view can be defined as “a fragile net of confessional identity, national identity and superstrata ideologies”, and the acceptance of this loosely connected net (Reinkowski 1997: 513). In political terms, this implies that, because the sectarian system merely reflects the makeup of society, it is ultimately better suited to regulate conflict than a secular system would be (Messara 1994).

Sectarian violence has been a difficult topic for novelists, filmmakers and others. Many have skirted the issue, focusing instead on civilians who resisted the logic of separation and exclusivity. A case in point is the most popular film about the Civil War, and the first such film to be shown in mainstream Lebanese cinemas, Ziad Doeuiry's West Beyrouth (Doueiry 1997). It portrays a Muslim boy and a Christian girl and their middle-class families, as they become victims of a war that they wholly reject. The conclusion is comforting, as it falls in line with the war-of-others thesis. Militiamen and sectarian violence here is presented as an outside force, external to the life-worlds of ordinary Lebanese. The focus on a victimised middle-class can partly be explained by the fact that many cultural producers hail from this group, and in any case rejected the logic of militia warfare and sectarian violence.

Other artists have produced less self-censored descriptions of sectarian bloodshed. Two of Lebanon's foremost novelists, Elias Khoury and Rashid al-Daif, have written semi-biographically about their experiences as fighters for the LNM in the two-years war. The much younger Rawi Hage, in his prize-winning De Niro's game (2007), describes the experiences of a young Christian fighter in East Beirut and his motivations for joining the Lebanese Forces and participating in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The novel suggests that ideology was only secondary to a range of personal circumstances ranging from poverty to broken families that could motivate young men to join the militias and participate in mass violence. A similar description from West Beirut can be found in Yussef Bazzi's Arafat looked at me and smiled (Bazzi 2007). On film, Randa Chahal Sabag's 1999 Civilisées (Civilised People), a portrait of militiamen during the war, suggests that the Lebanese populace bore more responsibility for the violence than they would like to believe (Sabag 1999). However, such bluntness is rare. In public debates about memory of the Civil War since 1990, critics of self-delusion have more commonly linked the problem to political and sectarian leaders who are blamed for keeping a lid on discussions about the war in order to pacify the population and avoid uncomfortable discussions about their own involvement in the war (Haugbolle 2010: 74-84). Equally, the more than 50 Lebanese films that deal with the war tend to treat individuals – even perpetrators – as victims caught up in a war beyond their control and design (Khatib 2008: 153-184).

D ) Massacres and mass violence

There is no disagreement over the fact that several massacres took place and that hundreds, in some cases thousands of civilians were murdered. Rather, historiographic debates centre on the interpretation of the political circumstances surrounding the massacres and the perceived necessity of these crimes. In several cases, the events have become foundational for the self-understanding of political groups. Disentangling them from ideological discourse is a difficult task, and not one that Lebanese historians are always able to fulfil. Today, a phalangist narrative, as represented on the Lebanese Forces' webpage, maintains that the massacres of 1975-76 and 1982 were in fact reactions to onslaughts on the Christians of Lebanon, defensive measures made necessary by the actions of the LNM [1]. Conversely, proponents of the left (who outnumber “rightists” in the group of intellectuals and artists dominating public debate about the war) stress that the worst massacres were committed by members of the Christian right.

Massacres of the two-years war

The outbreak of the war was marked by its first massacre, known as the Ayn al-Rumana incident on 13 April 1975, where 27 Palestinians were killed by Kata'ib militants (Picard 2002: 105). Although the assault was clearly committed by Kata'ib, Christian leaders accused the Palestinians and their leader Arafat for provoking a confrontation in an environment of heightened tension (Hanf 1993: 204). Ayn al-Rumana was followed by other massacres in the so-called two-years war from April 1975 to November 1976. As Elizabeth Picard points out, the attacks on refugee camps and villages in this period were not the product of lawlessness and militias ruling the street, although a vast number of militias were active and many areas were quite lawless. Rather, the massacres followed a logic of forming homogeneous cantons propagated by leaders such as Pierre Jumayil and Camille Chamoun, but equally – even if in retaliation – by leaders of the LNM like Kamal Jumblatt (Picard 2002: 110). The logic necessitated cleaning areas of non-Christian, or non-progressive, elements, and it sanctioned mass murder.

The killing of civilians was also motivated by a cycle of revenge, as massacre followed massacre in the two-years war. The first major incident was the Black Saturday massacre of 6 December 1975, when falangists killed between 150 (Chami 2003: 57) and 200 (Hanf 1993: 210) civilians in East Beirut. The LNM responded to Black Saturday and the ensuing massacre of civilians in the slum districts of Maslakh and Karantina on 18 January 1976, where several hundred (Hanf 1993: 211) – perhaps as many as 1,500 (Harris 1996: 162) – civilians were murdered, by bombarding and pillaging the coastal cities of Damour and Jiyé on 20 January, killing more than 500 inhabitants (Nisan 2003: 41).

In the meantime, Kata'ib laid siege on the Palestinian camp of Tal al-Za'tar. The camp fell on 12 August 1976. Syrian forces participated in or at least accepted the massacre that followed. The number of people killed varies. Harris (1996: 165) writes that “perhaps 3,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in the siege and its aftermath”, whereas Cobban (1985: 142) estimates that 1,500 were killed on the day and a total of 2,200 throughout the siege. More reliable is Yezid Sayigh's estimate of 4,280 Lebanese and Palestinian camp dwellers, as he bases it on reports in the immediate aftermath of the massacre (1997: 401). In retaliation, LNM forces attacked the Christian villages of Chekka and Hamat, killing around 200 civilians (Chami 2003: 94).

1982 invasion and Sabra and Shatila

The Israel Defence Forces' (IDF) invasion of Lebanon and subsequent shelling of West Beirut in the summer of 1982 must be considered an instance of mass violence. The invasion was the single most violent incident of the war, costing at least 17,000 people their lives and wounding up to 30,000 others (Hanf 1993: 341). One of the most influential artistic renderings of the civilian experience of invasion is Mahmoud Darwish's long prose poem Memory for forgetfulness: Beirut August 1982 (Darwish 1995), a series of testimonies and reflections on the relation of writing to memory and human suffering.

The invasion paved the way for the best documented of the war's massacres, at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila (for details of the history and numbers, see Aude Signole's article in EMV) [2]. In painstaking works like al-Hout's Sabra and Shatila (2004), reliable figures have been garnered from international organisations such as the Red Cross and extrapolated with individual accounts, media reports and military accounts, reaching a total of between 1,400 and 2,000 killed. Partly as a result of numerous and very detailed accounts of participants of the Christian right, from Joseph Abou Khalil to Robert Hatem (Eddé 2010), as well as investigative journalists like Alain Ménargues (2004), we know who participated (Lebanese Forces), what their motives were (revenge for Bashir Jumayil's death days before), and what they did – in the most disturbing detail. In fact, it is probably the viciousness of the killings, as well as their international exposure, that has made Sabra and Shatila the iconic massacre of the Lebanese Civil War. Sabra and Shatila has been the object of commemorations and political co-optation by various parties, including Hizbollah, while other massacres have not been commemorated as vigorously (Khalili 2007:168-76). On the positive side, at least from an historian's perspective, the attention has resulted in detailed documentation.

Similar objective works on Damour, Black Saturday and other, less prominent massacres like the inter-Christian attacks on Ehden and Safra in 1978 and 1980, are yet to be written. Episodes 3 and 4 of Al-Jazeera's 2001 documentary on the war, Harb Lubnan (War of Lebanon), contain detailed footage of these massacres, eye-witness accounts and interviews with political leaders, but no statistical information comparable to that available on Sabra and Shatila (Issawi 2004). Harb Lubnan may lack the apparatus of academic history, but it has become the most widely distributed piece of Civil War history, and the best-selling documentary DVD in Lebanon. It is particularly interesting for its large number of extensive and sometimes candid interviews with some of the leaders in the war.

E) Shelling, car-bombs and “habitual” forms of mass violence

While Hanf (1993) and Labaki and Abou Rjeily (1994) give convincing data for the death toll, there are few substantiated accounts of the exact nature of the violence from which people died. In up to 25% of all cases of death by violence reported in the Lebanese press, the exact reason could not be given (Hanf 1993: 341). Although the massacres described above account for around one-fifth of the 90,000 killed during the war, the largest number of civilians perished in almost daily shelling, sniper fire, murder and other indiscriminate acts more or less directly related to actual warfare throughout the 1975-1990 period. In the struggle for control over Palestinian camps in West Beirut, known as the “War of the Camps”, between former allies of the LNM from April 1985 to 1987, more than 2500 Palestinian fighters and non-fighters are estimated by the Lebanese government to have been killed (Brynen 1990: 190). The real number is likely to be higher, because thousands of Palestinians were not registered in Lebanon; and since no officials could access the camps in the aftermath of fighting, the casualties could not be counted. In addition, Amal and Shiite inhabitants suffered considerable losses (Sayigh 1994: 317).

Generally speaking, the historiography of the war has not been devoted to precise descriptions of massacres, body counts or debates over responsibility. Histories of the early war by writers such as Deeb (1980), Petran (1987) and Cobban (1985) stress how sectarian divisions in the political elite and the population led to a level of divisiveness that condoned indiscriminate killing of “others”. Less scholarly accounts, including bestsellers by Fisk (1990), Randall (1983) and Friedman (1990), tend to linger more on the massacres, but stop short of any systematic documentation.

Although the famous massacres of the war were very serious instances of mass violence, they tend to overshadow less prolific forms of violence that became an “habitual” part of life during the war. Part of this habitual violence took place between soldiers and militiamen. It is impossible to make a neat distinction between legitimate violence during battles and indiscriminate violence against civilians and combatants. During all phases of the war and on all sides, atrocities were committed against both groups. Kidnappings, road-block executions on the basis of people's sectarian identity, revenge killings of civilians, torture, wanton shelling of residential areas, and many other breaches of the conduct of war were integral and well-documented parts of the Civil War (Hanf 1993: 341).

Another category of mass violence was car bombs and planted bombs, which throughout the war claimed more than 3,000 lives, most of them civilian (Chami 2003: 317-19). At least 49 political and religious leaders were murdered between 1975 and 1990 (Chami 2003: 323-26). However, these numbers pale in comparison with the kidnapped and disappeared during the war, which have been estimated at 17,415 by the civil society organisation Committee of the Families of Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon. Founded in 1982, the Committee has worked since then for the release of information about the thousands of individuals who were abducted by militias (Haugbolle 2010: 199). The Committee has also become one of the proponents of a more open debate about the war, along with other civil society organisations.

F) Testimonies

Hundreds of personal testimonies of the war have been written in English, Arabic and French. They give rich detail of life during the war, and in many cases seek to challenge established histories of the war. Many more novels and films are based on memories and can be read as testimonies. They fall into four different categories: combatants, political leaders, civilians and foreign observers.

In total, around 25 former combatants have written testimonies of the war, most of them political leaders (Eddé 2010). A larger number of personal accounts have been given to the Lebanese press (Haugbolle 2010a). On the one hand, former militia leaders like Walid Jumblatt [3] and Elias Hobayqa, as well as lower-ranking leaders like Assa'ad Shaftari and Robert Hatem, have spoken publicly about their experiences and reflections on the war (Haugbolle 2010a). Other examples of self-representations include semi-biographical novels (Bazzi 2007, Hage 2008) and memoirs by former soldiers, among them two women (Beshara 2003, Sneifer 2008).

Memories of Israeli soldiers who participated in the 1982 invasion have been treated artistically in a number of internationally acclaimed films like Lebanon and Waltz with Bashir, which address (and occasionally dodge) the question of Israeli responsibility. Yermia (1983), a soldier during the invasion, details the IDF's indiscriminate behaviour in the war, in particular atrocities committed in Sidon in 1982. It also includes detainees' narratives from the Israeli “special” camp of al-Ansar set up close to Ayn al-Helwa. Further narratives from these camps have been collected by Khalili (2010).

A much more systematic and detailed assessment of crimes committed by the IDF can be found in the report of the International Commission into reported violations of international law by Israel during the 1982 invasion (MacBride 1984). The report is based on testimonies and researched accounts. It contains a long section on Sabra and Shatila, which concludes that “at a minimum, Israel's role in planning and coordinating the militia operation amounts to a reckless disregard of probable consequence” (MacBride 1984: 179). As a whole, the report is a severe indictment of Israel's breach of international law in the invasion of Lebanon. On the use of weapons, the report finds that the “use of fragmentation and incendiary weapons by the Israeli armed forces violated the international legal principle of proportionality and discrimination” (MacBride 1984: 188). It found evidence of “degrading treatment often leading to death” during the imprisonment of Lebanese and Palestinian fighters. And it further lambasted the IDF for indiscriminate and systematic bombing of civilian areas, as well as complicity in Sabra and Shatila (MacBride 1984: 194). An international law assessment of the 1982 invasion from 1985 comes to similar conclusions (Mallison and Mallison 1985).

Foreign medical relief workers have also provided valuable accounts of serious human rights violations in Sabra and Shatila, other Palestinian camps like Rashadiya, Bourj al-Shamali and Mieh Mieh, and the Israeli camps of al-Ansar and Khiam in South Lebanon (al-Qasem 1983). Cutting (1988) and, more ethnographically and reflected, Sayigh (1994), have written narratives of the War of the Camps, while Nassib (1983) and Mikdadi (1983) contain vivid descriptions of the 1982 invasion of Beirut. Perhaps the best testimony of the invasion, as well as other periods in the war, has been written by Edward Said's sister Jean Makdisi (Makdisi 1990).

G) Memory cultures and memory studies

Written historical accounts of the war are but a small part of the total production of historical memory in Lebanon after the war. Political parties, sectarian groups, neighbourhoods, families, schools and other institutions of socialisation have produced their own, often very skewed and antagonistic versions of the war. The difficulty of producing a national history in the aftermath of a divisive conflict has been made more difficult by the fact that the Lebanese state has refused to engage in a debate about how to commemorate the war and how to produce a space for open national debate about the past. It has been argued that the Lebanese state, through the semi-public reconstruction project conducted under the auspices of late Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, actively erased reminders of the war and sought to create a downtown memory-space that emphasised the good aspects of Lebanon's pre-war years and ignored the war itself (Makdisi 1997). In reaction to this (lack of) policy, which many critics have linked to the general amnesty announced in the wake of the war and labelled a “state-sanctioned politics of amnesia”, a big group of activists, artists, journalists and a few politicians have since the mid-1990s mobilised to “break the silence”. Their aim has been to “shake the Lebanese population out of its lull”, in order for the country to avoid “repeating the mistakes of the past”. Learning more about the Civil War, they argue, will teach people that it was a painful and pointless war that only benefited a small group of political and economic leaders – the same group who are today running the country (Haugbolle 2010: 64-84).

The results of this loosely connected social movement aimed at commemorating and debating the war have been mixed. On the one hand, awareness of the problem has undoubtedly been raised, and this may have contributed to a greater reluctance to start new armed struggles despite periods of enormous political tension since 2005. On the other hand, the movement suffers from elitism, and its events often cater to a crowd of educated Beirut-dwellers who are already well aware of the problem of amnesia. It has also been difficult for the movement to develop new strategies and arguments. In 2011, many arguments are still being heard that were first formulated in the mid-1990s. However, the tensions of the 2007-08 crises in Lebanese politics in the aftermath of Hizbollah's and Israel's 2006 war have arguably also revitalised parts of Lebanese civil society in defence of civic virtues, cross-sectarian collaboration and anti-sectarian activism (Kanafani Zahar 2011: 111-24). Moreover, new kinds of events that seek to engage the public more openly and draw in non-elite groups have also been launched, not least under the auspices of the largest NGO devoted to memory work, UMAM, whose institute is located in the southern suburbs of Beirut (Barclay 2007). UMAM was founded by the German-Lebanese couple Lokhman Slim and Monika Borgman, and has strong links to most of Lebanese civil society. Since 2005, UMAM has organised close to a hundred events and run several large-scale projects including interactive local history writing. UMAM also produced the documentary “Massaker” in 2004, a series of interviews with participants in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The film provoked discussions about the difficulties of giving perpetrators of violence a voice in a state where formal prosecution of their heinous crimes is made impossible.

Concurrent with the growth of this social movement in favour of public memory work, a number of academic studies about memories of the Civil War have been published. My own book, on which some of this review is based, analyses the different ways in which Civil War history was made the subject of public representation in Lebanon from 1990 to 2005. It argues that a particular pacifist-leftist group of intellectuals have dominated the debate, giving it an anti-sectarian tinge that does not necessarily correspond to sentiments in the wider population (Haugbolle 2010). Volk (2010) puts the politics of commemoration and martyrdom into a longer historical perspective, arguing that post-war debates and public commemorations draw on long-running contentions over sectarian and national identity. Aïda Kanafani-Zahar's study (2011) includes long accounts of the war in Mount Lebanon and deals in particular with the psychological dimension of the war legacy and the fractured social contract in Lebanese localities. From an equally ethnographic perspective, Larkin (2008) has studied how young Lebanese rely almost completely on “postmemory”, passed-on accounts and cultural production in their understanding of the war. The result is sometimes troubling repetitions of clichés and hardened myths, while other young Lebanese seek to counteract the signs of brewing sectarian conflict around them by exploring and subverting political language.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the historiography of the war is to combine the rich and varied cultural and academic productions dealing with the war and memory of the war with actual history writing. Many periods of the war, and many perspectives beyond political and military history, are understudied. If social historians of the war begin to make use of the sources collected and created in cultural memory work, and to systematise these sources, we could gain insight into some of the blind spots of the historiography of the war. Memory work should of course be treated critically, as it often serves ideological purposes. Having said that, memory culture is not just a collection of dubious sources. Constructions of memory in post-war Lebanon also point to narratives about history. History is not just numbers, dates and facts, but equally the telling of stories, and the blending of events into salient narratives. In Lebanon, there are many different narratives, many different histories of the war. Any attempt to write a history of the war – or to forge a national history – must start by acknowledging the multiplicity of historical narratives. The next step must be a proper research agenda, in Lebanon or by foreign research institutions, to support collective projects that include archival studies, ethnography, oral history and cultural studies. French scholars Franck Mermier and Christophe Varin (2010) recently published the results of such a comprehensive research project. Similar projects that actively involve Lebanese academics and memory activists in a creative collaboration could open the door to the immense archive of sentiments, memories, impressions and expressions from and about the Civil War and begin working on it in earnest. The result could be a more precise and more textured history of the Lebanese Civil War, hopefully materialising in the coming years. A much more systematic and detailed assessment of crimes committed by the IDF can be found in the report of the International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International law by Israel during the 1982 invasion (MacBride 1984). The report is based on testimonies and researched accounts. It contains a long section on Sabra and Shatila, which concludes that “at a minimum, Israel's role in planning and coordinating the militia operation amounts to a reckless disregard of probable consequence” (MacBride 1984: 179). As a whole, the report is a severe indictment of Israel's breach of international law in the invasion of Lebanon. On the use of weapons, the report finds that Israeli “use of fragmentation and incendiary weapons by the Israeli armed forces violated the international legal principle of proportionality and discrimination.” (MacBride 1984: 188). It found evidence of “degrading treatment often leading to death” during imprisonment of Lebanese and Palestinian fighters. And it further lambasted the IDF for indiscriminate and systematic bombing of civilian areas, as well as complicity in Sabra and Shatila (MacBride 1984: 194). An international law assessment of the 1982 invasion from 1985 comes to similar conclusions (Mallison and Mallison 1985).

Foreign medical relief workers have also provided valuable accounts of serious human rights violations in Sabra and Shatila and other Palestinian camps like Rashadiya, Bourj al-Shamali, Mieh Mieh, as well as the Israeli camps of al-Ansar and Khiam in South Lebanon (al-Qasem 1983). Cutting (1988) and, more ethnographically and reflected, Sayigh (1994), have written narratives of the War of the Camps, while Nassib (1983) and Mikdadi (1983) contain vivid descriptions of the 1982 invasion of Beirut. Perhaps the best testimony of the invasion as well as other periods in the war has been written by Edward Said's sister Jean Makdisi (Makdisi 1990).

H) Bibliography

AL-HOUT, Bayan Nuwayhed, 2004, Sabra and Shatila, September 1982. London: Pluto Press.

Al-ISSAWI, Omar (director), 2004, Harb lubnan (Lebanon's War), Episodes 1–15, Beirut: Arab Film Distribution, DVD.

AL-KHAZEN, Farid, 2000, The Breakdown of the state in Lebanon, 1967–1976, London: I. B. Tauris.

Al-QASEM, Anis (ed.), 1983, Witness of war crimes in Lebanon – Testimony given to the Nordic Commission, Oslo, October 1982, London: Ithaca Press.

BARCLAY, Susan, 2007, “Performing memory, violence, identity, and the politics of the present with UMAM”, MA thesis, anthropology, Beirut: American University of Beirut.

BAZZI, Yussef, 2007, Yasser Arafat m'a regardé et m'a souri, Paris: Editions Gallimard.

BEYDOUN, Ahmad, 1984, Identité confessionnelle et temps social chez les historiens libanais contemporains, Beirut: Université Libanaise.

BEYDOUN, Ahmad, 1993, Itinéraire dans une guerre incivile, Beirut: Cermoc.

BESHARA, Soha, 2003, Resistance: My Life for Lebanon, New York: Soft Skull Press.

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22 novembre 2010 : Panel organized by CERI/Science Po and Centre d'Histoire/Science Po : Memories of State Violence in the Twentieth Century: Comparative Perspectives on Europe and Asia

Introductory Remarks: Karoline Postel-Vinay, Senior Research Fellow, Sciences Po-CERI. Listen :

Legacies: The Pacific War, Historical Memory and Contemporary Conflicts in the Asia-Pacific : Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate, Cornell University, and Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology, Binghamton University Listen :

Managing the Memory of World War Two in Europe: Historical Truth, Political Legitimacy and Peace-Building : Claire Andrieu, Professor of Modern History, Centre d'histoire, Sciences Po Listen :

A Consensual Memory? Remembering the Righteous of France : Sarah Gensburger, Research Fellow, CNRS-Institut de Sciences Sociales du Politique Listen :

The Battle for Memory: The Victims'Attempt To Tell Their Version of Mao's Movements : Jean-Philippe Béja, Senior Research Fellow, CNRS/Sciences Po-CERI Listen :

Conclusion : Karoline Postel-Vinay

Listen :

International conference : From the Nuremberg code to contemporary medical ethics

Organized by :

Paris, Institut Goethe, 17 avenue d'Iéna, 75 116 Paris, France

Organisors :

Lise HADDAD (Hôpital St Louis, SRLF, Paris)

Jean-Marc DREYFUS (Centre for Jewish Studies, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom)

Dominique FOLSCHEID (University of Paris Est – Marne-la-Vallée)

Friday 25 November – Saturday 26 November 2011

With the support of the Paris municipality

All new medical techniques which raise complex and fundamental ethical questions are systematically avoided in Germany, despite the country's status as one of the world's foremost economic and scientific powers. “Obvious historical reasons” is the explanation given for this refusal, without these reasons ever being specified any further. Seemingly so “obvious” as to require no more exploration, these reasons relate to the terrible accounts of what are termed “medical crimes”.

It would seem that these crimes, legitimized and indeed committed by doctors, are the inescapable yet unmentionable basis of contemporary thought in the field of medical ethics. The impact of these crimes – Nazi crimes for the most part –on the western imagination and their role in shaping the developing horizons of medical thinking make it necessary to explain them more thoroughly today.

Historical researchers – mainly based in Germany and the United States – have in fact worked intensively on this subject over the last decade and have produced numerous publications, for the most part overlooked in France, shedding new light on whole areas of these dark chapters in European history. While the close relationship between the Nazi policy of “euthanasia” (in actual fact the systematic murder of psychiatric patients) and the Shoah has long been proved, in particular through the work of American historian Henry Friedlander, numerous other areas of research have been opened up, such as the ethical debates in 1930s Europe (including within the German Reich), the European reactions to the Nazi approach to medicine, the French resistance to euthanasia policies, the treatment of psychiatric patients in wartime, medical planning, research policies, etc. One particularly fertile area is the study of post-war trials.

Making this knowledge available to French ethicists and policy-makers would provide more than just a historical reminder: it would help to inform and enrich an urgent debate which is already well underway, dispelling the illusory notion that all of today's questions are purely contemporary in origin, the result of recent technical advances.

The conference, organised for medical practitioners, members of ethics committees and anyone with an interest in the history of medicine, will deal with subjects to include but not be restricted to :

The spread of and the resistance to theories of eugenics

Medicine and indoctrination (doctors under Vichy, Nazi doctors, ) The two faces of Nazi medicine : the medicine of killing and medical progress in the Reich

Medical experiments and post-war trials

The elaboration of the Nuremberg code and the conditions of its adoption and application

The memory of Nazi crimes in medical circles and its influence on ethical thought in the 1950s and 1960s.

The conference will be mainly historical in focus but will also create opportunities to exchange insights derived from historical knowledge and their application to contemporary ethical thinking.

Working languages for the conference: French and English (with simultaneous translation)

A selection of papers to be published in French, and possibly English. The publishing house of the French version will be Vendémiaire, in Paris.

Programme

Friday 25 November 2011

9.00 – 9.30: Introduction by Lise Haddad, Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Dominique Folscheid

9.30 – 11.00: Theoretical Foundations

Chairperson: Dominique Folscheid (University of Paris East-Marne-la-Vallée)

Marino Pulliero ( CRIA, Paris, France) : The dissemination of Darwinism in Germany

Carole Reynaud-Paligot (New York University à Paris), Eugenics and racial anthropology in France

Ulf Schmidt (University of Kent): Hitler's Doctor Karl Brandt: Medicine and Power in the Third Reich

11.00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-13.00 Nazi medicine, medicine of death

Chairperson: Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester, UK)

Kamila Uzarczyk (university of Wroclaw, Poland), "Why did you marry me anyway, you can't even have children". Voices of victims of sterilisation experiments in Auschwitz.

Susanne Heim (Institut für Zeitsgeschichte, Berlin): Nazified science? Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft under the Third Reich

Patricia Heberer (Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.): Operation T4, a utopia brought to accomplishment. The killing of the mentally ill in Germany, 1939-1945

1.00-2.30: Lunch

14.30-16.30: Imperfect justice

Chairperson: Eric Fiat (University of Paris East-Marne-la-Vallée)

Dick de Mildt (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) : The medical crimes trials in Germany
Annette Weinke (University of Jena, Germany: Doctors' trials in the German Democratic Republic and in the Federal Republic of Germany
Constantin Goschler (University of the Ruhr in Bochum) : German reparations (Wiedergutmachung) for the victims of forced sterilizations and of medical experiments

17h-18h00: Round table

Moderator : Lise HADDAD

With the participation of

Patricia HEBERER

Dick DE MILDT

Dominique FOLSCHEID

Gérard RABINOVITCH (CNRS, CERSES)

Saturday 26 November 2011

9.00-9.30: Second Day Welcome Remarks: Pr. Benoît Eurin (Saint-Louis Hospital, Paris, France)

9.30-11.30 Ethics after Nuremberg

Chairperson: Lise Haddad

Giorgio Israel (La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy) : Eugenics and racial anthropology in Italy.

Pr. François Lemaire (Hôpital Henri Mondor): The influence of Nuremberg on ethics and on the regulation of medical research in Europe and in the United States, 1945-1988.

Jean-Marc Tétaz (University of Fribourg, Switzerland): Human frailty and the question of Good: ethical considerations on the limitations of consent.

Carola Sachse, (University of Vienna, Austria), The meaning of apology. The survivors on Nazi medical crimes and the Max Planck Society (MPS)

11.30-13.00 Round Table: The relativism of ethics?

Chairperson: Giorgio Israel (La Sapienza, Rome) Heinz Wismann (EHESS, Paris, France), Eric Fiat (Institut Hannah Arendt, University of Marne-la-Vallée), Didier Dreyfuss (Ethics committee, SRLF, University Paris-Diderot).

Gacko massacre, June 1941

Tomislav Dulić

A. Context

As a result of the invasion of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 and the subsequent capitulation on 17 April, Serbia proper was placed under direct German occupation, while Bulgaria received the bulk of present-day Macedonia and smaller sections of Serbia. Bačka, in northern Serbia, was apportioned to Hungary, while Italian-dominated Albania received westernmost Macedonia and Kosovo, south of Mitrovica. The power struggle between Italy and Germany permeated much of the negotiations regarding the dismantling of Yugoslavia's western regions. Slovenia was split between Italy and Germany, meaning that southern Carinthia and Styria were the only parts of Yugoslavia to be included in Germany's Lebensraum. Germany's negative response to Italy's extensive demands on Croatian territory was facilitated by the Italian army's poor performance in Greece the year before, but also by Hitler's final decision to create the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) in order to pacify the remaining territories. The NDH roughly consisted of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (excluding Dalmatia and including all of Syrmia) [1] Due to Germany's political support for Zagreb, the Italians in the end only managed to incorporate a few islands and, most notably, large sections of northern Dalmatia, including Split (for details, see Rodogno 2006; Steinberg 1991; Olshausen 1973; van Creveld 1973; Pavlowitch 2008). Nevertheless, the Italians did manage to retain considerable political and military influence in the NDH through the 18 May 1941 Rome Agreement. This agreement divided the Italian sector west of an Italo-German demarcation line into three zones; the first included the territories annexed by Italy (most notably Dalmatia); the second covered a region where the NDH authorities were not allowed to keep any military or security forces; and the third was only temporarily controlled by Italy until the forces of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) were able to take responsibility for security. The existence of these zones was of crucial importance for Gacko municipality, since it was located in zone III, very close to the zone II border (Tomasevich 2001, 237).

B. Decision-making

Within a fortnight of the establishment of the NDH, the Ustašas and their Poglavnik (“leader”) Ante Pavlić adopted racial laws modelled on the Nuremberg Laws, targeting the Jewish and Roma communities. Soon, however, protests emerged among Bosnian Muslims, who became disquieted when settled (gurbeti) Roma were arrested by the authorities (Lengel-Krizman 2003: 37). Some of them had assimilated with the Muslim population, and it was difficult for locals to distinguish them from other Muslims. In order to calm the situation, the authorities in Zagreb instructed Hakija Hadžić, the Commissioner for Sarajevo and “former Drina Banovina (district in interwar Yugoslavia)” to come up with a solution to the problem. Following consultations, Hadžić argued that the settled Roma should be exempted from racial persecution, which was only to affect the migrant (čergaši) Roma (HR HDA 223/25/21868).

The racial laws did not apply to Serbs, meaning that they were not excluded on the basis of their race, but on their allegedly inferior “eastern” culture. This is an important difference, since it meant that Serbs could at least theoretically avoid persecution by converting to Catholicism or by fleeing to German-occupied Serbia proper (Dulić 2005, 93–94). Such an option was never present for the Jews or Roma, since their blood, according to Ustaša racial ideology, could not be allowed to “defile” the Croatian “national body”. The Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, were assimilated into the Croatian nation in a form of “benevolent assimilation”. This was based on the idea that Muslims were descendants of the Croatian medieval nobility and were therefore the genetically purest Croats (Tomasevich 2001: 488–91). In order to secure the loyalty of the Muslims, the Ustašas promised to reverse the effects of the agrarian reform of the 1920s, which in Bosnia almost exclusively affected the Muslims, since they made up the vast majority of the landholding elite. This inclusive policy in respect to Islam was important, since it enabled the Ustašas to claim that a majority of the population in Bosnia and Herzegovina was actually Croatian (see Pavelić 1941, 13).

The preparatory phase of the Ustaša attack on the Serbian community began in the first weeks and months of the existence of the NDH, when the authorities initiated a propaganda campaign that served the purpose of identifying the new enemies of the state. Sometimes, the exclusion went along the “racial scientific” argument that one had to protect oneself from the uncivilised traits of a “serbdom” that carried a specific “Serbian soul” emanating from centuries of “bad breeding” (Hrvatski narod, 31 July 1941). Mostly, however, the Ustašas depicted the Serbs as threats to the existence of a Croatian state or as obstacles that had to be removed if that nation was to enjoy a utopian future existence as part of the European “community of nations”. On 3 June, for instance, Minister of the Legislative Committee Milovan Žanić said that all means would be used to “make this country truly Croatian and cleanse it from the Serbs who have threatened us for centuries and would threaten us at the first opportunity” (Hrvatski Narod, 3 June 1941). At the height of the second wave of terror in late July, Foreign Minister Mladen Lorković specified that “the Croatian nation needs to be cleansed from all the elements which are a misfortune for that nation, who are alien and foreign in that nation, who dissolve the healthy strength of that nation, who for decades have been pushing that nation from one disaster to another; those [elements] are our Serbs and our Jews (Hrvatski narod, 28 July 1941; for more on NDH propaganda, see Ademović 2000).” Apart from preparing the ground for persecution through identification and stigmatisation of the targeted minorities, the Ustašas established a number of governmental bodies that were charged with overseeing the nationalisation of Serbian property and the deportation of Serbs to Serbia proper. For the latter purpose, the Ustašas also reached an agreement with Nazi Germany in early June on the deportation of some 200,000 NDH Serbs – particularly priests, administrators and other members of the elite – to Serbia proper in exchange for an equivalent number of Slovenes, whom the Nazis wanted to deport from German-occupied Slovenia in order to create “living space” for German nationals (Zbornik DNOR 1973, doc. 58). The “Aryanisation” of the economy and the public space was organised and carried out by the Office for Economic Revision, the Office for Colonisation and the Office for Nationalised Property. These administrative bodies acted in conjunction with the adoption of a number of legal decrees and orders, which gave the looting a semblance of legality (Kisić-Kolanović 1998). Moreover, the state institutions had access to various military and security bodies while carrying out the deportations, such as the Office for Public Order and Security (RAVSIGUR) and the Ustaša Supervisory Service (UNS). Finally, the Ustašas established a network of concentration camps throughout the NDH, which were run by Vjekoslav Luburić and Section III within the UNS. The first major camps were created in Jastrebarsko, Sisak, Gospić and Krušćica in Bosnia and Herzegovina (see Peršen 1990). Following the Italian re-occupation of the littoral in August, however, the authorities had to close down the Gospić concentration camp and replace it with a new compound in the small town of Jasenovac, 150 kilometres southeast of Zagreb. The Jasenovac concentration camp soon became the primary killing ground for NDH Jews, Roma, tens of thousands of Serbs and a large number of Croatian and Muslim anti-fascists (Mataušić 2003; Dedijer 1987; Miletić 1986-87).

The Ustaša armed forces consisted of the Domobranstvo (regular armed forces equivalent to the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany) and the Ustaša Corps (political armed force equivalent to the Waffen-SS). Consequently, there existed a parallel line of command in the NDH, meaning that the officers of the Domobranstvo did not command the Ustaša units (for more on the military organisations, see Jug 2004). These separate lines of command continued all the way up to the Ustaša Headquarters (Glavni ustaški stan, GUS) and the High Command of the Ustaša Corps (Glavni stožer ustaške vojnice). However, the GUS was never formally constituted, which means that it was Pavelić personally who became the leader of the Ustaška vojnica. At the same time, a large portion of executive powers lay in the hands of Eugen “Dido” Kvaternik, who headed the Directorate for Public Order and Security (Ravnateljstvo za javni red i sigurnost, RAVSIGUR) as well as the Ustaša Supervisory Service (Ustaška nadzorna služba). The fact that his father Slavko Kvaternik was the commander of the Domobranstvo and a member of the High Command of the Ustaša Corps meant that Pavelić and the Kvaterniks had direct control over all means of coercion in the NDH.

C. Local perpetrators

The signing of the Rome Agreement on 18 May 1941 and the subsequent withdrawal of Italian forces from zone III was immediately followed by the arrival of Ustaša units, who began the work of taking over the local administration. In Gacko municipality on the border with Montenegro, they prolonged the mandate of the acting municipal head, Josip Rom. The first enrolments into the new state administration followed. They included, among others, Hasan Čustović, the head of the post office, municipal official Mahmud Čampara, and business owners such as Džemo Tanović, Mustafa Hasanbegović and Omer Kapetanović, in other words members of the upper strata of the local Muslim community (AS G-2, f. 6, Bumbić, 6). Even so, violence did not break out until the arrival of Herman Tongl and a group of 15 other Ustašas from outside. Tongl immediately began his work on the organisation of a local Ustaša command in Gacko, headed by Ćustović. Subsequently, they began to “mobilise homeless and failed individuals from the Muslim part of the population into their ranks by promising them rewards” (AJ 110-493, fol. 434).

Tongl also organised a meeting with the Muslims in a local hotel, which has come to represent a key event in the historical narrative about the killings in Gacko. He provided the participants with an historical exposé, during which he allegedly said that the time had come for the Muslims – who for the first time were informed about their allegedly privileged position in the NDH – to take power in the region. Most notably, he said that Muslim landholdings were to be returned and that mosques were to be built in villages such as Kazanci and Korita. He then ended his speech by arguing that all Serbs had to be killed, “the last bullet for the last Serb” (AJ 110-493, fol. 445–6, inv. br. 55.695). An elderly Muslim objected and said that such deeds could not succeed. According to Džubur – who is the only source to provide names and details regarding the meeting itself – he also pointed out that Muslims and Serbs had lived together in the area for centuries, and that they had always paid dearly for the inter-ethnic strife that outsiders had prodded them into. Džubur also claims that “many of those present agreed with old Hamid, although they did not have the courage to say so publicly in front of the men of might, behind whom the authority and mighty Germany stood” (Džubur 1986, 358).

C. Victims and the killing process

Following the speech in Gacko, Tongl continued his journey to nearby Avtovac, where he gave a similar speech and organised an Ustaša command for northern Herzegovina under the leadership of Tanović. Upon his return on 2 June, he issued an order to the population of the villages Korita and Zagradci, according to which all men above 15 years of age were to report in person at the Sokol Society building in Stepen. There they would be issued with passports in order to be able to cross the border into Montenegro, while those who failed to attend would be executed or punished by deportation (AJ 110-493/56.223).

This important order placed the locals in a difficult situation, since they had to choose between abiding by the orders of an authority that must have appeared malevolent, or to remain at home and face the consequences of disobeying official regulations. At this stage of the killing process, the Ustašas had not yet committed any massacres in the region, which probably influenced the majority of Serbs to yield to their demands. Consequently, all Serbs – save a few who fled into the mountains – let themselves be imprisoned (some were brought in under Ustaša escort) (AJ 110-493/56.223).

Most of the prisoners – totalling well over 100 individuals – were placed in the Sokol Society building, while another group of 12 individuals were incarcerated in the nearby school. The prisoners were locked up for two days, which means they had time to evaluate and consider their options. At this point, the younger prisoners became suspicious, which resulted in a difference of opinion as to what one should do:

The younger men suggested that one should try to escape, because they understood that the Ustašas were preparing a massacre, but the older men were against it and suggested that one should keep calm and await further orders, since they strongly believed that there would be no massacre, but that in the worst case they might be sent to internment camps. They motivated their position with the argument that if they escaped, the Ustašas would have a reason to burn their homes and destroy their families, and that if they stayed they could be sent on internment and nothing else (AS/G2/f. 6/Stolac/Bumbić, 1).

The reason why the older prisoners decided to await further orders is to be found in a combination of stress, the perceived incongruity between resistance and security for family members, the fact that relatives were allowed to hand over food parcels, as well as the soothing message conveyed by the guards that “they were waiting for an Ustaša legal commission that would conduct interrogations” (AJ 110-493/56.223). On 4 June, Tongl arrived in Korita with a group of 30 Ustašas. Instead of initiating inquiries, he simply informed the prisoners that the authorities had decided to send them on forced labour to Germany because they had been found guilty of hiding weapons, and because they did not “accept” the NDH authorities (AJ 110-493/56.223). What happened next was described in detail by Obren Nosović. The prisoners, numbering some 170 individuals, were first brought to a neighbouring room, where the Ustašas tied them together at the wrists in parties of two to three individuals. After that, they were loaded onto a lorry and driven to the Golubnjača limestone pit near Kobilja Glava:

When we arrived by car to the pit, the Ustašas – there were 100-200 of them there and I could not recognise them since it was dark – began to unload us from the car, after which every group of two, three people was brought to the pit, where they started shooting at us with their weapons, beating us with poles, cudgels, axes and picks. When they saw that those brought to the pit were dead, they pushed them inside with the poles. When I, Nosović Obren, was brought to the pit, tied to Krsto Svorcan, someone fired a rifle shot from a distance of two to three steps. Krsto Svorcan immediately fell down dead and pulled me unharmed with him. Since I did not utter a sound, the Ustašas, probably thinking we were both dead, pushed Krsto Svorcan and me into the pit with a pole. (...) During the fall with Krsto Svorcan, I landed on top of him and the already dead people, thanks to which I only broke a rib on my left side (AJ 110-493/56.223).

As we can see from the statement, the majority of victims do not appear to have tried to run for their lives and only one prisoner actually escaped from the scene. Nosović hid deep inside the pit and lived through a horrific experience as corpses kept falling through its entrance almost until dawn. According to his statement, other victims who survived the fall began moaning with pain. As a result, the Ustašas threw hand grenades into the pit before covering the entrance up with branches and leaves. Unfortunately, one of the victims died of his wounds within two hours of being saved by Serbian peasants living in the vicinity on 7 June (AJ 110-493/56.223). The massacres in Gacko municipality did not only affect Korita and Stepen, but several other nearby villages and most of eastern Herzegovina (except Bileća, where local Muslims interceded on the behalf of their neighbours). As a result of the demographic structure of this Serbian-dominated region and its relative proximity to Montenegro, the initial massacres almost immediately provoked a rebellion that was first organised by Orthodox priest Radojica Perišić (who later became the commander of a Serbian nationalist Četnik unit). The first clashes between Ustaša patrols and locals occurred in the area of the Kurdulija bratstvo (clan), when gendarmerie stations in Jasen, Kazanci and Stepen were taken, only to be recaptured by the Ustašas within a couple of days. In order to dissuade the locals from participating in the rebellion, the Ustašas responded by arresting some 200-250 prominent Serbs from Gacko and Avtovac. Most of them were released on 8 June, except for a group of 20 individuals including Orthodox priests Novak Mastilović and Špiro Starović (Starović was later found dead in Avtovac prison with a horseshoe nailed to his chest) (AVII, ANDH/143/6/1-1). These arrests in Gacko municipality were not a spur-of-the-moment event; neither were they otherwise expressions of “Balkan hatreds” or irrational vengeance. Instead, they followed previous orders by the authorities, which were to be employed in the case of armed resistance to state authority. The orders stipulated, among other things, that in the case of rebellion, Ustaša and gendarmerie units should retaliate by arresting prominent members of the local Serbian communities, who were to be held hostage until the rebels ceased their activities. If the rebels refused to lay down their arms, the authorities should execute the hostages and take new ones as replacements (Zločini NDH, doc. 43). The link between macro-level decision-making and local events is further corroborated by the presence of Jure Francetić, the Ustaša appointee for Bosnia and Herzegovina and later the legendary commander of the infamous Black Legion. After arriving in Avtovac and Gacko on 9 June in order to acquaint himself with the reasons for the deteriorating security situation, he ordered the execution of the prisoners “because the rebels did not want to surrender and in order thus to influence them [to do so]” (Zločini NDH, doc. 61).

There is neither the space nor the necessity here to provide an overview of all or even the majority of the mass killings perpetrated in eastern Herzegovina during the summer of 1941. What needs to be understood is that the killings peaked once again during the period from the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June to 28 June (St Vitus's Day, honoured by Serbs in commemoration of their defeat at the hands of the Ottoman at the Field of Blackbirds in 1389), due to the fact that rumours had developed that there would be a general Serbian uprising on that day.

D. Aftermath

As a result of the rebellion that followed the massacres, the magnitude of the killings in Gacko and Avtovac did not reach the levels experienced by some of the other municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the summer of 1941. According to a 1964 survey of the war dead, the total death toll for the war reached 1,367 individuals. Notwithstanding the fact that one would need to add those victims that the survey failed to reach (according to the report, the commission only managed to cover 56-59 percent of those that were to be included), the death toll in Gacko probably did not reach more than 2,400 “victims of fascism” (the survey did not include četniks, ustašas and other “quislings”). This would amount to an estimated 13.8 percent of the population in 1941 (Dulić 2005, 318), which, although considerably lower than in many other localities, was extremely high compared with the average death toll in Europe during the Second World War.

Apart from the rebellion, one can also find the reason for the lower magnitude of destruction in the fact that Muslims sometimes interceded with the authorities on behalf of the Serbs. This was for instance done in Avtovac, but the rebels unfortunately did not reciprocate when capturing the town on 28 June. In a report by the NDH gendarmerie, it is mentioned that the 250-man-strong garrison in Avtovac had to abandon the town when it was attacked by a thousand rebels. After capturing the town, the rebels “began looting and killing those civilians that had previously not been evacuated” (AVII, ANDH/143a/4/2-1, Skoko 2000, 151). It is unclear exactly how many people Muslims were killed, and the figures range from 11 to 30.

The attack on Avtovac also heralded a completely new turn of events that brings us back to the place of the very first killings in the district. A day before the attack, a detachment of Italian Blackshirts and the 55th Regiment of the Second Army's “Murge” Division were ambushed by rebels at Kobilja Glava, at the cost of several Italian lives. Instead of being able to celebrate their achievement, however, the rebels found themselves in a confusing situation when the priest Perišić arrived and ordered the peasants to lay down their arms and hand over captured prisoners (AVII, ANDH, 143a/4/2-1; AJ 110-493/60789; Skoko 2000, 147).

The underlying reason for Perišić's intervention was that he had already had his first contacts with Alessandro Lusana (AJ 110/493/60789, 3), an Italian intelligence officer who wanted to exploit inter-ethnic hostilities to the benefit of Italy's demands on Croatian territory (which resulted in the re-occupation of zone III in early September 1941).

The contacts between Perišić and Lusana are important, since they heralded events that were to come. Once full-scale rebellion broke out in the summer and autumn, the Italians sought to drive a wedge into the insurrection by exploiting political and ideological differences that existed between the communist People's Liberation Movement (Narodnooslobodilački pokret, NOP) under Josip Broz “Tito” and various Serbian nationalist Četnik organisations. Most important among these were the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (JVUO) under the leadership of Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović, which in late 1941 was accepted as the legal military representative of the government-in-exile in London. Underlying conflicts pertaining to ideology and military tactics eventually resulted in clashes. After the outbreak of open conflict in early 1942, the JVUO gradually embarked on a process of “tactical” collaboration with the axis forces, and in particular the Italians. By mid-1942, the cooperation resulted in the official establishment of the Militari Volontari Anticommunista (MVAC), which consisted of Četniks who preferred to acquire a “legal” status than to fight as roving rebels (Rodogno 2006, 303). While the communists and JVUO had no influence on the events in June 1941 (at the time, the JVUO consisted of a very small group of rebels in Serbia, while the communists did not initiate their rebellion until the second half of July), collaboration eventually added yet another dimension to the complexity of the conflict.

E. Memories and the Nationalist Reinterpretation of the Recent Past

The events in Gacko municipality became symbols of Ustaša violence in the 1980s, which has to do with the fact that it was the first major rebellion that even preceded the “official” communist uprisings in July. Apart from printed collections of witness statements, Vuk Drašković's bestselling novel The Knife (Nož) stands out as particularly important. The plot centres on a mix-up with dire long-term consequences, when a Serbian boy survives the massacre of the Jugović family on Orthodox Christmas (7 January) 1942. The boy is handed over by the Ustašas to the Muslim Osmanović family, who actually perpetrated the massacre of his relatives. He thus comes to live under the name Alija in complete oblivion of his origins until adulthood. Alija thus comes to symbolise a modern-day “janissary”, who, after realising his origin, contemplates seeking revenge upon his own family. Here, the author alludes to commonly held views of Bosniaks as apostates of Christianity. Trtak (2003) has shown that Drašković's classification of individuals and events emphasise a collectivistic view of the ethnic communities. As an example, Drašković depicts Croatian and Muslim perpetrators as individuals who take great pleasure in macabre atrocities, while Serbs are presented as strong freedom fighters who meet death without fear. However, the narrator also points to the futility of revenge in the story of Milan, who felt remorse over causing the death of the murderer of his family. After being ridiculed for his regrets by Alija, Milan replies that justice and revenge are pointless if they can only be achieved through crime.

Drašković's book contributed to the national mobilisation 1980s, although it is difficult to say much about its impact on public opinion. It is probably more useful to view his work as an expression of nationalist sentiments that emerged alongside the gradual delegitimisation of the official master narrative about the partisan struggle, which accompanied the fall of communism in the 1990s. As a result of a “maximalist” reinterpretation of history that fed on the apparent “lies” of the official historiography, former “heroes” became villains, while those that had been defined as “traitors” became the heroes of the day. Drašković, who became one of the most important politicians during the war, at least in part adhered to this view and gave it a literary form, which is evident from the comparisons between the intra-Serb conflicts during the Second World War and the divisions and betrayal of the Kosovo myth. [2]. More often, however, he simply ignored the communists, and when he did refer to them always did it in a negative light. Thus, he moved the communists from the forefront of the Yugoslav historical narrative to the background of the Serbian one. In the process, he appears to have made use of the type of “family narrative” that was probably handed down to him by relatives (his father joined the Partisans in 1942) and friends from the Gacko of his childhood. [3]

E. References

Allcock, John. Explaining Yugoslavia. London: Hurst & Company, 2000.

Ademović, Fadil. Novinstvo i ustaška propaganda u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj: štampa i radio u Bosni i Hercegovini (1941–1945). Sarajevo: Media centar & Nezavisna unija profesionalnih novinara Bosne i Hercegovine, 2000.

AJ 110. Arhiv Jugoslavije, fond 110, Državna komisija za utvrđivanje zločina okupatora i njihovih pomagača u zemlji. Beograd.

AVII, ANDH. Arhiv vojnoistorijskog instituta, Arhiva NDH. Beograd.

Dadrian, Vahakn N. The History of the Armenian genocide: Ethnic conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. 3rd ed. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997.

Dedijer, Vladimir. Vatikan i Jasenovac. Beograd: Rad, 1987.

Drašković, Vuk, Nož. Beograd: Zapis, 1984.

Dulić, Tomislav. Utopias of nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1941-42, Studia historica Upsaliensia, 218. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2005.

Džubur, Lutvo. “Poslednje školsko zvono.” In Hercegovina u NOB, edited by Sveto Kovačević, 344-402: Vojnoizdavački i novinski centar, 1986.

HDA 223. Hrvatski državni arhiv, Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova NDH. Zagreb.

Jelić-Butić, Fikreta. Ustašas i NDH. Zagreb: SN Liber Školska knjiga, 1977.

Damir Jug. Oružane snage NDH: sveukupni ustroj. Zagreb: Nova stvarnost & HINUS, 2004.

Mataušić, Nataša. Jasenovac 1941.–1945. Logor smrti i radni logor. Jasenovac and Zagreb: Javna ustanova Spomen-područje Jasenovac, 2003.

Miletić, Antun. Koncentracioni logor Jasenovac. 3 vols. Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1986-1987.

Slavko Vukčevi, Zločini Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, 1941-45. ć. Vol. 1, Zločini na jugoslovenskim prostorima u I i II svetskom ratu. Beograd: Vojnoistorijski institut, 1993

Pavelić, Ante. Poglavnik govori. Zagreb: Naklada Glavnog ustaškog stana, 1941. Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Peršen, Mirko. Ustaški logori. Zagreb: Globus, 1990.

Rodogno, Davide. Fascism's European empire: Italian occupation during the Second World War, New studies in European history. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Skoko, Savo. Krvavo kolo hercegovačko 1941-42. Vol. I. Beograd: NIP “Planeta”, 2000.

Steinberg, Jonathan. All or nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-43. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Tomasevich, Jozo. War and revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945: Occupation and collaboration. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Trtak, Jasenka. “Us” and “Them”: Ethnic Identity and historical memory in two Serbian novels. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. Slaviska Institutionen, 2003.

Van Creveld, Martin L. Hitler's Strategy 1940-1941: The Balkan Clue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

von Olshausen, Klaus. Zwischenspiel auf dem Balkan: Die deutsche Politik gegenüber Jugoslaewien und Griechenland von März bis Juli 1941. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-anstalt, 1973.

Vukmanović-Tempo, Svetozar. Revolucija koja teče: memoari. Vol. 1. Beograd: Komunist, 1971.

Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilačkom ratu naroda Jugoslavije [Zbornik DNOR]. Vol. 1, Dokumenti nemačkog Rajha. Beograd: Vojnoistorijski institut, 1973.

Auschwitz

Marc Buggeln, Humboldt University of Berlin)

Auschwitz has become synonymous with crimes against humanity, in general, and the genocide of the Jews of Europe by National Socialist Germany, in particular, which is commonly referred to using the terms “Holocaust” and “Shoah”. Auschwitz was the biggest extermination camp, the biggest concentration camp, and, moreover, the camp that was responsible for the highest number of Jewish deaths. The construction and operation of the camp were motivated by the National Socialist policy of persecuting all those identified as opponents of the regime, in particular Jews, and by the course taken by the Second World War.

Lublin-Majdanek and Auschwitz were the only camps that functioned simultaneously as concentration and extermination camps. Both camps were under the authority of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, SS-WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office), which also oversaw the other concentration camps. The other extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec) were operated by local SS bodies. Auschwitz and Chelmno (German name: Kulmhof) were established as extermination camps on the territory of the German Reich after the redrawing of the borders. The forced labor performed by the prisoners at Auschwitz made a far more significant contribution to the German war economy than that performed in Majdenek, however. Major German companies like IG Farben and Krupp operated sub-camps in Auschwitz. Auschwitz also played an important role as a hub for the transport of prisoners into the German Reich for the purpose of forced labor.

A – Context

Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz) was occupied by the Wehrmacht just a few days after the start of the Second World War. The occupied territory was annexed to the German region of Upper Silesia. On 1 February 1940, Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, instructed Richard Glücks, the head of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, to look for suitable locations for new concentration camps, inter alia for the imprisonment of members of the Polish resistance and Polish intelligence. Three weeks later, Glücks informed Himmler that a camp existed in Auschwitz which could be converted for use as a concentration camp. The complex had been built by the German Reich in 1916 to accommodate Polish seasonal workers. After 1918, it was used to accommodate refugees in Poland and as a field warehouse. The Wehrmacht, which had used the camp after the occupation, handed it over to the SS on 8 April 1940. Over 1,200 inhabitants were evacuated to enable the construction of the new camp. Rudolf Höß, the former Protective Custody Camp Leader at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, became commandant of the new camp on 4 May 1940. Thirty German prisoners, for whom roles as prisoner functionaries were planned, arrived in Auschwitz on 20 May. The day, on which the first transport of Polish prisoners comprising 728 people from Tarnow arrived at the camp, i.e. 14 June 1940, is viewed as the day on which the Auschwitz concentration camp was established. The camp's first task was to accommodate 10,000 Polish prisoners, most of whom were to be transferred on to the concentration camps in the “old Reich”. It was also planned to carry out the executions of Polish resistance fighters at Auschwitz (Steinbacher 2000; Dlugoborski/Piper 1999).

The Board of IG Farben in Eastern Silesia began its search for a possible location for its fourth plant for the production of synthetic rubber (Buna) in late 1940. The company opted for a facility in Auschwitz in January 1941 at the latest. An intervention by the company in February 1941 ensured that the Polish workers it needed were saved from Himmler's more extreme expulsion plans. As part of its plans for the development of the plant, the company intended to use the concentration camp prisoners as its workforce from the outset. For this reason, following a visit to Auschwitz in March 1941, Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded to accommodate 30,000 inmates. In return, IG Farben was prepared to assist the SS in the expansion of the camp. Based on this, and following Peter Hayes, Florian Schmaltz comes to the conclusion that IG Farben's decision to locate its plant in Auschwitz was a key factor in the large-scale development of the camp (Schmaltz 2006).

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Auschwitz increased further in significance from the perspective of the SS leadership. As part of the “General Plan East”, the SS planned to develop enormous German settlements in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. In contravention of the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, it was intended to use Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), whom Himmler intended to train as building workers in the concentration camps, for this purpose. The order for the construction of a new camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau was issued on 26 September 1941. This camp would house 50,000 POWs in the near future and would have the capacity to be expanded to accommodate 150,00 or even 200,000 prisoners at a later stage. Work on the Auschwitz II camp complex in Birkenau started in October 1941. The 10,000 Soviet POWs who arrived in Auschwitz I from July 1941 were the first group to have their camp numbers tattooed on to their chests using a needle stamp. From 1942, the Jewish prisoners and, eventually, all inmates – with the exception of citizens of the German Reich – were tattooed with numbers on their left forearms. Auschwitz was the only concentration camp, in which the prisoners were tattooed as this facilitated the identification of the numerous bodies by the SS for their prisoner records. The Soviet POWs, who were already extremely weak, either died of malnutrition and the very poor sanitary conditions or were killed by the SS guards soon after their arrival at the camp. Hence, very few POWs were available to the SS for eventual labor allocation in early 1942. The first prisoners to be accommodated in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 1 March 1942 were the 945 surviving Soviet POWs and a few Polish prisoners (Allen 2002, Schulte 2001).

The original plans for the accommodation of up to 200,000 prisoners of war at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp proved unsustainable after just a few months. Around the time that work started on the construction of the new camp, the SS carried out innovative experiments on the murder of prisoners at Auschwitz I camp. These experiments were carried out in connection with “Action 14f13”, the objective of which was to kill all sick and weak concentration camp inmates in the German Reich. It is assumed that the SS started to use Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas to kill camp inmates in late August/early September 1941; the gas had previously been used as a disinfectant for clothing.

The first major murder campaign using the poisonous gas probably took place in the cellar of Block 11 in September 1941. The victims were 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick concentration camp inmates. Because it was very difficult to ventilate the cellar, the SS transferred the murder activities thereafter to the Auschwitz I crematorium where they continued to kill prisoners using Zyklon B from January to May 1942. It is a matter of dispute in the literature as to when the decision was taken to systematically murder people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp using Zyklon B. While the majority of authors assume that the development of the facilities for mass murder did not begin until after the Wannsee conference in January 1942, Michael T. Allen argues that the first proposal for a crematorium for the mass murder of people was presented in October 1941 (Allen 2002, 2003; Schulte 2002, Fröbe 2000).

The facts that the intention to include West European Jews in the murder campaigns was made known at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 and that the SS also considered the Jews as a replacement for the Soviet POWs as slave labor for the implementation of the settlement plans are undisputed, however. Hence, mass murder and slave labor were intricately linked in the SS's plans. From spring 1942, increasing numbers of transports with Jews from occupied Europe arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp. All of the prisoners from the initial transports were either murdered immediately or given temporary reprieve as slave labor. The first family transport of Jews from Slovakia arrived in Auschwitz on 29 April 1942. The selection process that would subsequently be adopted as a systematic procedure was carried out for the first time on this transport: men and women declared capable of work were given a prisoner number and forced to carry out slave labor while the sick, elderly, and young were killed immediately without registration (Fröbe 2000: 160).

Because the capacity of the crematorium in Auschwitz I was insufficient and the new crematoria in Birkenau were not ready, Höß had two farm houses (called the “Red House” and “White House”) at the edge of the Birkenau camp converted to extermination facilities. Deported Jews from central and western Europe were murdered using Zyklon B in both former farm houses from May 1942 to March 1943. But there were already plans to build new death factories. The eyewitness Filip Müller states: „From the start this small ‘death workshops', into 700 people could be cramned, served to relieve the two extermination centres at Birkenau. Known as Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 (…). The people gassed here were simply buried in mass graves, which had been dug near by. When, in the summer of 1942, the hot sun began to burn, the corpses started to swell and the earth crust to burn open. A black, evil-smelling mass oozed out and polluted the ground-water in the vicinity.” (Müller 1999, p. 49)

Crematorium II had been under construction in Birkenau from spring 1942. In August 1942, the SS site management added crematoria III, IV, and V to the plans, and work started on the construction of four crematoria that would form the core of the extermination facilities in Birkenau from spring 1943. This expansion was motivated by earlier consultations between Hitler and Himmler on the status of the “resolution of the Jewish question” (Steinbacher 2004).

During this period, IG Farben helped the SS with the extension of the Birkenau plant by providing building materials. At the same time, however, the progress on the factory extension was slow. IG Farben pressed for the construction of a separate camp near the factory to accommodate a permanent labor force for its own purposes that would not have to complete a long journey on foot to the factory. The first 2,100 inmates entered the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp (Auschwitz III) in late October 1942. By 1943, 6,000 prisoners were held at the camp and their number had swelled to 11,500 by August 1944 (Wagner 2000). The Auschwitz complex included a total of 47 sub-camps at which the inmates were deployed as forced labor (Ort des Terrors 2006). The companies involved in these sub-camps included Siemens, Krupp, Degussa, Reichswerke Hermann Göring, Rheinmetall Borsig AG, and Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG (Ort des Terrors 2006).

Of the planned crematoria in Birkenau, number IV was the first to be completed and handed over to the SS on 22 March 1943. Crematorium II followed on 31 March, crematorium V on 4 April, and Crematorium III on 24 June 1943. According to the information provided by the company responsible for the crematoria, i.e. Topf & Söhne, including Crematorium I in Auschwitz I, the crematoria provided a total incineration capacity of 4,756 corpses per day. A “special commando”, composed mainly of Jewish prisoners, was forced to remove gold teeth and hair from the corpses and incinerate them. The German Reich derived profit from the dead by smelting the gold from their teeth into gold bars and converting human hair into felt for the war industry. The mass extermination reached its climax in summer 1944. Up to 10,000 Jews were arriving each day from Hungary and the crematoria could no longer keep pace with the genocide. Thus, the SS started to burn the bodies of the victims in trenches and on pyres in the open terrain (Steinbacher 2004).

Auschwitz was both the biggest extermination camp and the biggest concentration camp. In August 1943, the concentration camp complex held 74,000 prisoners as compared with the 26,500 prisoners held in Sachsenhausen, the next biggest concentration camp. Despite the fact that Auschwitz played a pioneering role in the exploitation of prisoners as slave labor through the cooperation with IG Farben, comparatively few Auschwitz inmates were deployed for essential war-related tasks as compared with other camps. For this reason, the mortality rate among the registered prisoners was also significantly higher in Auschwitz than in most of the other concentration camps (Kárný 1987).

In order to prevent resistance facilitate better control of the camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau was gradually subdivided into different areas which were separated from each other by barbed wire. The plans originally provided for four sections (B I – B IV) which, with the exception of B I (20,000 prisoners), were each supposed to be able to accommodate around 60,000 inmates. However, B III was only partly built and the work on B IV never started. Some of the most important sections of the camp included the men's camp, the women's camp, the “Theresienstadt Family Camp” (B IIb), the “Gypsy Camp” (B IIe), the camp for Hungarian Jews (B IIc and BIII (“Mexico”)), the infirmaries, and the warehouse containing the prisoners' personal effects (“Canada”).

From summer 1944, in response to the advance of the Red Army, the SS began to move some of the prisoners to more westerly camps. All construction work in Auschwitz ceased in October 1944 and all of the gas chambers ceased operation in November. The special commando was forced to dismantle the extermination facilities. A revolt of the special commando took place on 7 October as the prisoners feared that they themselves would be murdered. The rebels succeeded in killing some of the guards. However, the majority were killed by the SS during the quelling of the revolt. The final evacuation of the camp began on 17 January 1945. Fifty-eight thousand prisoners, of whom it is presumed that some 15,000 died, were forced to leave the camp on a death march. The SS remained at the camp with a small commando and blew up the remainder of the extermination facilities by 26 January. The Red Army reached the camp on 27 January. They liberated 5,800 prisoners in Birkenau and a further 1,200 in Monowitz and other sub-camps (Dlugoborski/Piper 1999, Strzelecki 1995).

B – Instigators and Perpetrators

Both the extermination of the Jews of Europe and the persecution, mistreatment, and, in some cases, murder of political and social opponents of the National Socialist regime were measures sanctioned and approved by the entire German leadership. Hitler and Himmler were the central actors in both processes. They were responsible for the main decisions and were informed of all key developments. Even if doubts prevail in the research as to Hitler's “strengths” and “weaknesses” as a dictator, there is little doubt that he exerted a key influence on the dynamic of the process of extermination of the Jews of Europe. However, many local perpetrators “worked toward the Führer”, i.e. they acted in the awareness that their activities reflected the “will of the Führer” (Kershaw). The key individual, who had everything under his control for the longest period of the camp's existence, was its first commandant, SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß. Born in 1900, he gained his formative socialization experiences at the front in the final months of the First World War. After the end of the war, he was active in the Freikorps (paramilitary organizations in Weimar Germany) and participated in their political assassinations and lynchings (Fememorden). He joined the SS in September 1933 and embarked on his SS career at Dachau concentration camp in 1934. Unlike Theodore Eicke, the first Director of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, who mainly understood his work at the concentration camp as part of the fight against the regime's political opponents, Höß saw his main area of activity as the fight against its “biological” opponents. He regarded Jews, “criminals”, “anti-socials”, and the main enemies of National Socialism, and applied himself energetically to the development of the camp in Auschwitz and optimization of the extermination process. Höß remained a supporter of National Socialism even after 1945 (Orth 2000).

Höß was supported in the management of the camp by commissioned and non-commissioned SS officers, who, like himself, had gained extensive experience in concentration camps throughout the territory of the German Reich. As opposed to this, the rank and file, and, hence, the bulk of the perpetrators, had very different background experiences and was far more heterogeneous in its composition. Troop numbers at Auschwitz reached their peak in January 1945 with 4,480 men and 71 female SS guards. Up to 1942, transfers of SS troops engaged in active combat to Auschwitz concentration camp were not unusual. These were reduced to a minimum in 1943, however, and ceased entirely in 1944. Of 282 men transferred to Auschwitz in 1944, 128 came from the Wehrmacht and 119 from other concentration camps. The rest of the men came from other work camps or had newly joined the SS. From 1942, the proportion of Reich Germans and Austrians in the SS guard detachment was between 50 and 60 percent.

Many “Volksdeutsche” (i.e. ethnic Germans) were also deployed there. A separate company of Ukrainian guards was established in March 1943, for example. From June 1944, there was a Wehrmacht coordination office in Auschwitz which was responsible for the integration of soldiers who were unfit for combat at the front into the guard troops. At least 500 former soldiers were incorporated into the SS in Auschwitz. The main religious affiliations stated by the guards were: Catholic (42.6%), Protestant (36.5%), and gottgläubig (“believer in God”) (20.1%). The educational level of the rank and file guards in Auschwitz was comparatively low. The female SS guards worked in the female sections of the camp (Dlugoborski/Piper 1999, Band 1: 321-384).

A lot of these guards were used to act with extreme violence every day. One example from the killing operations at the gas chambers: “The only one who stayed alive a few hours longer was the woman who had wanted to warn the others. She was taken to a room next to the gas chamber where she was interrogated under torture. Making her talk was not difficult for the SS who had plenty of experience in such matters. Every prisoner working in the crematorium was lined up for an identity parade. (…) While the woman was being shot, SS men bound the prisoner. Then Voss and Kurschuss led him to one of the ovens. He was pushed inside and buried alive. The rest of us were made to watch his hideous end.” (Müller 1999, p. 79).

In addition to these “foot soldiers of the Final Solution”, various professionals with specialist knowledge and advanced qualifications also participated in the crimes perpetrated at Auschwitz. The SS doctors constitute the main group involved here. Department V (SS stationed physicians) had just under 20 SS members. A total of 30 qualified doctors worked in Auschwitz at various stages. The medics had the following tasks to perform in connection with the crimes perpetrated at the camp: selection of arriving “Jewish transports”, monitoring of the filling of Zyklon B in the gas chambers, selection of prisoners who were unfit to work, perpetration of veiled executions by lethal injection, overseeing of executions, and performance of forced sterilizations and abortions. Some of the doctors also carried out experiments on the prisoners (Dirks 2006). The leading SS stationed physician was SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Eduard Wirths. However, it was SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Josef Mengele who would later became synonymous with the participation of the doctors in the genocide at Auschwitz. Mengele was the doctor most feared by the inmates for the usually fatal experiments he carried out on them.

Another important group of experts involved in the genocide was the Zentralbauleitung (Central Construction Authority) of the Waffen-SS and police. It was managed initially by SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Bischoff and from late 1943 by SS-Obersturmführer Werner Jothann. The Zentralbauleitung was responsible, inter alia, for the development of the gas chambers and crematoria. It tried to develop the most efficient architecture possible for the “Final Solution” and collaborated closely on this project with other experts. An important role was played here by Kurt Prüfer, an engineer from the company Topf & Söhne, who worked intensively on finding ways to increase the performance of the crematoria (Fröbe 2000). The managers of IG Farben were also involved in the crimes committed at Auschwitz. If nothing else, large sections of the company's board visited the plant building site and sub-camp. Moreover, they were informed of the activities at the camp through the cooperation of their local managers with the SS. The official manager of the company's operation at Auschwitz was board member Otto Ambros. However, as Ambros rarely visited Auschwitz; his role was initially carried out de facto, and later also, officially, by Walther Dürrfeld. The managers supported the SS in the development of the camp and worked closely with the SS in other respects. The prisoners in the sub-camp were worked to death in the inhuman working conditions. IG Farben allowed prisoners who were unfit for work to be “selected” and transported to their certain deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Wagner 2000).

C – Victims

A total of approximately 1.3 million people from all over Europe were deported to Auschwitz. The majority of them were murdered by the SS short after their arrival. The camp administration registered approximately 400,000 people as prisoners. By Franciszek Piper's estimate, the best substantiated presented hitherto, around 1.1 million people died in Auschwitz. Of these, the largest group of victims by far was that of the Jewish prisoners. Piper works on the assumption of 960,000 Jewish victims at Auschwitz. It is estimated that around 865,000 Jews were murdered using poisonous gas in the gas chambers immediately on their arrival in the camp and without registration. A further 95,000 registered Jewish prisoners died of hunger, violence, and, above all, murder in the gas chambers due to illness. Over half of these, i.e. approximately 500,000, were murdered in 1944 (Piper 1993).

According to Piper, a total of around 1.1 million Jews were transported to Auschwitz. Of these, approximately 140,000 left the Auschwitz camp alive, either in a transport as prisoners who had been selected as fit for work and transferred to other camps or during the death marches that took place as part of the evacuation of the camp. The two largest national groups by far were the 438,000 Hungarian Jews and 300,000 Polish Jews. Other larger groups of Jewish prisoners originated from France (69,000), the Netherlands (60,000), Greece (55, 000), the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (46,000), Slovakia (27,000), Belgium (25,000), the German Reich (23,000). The good fortune of not being dispatched to an immediate death in the gas chambers depended on the assessment of the Jewish prisoners' fitness for work by the SS doctors. The main selection criteria were the prisoner's age and physical condition. In addition, women with small children were generally classified as “unfit for work”. Children under 14 years of age also tended to be deemed incapable of work; between the ages of 14 and 16 the decision was based on the physical state of the child; and from 17, they were fit for work in the eyes of the SS. Women of up to 40 years of age with no children and men up to 45 were generally selected for work allocation. The more the prisoners exceeded this age boundary, the more likely they were to face immediate death. However, selection for slave labor only represented a temporary reprieve. The conditions in Auschwitz and its sub-camps were so horrific that many of the prisoners who worked there also died.

The next biggest group of victims in Auschwitz was the non-Jewish Polish prisoners. A total of approximately 140,000 to 150,000 Polish prisoners were transported to Auschwitz. Around half of them (70,000-75,000) died there. Indeed, the Polish prisoners formed the largest group of prisoners at the camp from 1940 to mid-1942. They also recorded the highest number of victims in this period. At the same time, the Polish inmates had the best opportunities to establish contact with the civil population. They also held many of the minor functions at the camp and posts in the prisoners' administration and, as a result, had access to information. Thus, for example, it was easier for Polish prisoners to plan an escape than other prisoner groups. For this reason, the SS were at pains to transport the maximum possible number of Polish prisoners to concentration camps in the German Reich. Nonetheless, the Poles remained a comparatively large group at the camp up to its dissolution.

Like the Jews, two other groups, i.e. the Sinti and Roma and the Soviet POWs, had little or no chance of surviving Auschwitz. Approximately 23,000 Sinti and Roma were transported to Auschwitz, of whom 21,000 died. On 16 December 1942, Himmler issued an order for all Sinti and Roma living under German jurisdiction to be deported to a concentration camp. Based on this order, over 20,000 Sinti and Roma were transported to Auschwitz Birkenau in March 1943 alone. They were strictly segregated in Section B II e of the camp. The mortality rate there was particularly high due to the extremely bad treatment of the prisoners. On 16 May 1944, the prisoners of the “Gypsy Camp” managed to prevent their murder by barricading their barracks with stones and tools. However, in the night of 2 to 3 August 1944 the SS succeeded in transporting the remaining 3000 Sinti and Roma to the gas chambers where they were killed (Zimmermann 1996).

The chances of Soviet POWs surviving the camp were even lower. As far as it is known, the Wehrmacht transported around 15,000 of these prisoners to Auschwitz with the agreement of the SS. It may be assumed that very few, if any, survived. The first of these POWs arrived in Auschwitz in 1941. In November 1941, a Special Commission from the Gestapo Headquarters in Katowice came to the camp to divide the POWs into groups. Group A was labeled as “politically intolerable”, Group B as “politically unsuspicious”, Group C as “suitable for rehabilitation”, and another special group comprised “fanatical Communists”. Around 700 prisoners were assigned to Group A, 8,000 to Group B, 30 to Group C, and 300 were classified as “fanatical Communists”. Assignment to the latter group and Group A was tantamount to a death sentence. However, the chances of survival for the majority of the POWs were slim. Fewer than ten percent of the POWs admitted to the camp in 1941 survived the winter of 1941/42 (Sterbebücher, Band 1, 1995).

A further 25,000 prisoners from groups other than those listed above were registered at the Auschwitz complex. Of these, between 10,000 and 15,000 died (Piper 1993). Overall, the mortality rate in Auschwitz, including among those who were assigned a camp number, was significantly higher than in most of the other concentration camps (Buggeln 2009). This was due, inter alia, to the extreme brutality of the guards and the hopelessly inadequate provision of vital resources for the prisoners. The situation was further exacerbated by the effects of the hard debilitating labor the prisoners were forced to carry out. The prisoners were shaven, maltreated, and degraded to mere numbers on their admission to the camp. Many became starving and ill within a very short time. Primo Levi described life in Auschwitz as follows: “A fortnight after my arrival I already had the prescribed hunger, that chronic hunger unknown to free men. (…) On the back of my feet I already have those numb sores that will not heal. I push wagons, I work with a shovel, I turn rotten in the rain, I shiver in the wind; already my own body is no longer mine: my belly is swollen, my limbs emaciated, my face is thick in the morning, hollow in the evening; some of us have yellow skin, others gray. When we do not meet for a few days we hardly recognize each other.” (Levi 1996, 36 et seq.)

Besides hunger, the lack of appropriate, warm clothing contributed substantially to the prisoners' increasingly debilitated condition: “By the month of April, when the cold, though less severe, had not gone yet, the thick clothing and pullovers would be withdrawn and trousers and jackets replaced by similar articles in cotton, also with broad stripes; and only towards the end of October would the winter garments be distributed again. However, this no longer happened in the autumn 1944 because the woolen suits and coats had reached the end of any possibility of reuse, so the prisoners had to face the winter of 1944-45 dressed in the same thin clothes as during the summer months.” (Levi/De Benedetti 2006, p. 38).

D – Witnesses

The surviving documentation – not witness statements – constitutes the most important source for much of the research on the Holocaust and Auschwitz. The question concerning the number of victims, in particular, can be answered with the help of the death registers, transport lists, and other documents. The prisoners themselves had very limited opportunities for estimating the number of victims (Hilberg 2002).

However, witness statements constitute indispensable sources when it comes to many other questions that arise in the historiography of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Some of them even play a role in the course of the historical events surrounding the camp. This is particularly true of the prisoners' reports that reached the public before the liberation of Auschwitz. The most important of these is, perhaps, the account provided by two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Wetzler and Walter Rosenberg (later: Rudolf Vrba), who managed to escape from Auschwitz in spring 1944. They compiled a comprehensive report for the Slovakian Jewish Council and hoped to be able to prevent the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, which was just beginning, through its dissemination. Although this aim remained unfulfilled, the report was quickly disseminated in the western world and it was published in Washington in November 1944. At the Nuremberg Trials, the report featured as document O-22L of the prosecution's evidence. The Allies also had detailed aerial photographs of all of the camps from 31 May 1944. However, no targeted attack was ever carried out on the gas chambers or transport links.

The collection of witness reports on the Holocaust mainly took place in the immediate post-war period (1944-1948) and since the 1980s. In the immediate aftermath of 1945, however, many reports were merely recorded and collected but not published. The few published reports only attracted limited attention. Two of the best known publications from this early period are Ella Lingens-Reiner's book Prisoner of Fear, which was published in London in 1948, and Hermann Langbein's report Die Stärkeren (The Stronger Ones, 1949).

The statements by the survivors of the special commando are particularly important when it comes to explaining the course of the extermination process. The prisoners in this Commando were divided into different groups which had specific tasks to fulfill: i.e. accompanying the victims to the door of the gas chamber, removing clothing and valuables, transporting the bodies from the gas chamber to the crematoria, collecting tooth gold and cutting off hair, incinerating the bodies in the crematoria, and, finally, disposing of the ashes in the nearby river Vistula (Greif 1995, Friedler/Siebert/Kilian 2002).

While the reports by the victims are generally characterized by a desire to bear witness and an often breath-taking openness, the majority of the perpetrators' statements involve cover-up strategies, the shifting of the blame to others, and a frequent inability or absence of the will to remember. This denial and exculpation can also be explained by the fact that the perpetrators were in fear of criminal prosecution and a possible death sentence. Despite this, their statements can also be relevant to the reconstruction of the processes at Auschwitz.

The most important source on the Auschwitz camp originating from the perpetrators' perspective is probably the memoir written by former camp commandant Höß when he was on remand in Krakow prison in 1946. It was published in Polish in 1956 and in German in 1958. In this work, Höß presents himself as a conscientious camp organizer whose efforts were sabotaged by an excess of tasks assigned to him by his superior Himmler and by the actions of his stupid and incompetent underlings. Apart from this distorted self-presentation, however, the report has emerged as close to the truth on many details and thus remains an important source of information (Zimmermann 2004).

E – Divided Memories

The role played by the remembrance and commemoration of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in different national cultures varies significantly. There is no doubt that the global significance of the commemoration of the Holocaust has increased significantly since the 1980s and certain tendencies for its standardization can be observed in recent times as a result of international media events, such as the film “Schindler's List”. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which was opened in 1993 and has become one of the most important research centers on the history of the Holocaust, also plays an important role in this process of the internationalization of its commemoration. Although Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider confirm the emergence of a global memory of the Holocaust, in which Auschwitz assumes a central role (Levy/Sznaider 2001), specific national perspectives on the event probably also continue to exert a formative influence.

Following the liberation of the camp, the complex was used as both a hospital for former prisoners and a camp for German POWs. The Soviet authorities handed most of the camp complex over to the Polish administration in early 1946. From March 1946, organizations representing former inmates went increasingly public with a plan to create a museum on the site of the camp. This proposal was approved by the Polish state and the State Memorial at Auschwitz Birkenau was established by law on 2 July 1947. An exhibition building and an archive and library were developed and established in the ensuing period. Up to 1989, the exhibition narrative was mainly characterized by the desire to present Auschwitz as a place of suffering of the Polish nation. The main emphasis was on the history of the Polish resistance against Germany, the suffering of the resistance fighters in Auschwitz, and, finally, the Communist victory over Germany. A sub-exhibition entitled “The Suffering and Struggle of the Jews” was not opened until the 1970s, however it succeeded in focusing attention on Auschwitz as the central location of the extermination of the Jews of Europe. The former camp complex was inscribed in the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in 1979 and to prevent the identification of the camp with its location in Poland, in 2007 the World Heritage Committee decided to change the official designation of the camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau – German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945). The end of Communist rule in Poland led to an opening of the discourse in Poland and considerable struggles for the prerogative of interpretation ensued. The post-Communist Polish authorities altered or removed the memorials commemorating the Red Army from the site relatively quickly. Virulent conflicts took place between Polish Christians and Jewish organizations throughout the 1990s. The climax of the conflict was finally reached when a Carmelite monastery and eight-meter-high cross were erected on the site of the former camp; the latter was perceived as unacceptable to many Jews as a symbol erected on the world's biggest Jewish cemetery. These conflicts have calmed down somewhat in recent years. The main focus at present is on the efforts to prevent the progressive deterioration of the former camp complex at a few central locations (Szurek 1992, Reichel 2005).

From the outset, the remembrance of Auschwitz and the Holocaust in Israel was closely linked with Zionism as the central basis for the legitimation of the state's foundation. The Yad Vashem memorial was established in 1953 to centralize the remembrance of the Holocaust based on the “Law on the Commemoration of the Martyrs and Heroes”. Little space was allocated to the Jewish Diaspora or the Jewish victims, who were perceived as passive, in either the Israeli national memory or the design of the exhibition at Yad Vashem. Armed resistance was viewed as the only legitimate response to National Socialism. The victims of Auschwitz were often implicitly and, in part, explicitly reproached for having “gone like lambs to the slaughter”. This attitude was particularly prominent during the Kastner Trial in 1954, in the course of which Jewish councils in occupied Europe were blamed for having collaborated with the Nazis and ultimately aiding and abetting their murderous campaign. Rudolf Kastner, a former member of the Jewish Rescue Committee in Hungary was murdered in Tel Aviv in 1957. The Israeli commemoration policy underwent a clear shift as a result of the Eichmann trial in 1961, however. The reality of the policy of extermination was confronted here in public for the first time. This prompted greater sympathy with the victims which also increased in the following years as a result of the country's experience with the war in the Middle East. The Holocaust often became a “didactic play” for the politics of the day. Public communiqués frequently linked the remembrance of the Holocaust with Zionism. In recent years, however, the policy of commemorating the Holocaust in Israel has become more plural in nature. (Segev 1995; Friedländer 1987, Hass 2002).

Whereas, as an “anti-fascist state”, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) rejected all responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis, the Federal Republic of Germany embarked on an initially hesitant but ultimately intensive process of confrontation and Aufarbeitung, i.e. dealing with the past. Auschwitz and the Holocaust proved a constant challenge, however, that was difficult to meet. They remained a “negative memory” that repeatedly raised the question of the Germans as perpetrators. Conservative forces, in particular, tried to interpret National Socialism as totalitarianism and presented the establishment of a democracy as the only meaningful lesson to be drawn from the events. However, an attitude that favored an exclusive focus on the future could also be found on the left of the political spectrum. The acknowledgement of historical guilt generally remained an outsider position and this was a repeated source of discord when the focus shifted to Auschwitz, for example in the course of the reparation negotiations with Israel in the early 1950s and during the Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965). The television series “Holocaust”, which was broadcast on German television in 1979, made an important contribution to the shift in the public understanding of Auschwitz in West Germany. It was one of the factors that contributed to the emergence of historical workshops in many locations within the Federal Republic, which explored questions about National Socialism in the locality and often focused on the deportation of the local Jewish population. This emerging critical public ensured that the 1980s became the decade of a more intensive examination of the Holocaust, the focus of which was the history policy of the country's Christian Democratic government. Thus, CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler stated on the record in 1983 that it was the pacifism of the 1930s that had “made Auschwitz possible in the first place”. Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl invented the concept of the “Gnade der späten Geburt” (“the blessing of being born late”) and laid wreaths with US President Ronald Reagan at Bitburg military cemetery where members of the Waffen-SS are also buried. Finally, Philipp Jenninger, the President of the German Bundestag, gave a speech at the Bundestag on 9 November 1988, which was misleading in its rhetoric, at the very least, in suggesting an apparent empathy with the perpetrators and prompted his resignation. At the same time, the question of the comparability of the Holocaust was being negotiated in the context of the “Historikerstreit”, i.e. “historians' dispute”. Finally, a speech presented by Christian Democrat President Richard Weiszäcker on 8 May 1985 constituted an acknowledgement for the first time by a high-ranking West German politician of the responsibility of the Germans for the crimes of the Nazis. As a result this speech is viewed both nationally and internationally as marking a breakthrough in the Federal Republic's acknowledgement of its guilt.

These debates prompted a change in the Federal Republic's policy of remembrance. The acknowledgement of German guilt became a matter of party consensus and the denial of the Holocaust and Auschwitz became initially unacceptable and, eventually, a crime. In addition, 27 January, the day on which Auschwitz was liberated, was declared an official day of remembrance in 1996 and a “Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe” was erected at a central location in Berlin in 2005. The responsibility that derives from the past has now become part of the German “reason of state”. The fact that this acknowledgement of German guilt could also be used to justify a war was demonstrated during the NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 when German foreign minister Joscha Fisher justified the attack with the words “Nie wieder Auschwitz” (“Never again Auschwitz”). (Reichel 2005, Dubiel 1999, Berg 2003).

Since the 1990s, at the latest, it has been possible to observe that the memory of the Holocaust and Auschwitz is beginning to play a role in the remembrance policies of many countries. For example, the day of commemoration of the victims of National Socialism on 27 January introduced in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1996 was officially designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 1 November 2005. The day is now also officially commemorated in Israel, Italy and Great Britain.

F – Legal Actions

The central role played by Auschwitz in the extermination of the Jews of Europe was already known shortly after the end of the war. Despite this, the extermination process and Auschwitz played a comparatively subordinate role in the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals, partly because the defendants at that trial had little or no direct involvement in the establishment and operation of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz assumed a more central role in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials IV (WVHA Trial) and VI (IG Farben Trial). The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt or SS-WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office) was responsible for the operation of the concentration camps and, along with the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or SS-RSHA (Reich Main Security Office), played a central role in the extermination process. The punishments handed down by the court of first instance were severe. The four WVHA members were sentenced to death, nine others received prison sentences of ten years or more, and there were three acquittals. The death sentence against the head of the SS-WVHA, Oswald Pohl, was the only one to be carried out, however. Most of the sentences were significantly reduced as part of the amnesty campaigns of the 1950s. In the IG Farben trial, the judgments, which were made against the backdrop of the emerging Cold War and the increasing integration of the old economic elites into the reconstruction of west German industry, were significantly more lenient even in the court of first instance. The most severe punishments were given to the two Auschwitz plant directors, Otto Ambros und Walther Dürrfeld, who both received prison sentences of eight years. In this case too, most of the sentences were significantly reduced in the following years, thus the top IG Farben personnel were at liberty again in 1951 and went on to hold leading positions in the west German economy. Otto Ambros, for example, acted as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Knoll AG from 1960 to 1975 and was also an advisor to Federal Chancellor Adenauer.

The Western Allies did not hold any specific trials on the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, many of those responsible for Auschwitz were sentenced at trials concerning other concentration camps that were held in Allied courts. Thus, for example, Josef Kramer, who was camp commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau for a time, was sentenced to death by a British military court for the crimes he committed at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. At the Dachau trial, an American military court passed the death sentence on three SS members who also played key roles in Auschwitz. In 1946, a British military court condemned Bruno Tesch, the director of the company Tesch & Stabenow, and his main advisor Karl Weinbacher to death for their role in supplying Zyklon B to Auschwitz. The main employees of Topf & Söhne, who were responsible for the construction of the crematoria, ended up in American custody. The co-owner of the company Ludwig Topf committed suicide on 30 May 1945 while his brother Ernst Wolfgang remained unchallenged and opened a crematorium furnace business in Wiesbaden in 1947. The engineer Kurt Prüfer was released by the Americans but arrested by the Soviets in Erfurt in 1946. He was sentenced to 25 years in a forced labor camp and died in 1952.

The most important and comprehensive trials dealing with the Auschwitz complex took place in Poland after the war. A total of several hundred SS members who had served in Auschwitz had to answer for their actions in court there and to a greater extent than in any other country. The two most sensational trials were staged by the highest legal instance in Poland, the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw. The case against Rudolf Höß, which was heard in March/April 1947, attracted considerable international attention. The trial ended with the death penalty and Höß was executed at Auschwitz I on 16 April 1947. Proceedings were held against 40 other, in part, senior SS Members at a second trial in November/December 1947. This trial ended with 23 death sentences, of which 21 were carried out. Action was brought against a total of 673 persons in Poland, including 21 women, for offenses perpetrated at Auschwitz. The majority of the trials were held at district, województwo, and special courts in Krakow and Wadowice.

Adolf Eichmann stood trial from 11 April to 15 December 1961 in Israel on various charges, including his role as organizer of the deportation of Jews to the extermination camps. Eichmann admitted in court to having visited Auschwitz around five times and to having witnessed the extermination process in the gas chambers. Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed. As a result of its intensive media – including television – coverage, the Eichmann trial was responsible, not least, for focusing international attention on the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Hannah Arendt's dictum of the “banality of evil” also exerted a formative influence on the perpetrator research for many years.

The preparation of major criminal proceedings against SS members of the Auschwitz camp commenced in the Federal Republic of Germany around the same time. The extensive involvement of Fritz Bauer, Attorney General of the German federal state of Hesse, played a crucial role in the expediting of the trial. The proceedings against 22 defendants opened on 20 December in Frankfurt and lasted for over one and a half years. Three hundred and fifty former Auschwitz prisoners gave evidence in court. The political climax of the trial was a visit made to Auschwitz by the judges in December 1964. In addition to the court participants, between 200 and 300 journalists also attended the tour of the camp. Prison sentences were handed down to 17 of the defendants in 1965, three of them were acquitted, and two had previously been released from the trial. Six defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentences were often viewed as excessively lenient, particularly abroad, however this trial was very important for the public in the Federal Republic of Germany. It triggered both a public and historical debate on the crimes of the National Socialists.

Three additional but significantly less comprehensive trials for crimes perpetrated in Auschwitz took place in Frankfurt up to 1976 and received comparatively little attention. The GDR's most sensational trial for crimes perpetrated in Auschwitz took place in East Berlin in March 1966. The defendant was Dr. Horst Fischer who had worked as an SS doctor in Auschwitz from November 1942. The judge passed the death sentence after just ten days of proceedings and Fischer was executed by guillotine in Leipzig prison on 8 July 1966. Czech courts had previously passed two death sentences against one male and one female SS paramedic. Several trials of SS members from Auschwitz were held in Austria in the early post-war period. Two members of the Auschwitz SS Central Construction Directorate were indicted in Vienna in March 1972. Their trial ended in acquittals. (For more detail on the trials, see: Werle/Wandres 1995, Wojak 2001 and 2004, Weinke 2002, Dirks 2006, Pendas 2003, Steinbacher 2004).

G – Denial (“The Auschwitz Lie”)

Attempts have been made to contest or relativize the National Socialist policy of exterminating the Jews of Europe since the end of the Second World War. Most Holocaust deniers focused and continue to focus on the events in Auschwitz extermination camp, which is why they often refer to the “Auschwitz Lie”. The basis of the arguments of most of the Holocaust deniers or relativizers is formed by four explanatory models. First, it is disputed that the National Socialist leadership, in particular Hitler, knew about the events at Auschwitz. Reference to the lack of an order from Hitler for the extermination of the Jews of Europe always plays a central role in this line of argument. Second, the technical feasibility of the extermination process at the Auschwitz camp is disputed. This mainly involves technical information about the capacities of the gas chambers and crematoria which, in the view of the deniers, should prompt a drastic reduction in the victim numbers. Another variant of this argument, which contests the use of Zyklon B at Auschwitz, is based on the claim that traces of the chemical cannot be found in the gas chambers. Third, many documents and statements are described as forgeries and lies. Fourth, the victim numbers referred to in the historical research are relativized as far too high; the argument of the lack of capacity in the gas chambers is often used to support this claim.

In the early post-war years, the documents of the Holocaust deniers were dominated by the argument that the Holocaust is an “invention of the Jews” and did not take place. The writings of the French fascist Maurice Bardèche are an example of this. The majority of the publications of the Holocaust deniers appeared in the 1970s. Examples of these include the publications of Emil Aretz, Arthur Butz, Richard Harwood, Robert Faurisson, and Wilhelm Stäglich. “The Auschwitz Lie” (1973), a brochure compiled by Thies Christopherson, who was a member of the SS and stationed at a sub-camp near Auschwitz, became particularly prominent in this context and its title was adopted as a slogan by the Holocaust deniers.

The contestation and trivialization of the Holocaust has become increasingly difficult since the 1980s. First, historical research has focused increasingly on the topic and stood up to the deniers and, second, Holocaust denial has become a matter of criminal prosecution. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Holocaust denial was initially considered as covered by the law governing the freedom of expression, however it became prosecutable as libel from 1985. From 1994, the crime of the “Auschwitz Lie” was classified as incitement (to hatred) of the people (Volksverhetzung). The Holocaust deniers reacted to this by resorting to mainly technical lines of argument. The Leuchtner Report (1988), which states that no hydrogen cyanide was detectable in samples of stone collected from the crematorium rubble in Auschwitz and murder involving the use of Zyklon B gas could not, therefore, have taken place there, has assumed a particular significance in this context (Enzyklopädie 1995, Band 1: 121-127; Gutman 1985, Bastian 1997).

With the development and spread of the internet, the Holocaust deniers have increasingly shifted their focus to this communication channel. Nonetheless, a trial that took place in London in 2000/2001 attracted considerable public attention. British journalist and Auschwitz denier David Irving had filed a libel suit against the American academic Deborah Lipstadt who had referred to him as a falsifier of history, an anti-Semite, and racist. Several historical experts demonstrated at the trial that Irving had deliberately misinterpreted or suppressed evidence of mass extermination. The trial ended with the rejection of the defamation suit and, hence, the confirmation that Lipstadt's descriptions were justified on the basis of Irving's writings (Pelt 2002; Evans 2001).

As part of the internationalization of the remembrance of the Holocaust, the UN General Assembly also adopted a resolution on 26 January 2007, which was approved unanimously and without abstention by all 192 Member States, and calls all UN Members to oppose Holocaust denial.

H – Bibliography

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Translated from French to Turkish:

It was very recently translated from French to Turkish, M. Jacques SEMELIN's book, Purifier et détruire, usages politiques des massacres et genocides, Paris, Seuil, 2005. The Professor Jacques SEMELIN is the President of the Advisory Board for the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence.

The Editor in Istanbul is the prestigious İLETİŞİM YAYINCILIK

See : http://www.iletisim.com.tr/kitap/arındırma-ve-yok-etme-1769.aspx

Call for Papers Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide (stage 1) Corpses and Destruction (Destroyed, hidden, profaned and displayed corpses).

Conference to be held in Paris, France. 12, 13, 14 September 2012

Organisers: Elisabeth Anstett (CNRS, France) and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester, United Kingdom)

Advisory Panel: Michel Signoli (CNRS, France), Caroline Fournet (University of Groningen, Netherlands), Sévane Garibian (University of Neufchatel and Geneva, Switzerland), Jon Shute (University of Manchester, United Kingdom).

______________________

Appel à communications

Les corps dans les violences de masse et les génocides (1) Corps détruits : destructions, disparitions, profanations, expositions.

Paris, France 12, 13 & 14 septembre 2012

Organisateurs : Elisabeth Anstett (CNRS, IRIS, Paris, France) et Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Université de Manchester, Grande-Bretagne)

Comité scientifique : Michel Signoli (CNRS, France), Caroline Fournet (Université de Groningen, Pays-Bas), Sévane Garibian (Universités de Neufchâtel et Genève, Suisse), Jon Shute (Université de Manchester).

Details :

Débat :

Femmes dans les violences de masse : complicité, résistance et réponse

Women in mass violence: complicity, resistance and response

Date : 8 mars 2012 de 17h00 - 19h00

Lieu : Salle de conférence, CERI, 56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris

Débat organisé à l'occasion de la Journée Internationale de la Femme par l'Encyclopédie en ligne des violences de masse, avec le soutien du CERI, du Centre d'Histoire et de PSIA

Programme : http://www.ceri-sciencespo.com/reunion_affiche.php?id=862

Reportage vidéo relatif à la rencontre : http://vimeo.com/38357150

Women's Vigilantism in India: A Case Study of the Pink Sari Gang

Dr Atreyee Sen, RCUK Fellow in Conflict, Cohesion and Change, CIDRA, University of Manchester

Table of Contents:

Introduction

“It's a Curse to Be a Dalit Woman”: Contextualizing Female Vigilantism in Banda

Assaulting Husbands and Attacking the State: Women on the Wrong Side of the Law

Feminist Futures?: Imbibing the Language of Activism and Development

Violence and its Limits: Some Concluding Comments

Bibliography

Introduction

On 18 December 1752, the New York Gazette reported that an ‘odd Sect of People' had been appearing in New Jersey. Calling themselves the Regulars, they dressed in women's clothes, painted their faces and then visited the homes of reported wife-beaters. They stripped the abusive husband and flogged him with rods, chanting, ‘Woe to the men that beat their wives'… The following year, the New York Gazette printed a letter by a ‘Prudence Goodwife' whose husband had incurred the wrath of the Regulars: ‘[T]hey have regulated my dear husband, and the rest of the Bad Ones hereabouts that they are afraid of using such Barbarity; and I must with Pleasure acknowledge, that since my Husband has felt what whipping was, he has entirely left off whipping me, and promises faithfully he will never begin again.' (Cutler, Lynch-Law: An Investigation into the History of Lynching in the United States [New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969], quoted in Law 2011: 18)

Banwari Devi (52): ‘C'mon take your clothes off (chal kapde utaar),' my rapist barked at me. He was a high caste man, he followed me into the field. I shouldn't have headed to the pastures alone, especially when the crops had already been harvested. But I really wanted to pee. When the crops are reaped, they are sliced off by sharp sickles, not uprooted, the dried ends of chopped stems are like a bed of nails… If I tried to run barefoot it would be like running over a field of spikes, the bottom of my feet would have been lacerated... I tried to run on the mud path and not through the field. But the man caught up with me and slammed my head against a tree… Then he took me. After he was finished, he spat on me. I was only eighteen. I went to the police, the politicians. Everyone said I had asked for it, going into the fields by myself. I wept a lot… didn't want to go near the pastures again… yet it was our only source of sustenance. My husband finally left me, and he took our boys. I was left with nothing at a young age. Now I am 52. Yes, I do go around beating men who attack village girls. You asked me why I joined the Gulabi Gang… So that women after me can walk through fields with long, fearless strides… (Personal interview with Banwari Devi, a Gulabi gang member, at a public demonstration in Delhi, 17th September 2009) [1]

**** Historically, neighborhood vigilantism has proved to be an effective, short-term response strategy for localized forms of gender violence (Sen and Pratten 2007; Oomen 2004). Yet, these acts of retribution have often presented feminist scholars and activists across the world with a moral predicament (Baccheta and Powers 2002). For example, a substantial amount of literature on outlawed women combating crime in US ghettoes has documented that poor women have taken self-defense classes and organized themselves into armed aggregates, primarily to lynch sexually abusive men in public (Rutter 2008; Cutler 1969). This scholarship has underlined reasons why women's illegal task forces (despite their limited successes) cannot be entirely celebrated—as their agency to resist patriarchal cultures has not been bound by the aims and aesthetics of long-term feminist action (Parashar 2010; Ayyildiz 1996). In addition, some women's vigilante groups, such as anti-migrant hit squads patrolling the US-Mexico border regions, and anti-abortion activists, attack women across religious and ethnic divides (CNN Wire Staff 2011; Mason 2000). Despite the convoluted maxims associated with female vigilante practices, critiques of women's vigilantism acknowledge that collective acts of aggression create new feminine social linkages, which, in turn, allow certain women's groups to acquire physical and social mobility (Blee 2008; Sen 2006).

In India, contemporary women's vigilante groups battling dowry practices, wife-beating, and other gendered oppressions are usually affiliated with left-wing ideologies (Shah 2010) or extreme right associations (Sarkar and Butalia 1995), which renders their social positioning somewhat precarious. While informal male vigilantism, even that which benefits impoverished communities, can be easily criticized by state officials, scholars, and social workers; armed women fighting for the rights of their disempowered counterparts have created a great dilemma considering the long history of women's voicelessness in the region. Yet, in 2004, when Akku Yadav, a thug who raped several women in a Nagpur slum, was castrated, blinded, and killed by a group of victimized women outside court, media reports of his spontaneous lynching gained the group enormous public sympathy, especially since this action displayed no overt links with party politics (Banerjee 2006) [2]. The northern-Indian Gulabi Gang or the Pink Sari Brigade (named after the group's electric-pink sari uniform) is one such rare vigilante group, which did not emerge in “political cadre-land”, but as a response to the harsh needs of illiterate village women on the ground. Based in one of the poorest regions of Uttar Pradesh, the Pink Gang is considered to be the world's largest existing women's vigilante group, with 20,000 recruits in India and a newly established network in France.

This case study explores the quotidian philosophies and social logic of women's vigilantism through an analysis of the Gulabi Gang's activities. It shows how marginalized women, who have resorted to organized violence in an attempt to secure justice, walk a tightrope between legally reprehensible and socially condoned action. I argue that women's squads operating outside the legal system eventually take recourse to the language of politics and pacifism to gain validity and sustainability as a social movement. By drawing on the oral testimonies of Gulabi Gang members (some narratives documented by the author, and some derived from scholarly research and media accounts), this study highlights how female vigilantism, in most deprived societies, procures a legitimate space when viewed and examined through the model of “ethical violence”, and related understandings of proportionate punishment for crimes against women (White and Rastogi 2009, 315). “In all the time that I have been with the gang, we only beat people, we have never murdered anyone,” said Shanti, a gang member since 2007 [3].

“It's a Curse to Be a Dalit Woman:” Contextualizing Female Vigilantism in Banda

The unofficial headquarters of the Pink Gang are located in the dusty agricultural town of Badausa in the heart of Banda, a blighted area of Uttar Pradesh, one of India's most populous states. According to economic reports on the region, Banda has been particularly plagued by years of drought that severely parched its arid, single-crop lands. It was identified as one of India's poorest districts, and targeted by the state government's large-scale jobs program [4]. Over 20 percent of the 1.6 million people living in Banda's 600 villages are situated at the bottom of rigid caste hierarchiesInter- [5]. These low-caste groups are known as Dalits (or “untouchables”), and any form of discrimination against them has been banned by the Indian Constitution. However, legal directives have had little effect on social practices, and high-caste members continue to repress Dalit communities subsisting at the margins of struggling agricultural economies (Ciotti 2006). Rural women bear the brunt of poverty, illiteracy, and discrimination in Banda's highly feudalistic society. Over the past few years, Uttar Pradesh registered one the highest rates of dowry demands and deaths, as well as of domestic and sexual violence against village women of all castes (Srivastava 2003). And these are merely the official figures. The area is also reputed for continuing the practices of child marriage, female infanticide, and son preference; and for the mortality rate of its young brides during childbirth (Arnold et al. 1998). Chanda Devi (46), a gang affiliate, said, “Not only is it a curse to be a Dalit, but it is just as difficult being a woman.” [6]. Thus when the media interviewed members of the local population in Banda, most villagers did not express any surprise that a women's vigilante group had sprung up in this rural landscape afflicted by poverty and patriarchal prejudices.

According to Khan, who is currently writing a book on the Pink Sari Brigade, the group's main office is “a concrete, box-shaped structure and it belongs to Sampat Pal, the self-proclaimed commander in chief of the Gulabi Gang.” [7] Sampat is a wiry woman, married to an ice cream vendor, mother of five children, and a former government health worker who has played a pioneering role in setting up the gang. She rebelled against caste and gendered inequities at an early age—when faced with her parents' resistance to her receiving an education she began drawing on the walls, the floors, and dusty village streets. Sampat's parents finally acquiesced and sent her to school. Her education came to a halt when she was married off at the age of nine and, subsequently, had her first child at thirteen. To increase her meager family income, Sampat began working as a government health-worker, which brought her into close contact with the socio-economic problems of rural women. She quit her job in frustration as she felt the state government had done little to alleviate the pitiable conditions of muted village communities.

Returning home one evening in 2002, Sampat heard rumors that a friend had been beaten by her alcoholic husband and that the local police, chronically indifferent to violence against women, had looked the other way. When she went alone to rescue her friend from a fraught household, Sampat was abused and turned away by the inebriated husband. She gathered some neighbors, returned to her friend's house, and thrashed the abusive husband in view of the community. This event triggered Sampat's aspiration to create a band of women fighters. She said: “In our villages where food is scarce and there has been a drought-like situation for ten years, women are the most abused. I realized that under these conditions, a woman has to fight to survive.” [8]

At first, the gang consisted of just five women, all old friends. Over time, Sampat's small successes in battling domestic abuse attracted the loyalty of dozens of female neighbors. The gang members began to train in techniques of counter-aggression, such as smearing abusive men with chili powder; however, the most popular drill was in the use of sticks (lathis), a baton usually carried by local policemen when out on patrol. According to Sampat, “I wanted to work for the people, not for myself alone. I was holding meetings with people, networking with women who were ready to fight for a cause, and was finally ready with a group of women.” [9]. Over a span of five years, the gang grew into a powerful posse of 20,000 women, including ten district commanders who ran the gang's outposts across Bundelkhand (a subdivision of Uttar Pradesh)—an area that spans 36,000 square miles. According to the Gulabi women I encountered in Delhi, the current members of the gang are aged between eighteen- and sixty years old; they are mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and even grandmothers (since rural women bear children at a young age); and they belong to various low-caste groups; even though they claim to battle for women across caste and class divides. [10]. While some gang women are still unemployed, others are engaged in marginal agricultural activities (as landed or landless laborers).

The local Pink Gang stations, including Sampat's home, operate as meeting places in Banda where women can discuss their problems. In Sampat's house, she offers a steady supply of steaming cups of tea and samosas to women who have shown up on her doorstep. Some women asking for help are reticent to join the gang, but, nevertheless, retain an important role as sympathizers, circulating information about the gang's activities in their respective localities. Others travel great distances in order to enlist as gang members having experienced the immediate benefits of violent collective action. Some others, like Tara (22), joined the gang because it had become a craze. “Everyone was joining in drives. So I went along with the herd.” [11] Despite having gathered reinforcements, Sampat continues to work seven days a week, from the crack of dawn until nightfall, counseling women, organizing sit-ins, and leading rallies, while relying entirely on the rusty bicycle that she uses to get around and on her old Nokia cell phone.

Assaulting Husbands and Attacking the State: Women on the Wrong Side of the Law

Every day, nearly half a dozen desperate women arrive at the gang's meeting place asking for support. Most of them have come through word of mouth, or after having read about the gang's victories in vernacular newspapers. Some unaccompanied women travel long distances on rickety buses, or even hitchhike on unsafe roads, knowing well the risks involved in journeying alone through rural areas. They come with tormented tales of abuse, discrimination, and sexual violence that neither the police, nor male decision makers in their communities, would openly address. According to several gang members, when a complaint is lodged, the Gulabis jointly agree on a plan of action. Chamania (40) said, “First we go to the police and beg them to do something. But the administration won't listen to poor people, so we end up taking matters into our own hands.” [12] In the case of a wife-beating, for example, should the police refuse to arbitrate, gang members first speak directly to the husband and demand he change his ways. If the man does not relent, gang members then invite his wife to join them in thrashing the husband. “Our missions have a 100 percent success rate. We have never failed in bringing justice when it comes to domestic problems,” said Sampat. [13] Within the space of two years after they had given themselves a name and a uniform, the women-in-pink had thrashed hundreds of men who had abandoned or abused their wives.

Even though a majority of the gang's cases concern marital violence, dowry demands, and (or) abusive in-laws, they also address land disputes, resolve neighborhood skirmishes, and help poor women procure socio-economic benefits, ranging from school admissions to acquiring food cards. Kamat Devi (48) said, “Though I don't have any designated role in the gang, I end up settling fights between neighbors in the village. When we hear of a rift, we hold meetings with Sampat Devi and try to come up with an amicable solution. It isn't always easy, but people respect the Gulabi Gang as we are always neutral.” [14] In her account of Sampat's services, Khan documented the leader's interaction with Soman, a petite woman who arrived at the leader's home with her husband and son in tow. Soman's husband was recently released after three years in captivity, kidnapped by a local gang of thugs over a property dispute. The anguished woman claimed that the police were heavily bribed not to interfere in the investigation. While her husband was away, Soman relied exclusively on Sampat's protection. The leader collected donations of grains and pulses to help see Soman through her crisis, and she organized protest marches to put pressure on the police to track down Soman's husband. [15]). Sampat's gang also tries to ensure that village women who are either unemployed or own small pieces of land obtain red cards (or Below Poverty Line Cards), which allow poor villagers access to subsidized grain from local public distribution centers. These actions suggest that the gang not only takes on challenging missions, but offers all-round support to both rural men and women, looking after the latter's basic needs while helping them regain a sense of security in their everyday lives. Sampat's version of vigilantism, however, is not dramatically different from those employed by women who execute brutal justice among fringe communities in other parts of India. My own research with vigilantes in the Bombay slums revealed that despite the pro-women stance of local female gangs, their collective actions could only be accurately peddled as a variety of “soft feminism” (Sen 2007). As did the women's squads in Bombay, Gulabi Gang members thrashed husbands but stopped short of urging abused wives to leave their marital homes. For example, in Khan's narrative on Sampat's home, a mother arrived with her weeping daughter who had been thrown out by her husband for having demanded 20,000 rupees from his in-laws. “He married me for the love of money,” sobbed Malti, the despairing wife. Sampat told her followers that they would march to the girl's house and demand an explanation from the husband. “If they don't take her back and keep her well, we will resort to other measures,” she said, implying that the husband will probably be put in his place. [16] This suggests that the gang members abstained from developing a radically liberatory voice, and refrained from dismantling rural families; instead, preferring to “redomesticate” village women by enabling the latter to lead better conjugal lives and carry on familial duties under safer conditions. Even committed gang members did not abandon their households, but resorted instead to negotiations with their families for permission to continue their participation in gang activities. Banhari Devi (21) said, “I was recently married and my family thought it was a ridiculous idea and were dead against my stepping out of the household. My husband wasn't supportive at all, but I was convinced that I wanted to join the Gang and so I did. This took months of persistence but my husband finally agreed.” [17] Educated gang members have played a leading role in inventing slogans on women's employment and education (discussed later), but they have not devised a rhetoric of emancipation (from men and marriage). Globally, female vigilantism eventually achieves only partial social freedoms for women, while continuing to operate within the constraints and constants of patriarchal structures (Sen 2007).

It is to be noted that, in Banda, the gang's notoriety overstepped the boundaries of gender-related disputes, as their violent vigilantism posed a direct challenge to state officials and the government machinery. In June 2007, the Gulabis received complaints that a government-run fair-price shop was not giving out grain. Sampat and her gang surreptitiously observed the shop owner. The gang eventually intercepted two truckloads of grain marked “Below Poverty Line” as they were being shunted off to the open market. Armed with their evidence, the gang members pressured the local administration to seize the grain and hand over the shop owner to the police. But when local authorities refused to register the case, angry gang members assaulted one of the police officers. [18] This incident immensely bolstered the Gulabi Gang's credibility in the region. Later that year, the gang stormed a police station where an untouchable man had been held in custody for two weeks without any case having been filed against him. In 2008, gang members raged into an electricity office in Banda district forcing officials to turn back on power that had been switched off in an attempt to extract bribes from local villagers. [19] In January 2011, the Gulabis helped a 17-year-old girl who had been gang-raped by a group of men, including a member of the local legislature. When the rape victim, Sheelu Nishad, went to file a case, to her utter dismay she was arrested by the police under trumped-up charges. It turned out her attackers had already called the police, accusing her of theft. After the girl's father approached the gang for help; the Gulabis organized a demonstration in front of the police station, and, subsequently, another in front of the legislator's house. The gang's effective intervention led to the rapist's arrest, and Rahul Gandhi, the heir to the Gandhi family's “political throne” in India, traveled 370 miles from New Delhi to meet the victim. [20] The gang, thus, struck fear into the hearts of abusive men, but they also grudgingly earned the wrath and respect of the local administration.

What I found curious in my personal interviews, as well as in media reports on the Pink Sari Brigade, was the problematic associated with the gang terminology used by armed village women. The gang's trust is formally called the Adivasi Mahila Utthan Gram Udyog Seva Sansthan (tribal-women's advancement and village-development service organization) [21] and yet very few people (a) know the gang by any other official name and (b) refer to the women as providers of service or seva. The gang members, however, emphasize that they don't follow hierarchies, are treated as equals, pursue a common goal of removing corruption, and cannot be labeled “anti-social.” “Mind you,” Banwari Devi said after giving an emotional account of her journey with the gang, “we are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice.” [22] Bhagwati Devi (45) said, “The word ‘gang' doesn't necessarily denote criminals. It can also be used to describe a crew.” [23] Yet another Gulabi I interviewed said, “We are a women's team [using the English word for it] in pink. Gang means team.” For the Gulabi women, it is imperative for the general public to understand the importance and vitality of operating as a collective; to increase the self-worth of rural women, while at the same time fighting off the backlash from incensed husbands and corrupt officials. The gang's women are regularly threatened, sometimes at gunpoint; hence, they use the language of self-defense, instead of aggression, while training women in stick-fighting. Even though the women have attacked a number of villagers and anti-poverty government officers in the region, the gang insists that they would use violence only as a last resort. Their primary endeavor is to initiate peace talks, which are usually, then, followed by “shaming rituals” in which gang women demonstrate outside the homes of offenders. [24] According to Sampat, “We don't like using violence, but sometimes that's the only way people listen.” [25]The use of the word ‘gang', the carrying of sticks, and the electric-pink saris were all designed to give visibility to the “Pink Women”. Sampat said, “In rallies and protests outside our villages, especially in crowded cities, our members used to get lost in the rush. We decided to dress in a single color, which would be easy to identify. We didn't want to be seen in other bright colors as they had associations with political or religious groups. We settled on pink, the color of life.” [26] Most Gulabis point out how the concept of a “women's gang” continues to perplex rural people who assume the term ‘gang' refers to local bandits. However, as the idea of a violent women's identity politics caught on, shops in the region could not keep up with the demand for pink saris; some women wore them simply to display their solidarity with the Brigade. Vernacular newspapers finally shied away from calling the Gulabis a crudely violent gang, often referring to them as either folk heroes, a concerned citizen's group, the “pink sorority”, a civil-defense patrol, or the “Banda sisterhood”—amongst others—which enabled the vigilantes to move away from their image as deliverers of rough, illegal justice toward an image of them as rural women and precursors of social change. [27].

Feminist Futures?: Imbibing the Language of Activism and Development

Sampat is a key actor at the Woman's Forum Annual Summit held every year in Deauville, France. During each session, (with the use of translators) this semi-literate village woman addresses an international audience and gives a speech about the future of ostracized communities across the world; she highlights the significance of mass violence perpetrated by poor women as a social necessity, and not as a whimsical expression of raw justice. Over time, she has attempted to distance the gang from being tagged as a contingent of crude male-bashers, and has fostered its status as a harbinger of social development. “We don't use violence much anymore,” she said. “Now just our name and [the fact] that [they know] we are coming are enough.” [28])

To justify and prolong the existence of the gang, Sampat and her followers have empowered themselves with a new language of education, stability, and employment (as opposed to a language of war and armed resistance). Sampat has often claimed in the media that there are fewer rapes in her area and more girls are attending school. To promote child education, the gang has regularly visited households to offer parents guidance on educating girls. Some villages had dilapidated primary schools without teachers. Following Sampat's initiative, the schools acquired teaching staff and the children were encouraged to attend classes. Instead of bashing up men, the gang has started to use street theater as a popular medium for reaching out to a larger audience. Currently, the women have also drawn up plans to run rehabilitation centers for alcoholics. The Gulabis have begun offering free advice on general family-welfare, and are travelling across the countryside raising rights-consciousness amongst Dalit and non-Dalit villagers. [29] Parvati (24) said, “I met Sampat Devi when she came to our village and spoke at a public gathering. I was amazed after seeing a small woman sound so determined. Everyone listened in silence. I knew that I wanted to be part of her Gang.” [30]In villages with high rates of hunger and unemployment, the gang designed tentative blueprints for fabric-production centers, especially for women. According to Sampat, “I work on a grassroots level and want to set up a small-scale industry for poor villagers. We have talented young men and women who can make organic manure, candles, Ayurvedic medicines, and pickles. They could earn a decent livelihood. If I get funded, I can set up a stitching center for women who can then support their families. The future of the Gulabi Gang is bright.” [31]

With few resources at her disposal, Sampat charges about three euros for membership in the group, in exchange for the pink sari that members wear with such pride. In the initial years, the Pink Women of Banda shunned political parties and NGOs because, in the words of their feisty leader, “they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us.” [32] In several other interviews, the Pink Sari women had claimed that they were against donations or handouts. Even though the state government officially favored positive discrimination and reserved jobs for low caste groups; these benefits rarely trickled down to remote rural communities. One of the gang's supporters stated, “We don't want appeasement or affirmative action. Give us work, pay us proper wages and restore our dignity.” [33]. However, Sampat's agenda of turning a large group of stick-wielding women into a coherent social movement forced the gang to renegotiate their anti-funding stance. In a number of recent interviews, Sampat has stated, “I want this movement to carry on and would like support from international or local agencies.” [34] In an interview with me, one of her followers said, “We need a support system. I don't have any means of travel; I cannot even afford to pay the bus fare, so I end up walking. If we don't ask state organizations for help, then we will fade away.” On a number of websites developed by the gang, [35] as well as on their Facebook pages, the Gulabi Gang requests donations from governmental and aid agencies.

Until recently, the Pink Gang had, strategically, acted outside of the political system as well, which greatly irked local politicians who ran their own versions of private armies in order to silence poor villagers. “Joining politics is not my chosen way to help people. We will keep up our good work, so the state does not take us for granted,” Sampat said. [36] The gang has even been called “militant Maoists” by local police authorities, the latter having repeatedly accused the women of assault and defamation. While Sampat has survived assassination attempts, a number of other Gulabi leaders have been threatened with counter-violence by political leaders and the police force, making them apathetic to the police-politician nexus that has plagued rural areas. But, in yet another attempt to move beyond being labeled as crass vigilantes, Gulabi members have finally started to enter the realm of party politics. In 2006, Sampat contested the local body polls as an independent candidate and mustered only 2,800 votes. By 2010, the Pink Gang's tremendous popularity helped them develop substantial political clout. In October of that year, a record number of twenty-one Pink Gang members won panchayat (municipality) elections. In these positions, elected Pink Gang officials oversee construction and repair work on local roads, provide for sanitation and drinking water, and implement development schemes for agriculture. “Before, the village chiefs never used to listen to our issues, but with the Pink Gang in power, life will become easier,” said Usha Patel, who spent many days rallying support for her district commander. [37] Sampat expressed hope that these victories would represent the beginning of a political future for the Pink Gang—and a way for their authority to rout mob power.

In 2009, when the Gulabi women trekked to Delhi, India's capital city, to supposedly demand independence for Bundelkhand, they merely demonstrated on the streets. This petitioning was curious since Mayawati, the powerful woman leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which (a) claims to champion the cause of low-caste communities in Uttar Pradesh, and (b) has been pressuring the state reorganizing committee to draft a separate state for Bundelkhand, had wooed Sampat ever since the latter's rise to fame. Even though, eventually, Sampat did not team up with the BSP, she evidently emulated this woman who led the populist politics of a mainstream party. Without allowing their actions to escalate into violence, the gang and their display in Delhi of tinted rage attracted the media attention they had desired. “We want a separate state so that our people get better facilities,” said Sampat, offering a rationale for the gang's journey to Delhi. The leader offered to give pink saris to the Indian President, Pratibha Patil, and the Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi, so that these powerful women, thriving within the domain of formal, constitutional politics, could also express their sympathy for the Brigade. While district commanders were raging against crime and corruption, Neeta a “foot soldier,” confessed that she had come to Delhi in the hope of meeting the female Minister for Railways, Mamata Banerjee, in order to lodge a complaint against her husband Sanjay, a railway employee. Neeta had been abandoned along with her two children after fourteen years of marriage and wanted the minister to take punitive action against her truant husband. [38] While Sampat was pre-occupied with obtaining a political voice for her troops, conversations with women at the demonstration revealed that it was still the desire for everyday justice for women (couched within a need to engage in parliamentary politics) that had brought some Gulabis to Delhi.

Even though the gang carried out violence against abusive husbands and corrupt officials (usually men), they had acquired the sympathy of most villagers. Their membership included a few men, such as Jai Prakash Shivhari, who joined the gang to help settle the issues of depleting water resources, farm subsidies, and funds being siphoned off government projects. [39] Some men openly equated Sampat with the legendary, militant Queen of Jhansi, Laxmibai. Phoolan Devi, a Dalit and female “dacoit” bandits) from nearby Chambal, also led a crusade against upper-caste atrocities perpetrated upon low-caste women, and should have been another iconic figure of comparison; but the men often attributed Sampat's character an anti-hero status similar to that of Dadua, a notorious, low-caste (kurmi) male “dacoit” from Banda. A villager, Babloo Mishra, even risked allowing Sampat's followers to use his premises for an office. “The best thing is that these women will take up anyone's cause as long as it's genuine, not only those of its members,” he said. [40] The gang also earned the support of those men connected to women who had been rescued by the Gulabis. When rape victim Sheelu Nishad's father realized that his daughter had been imprisoned on false charges he was distraught. “I was nervous and crying and somebody suggested I go to the Gang,” said the frail elderly man. [41] The unfettered support offered by the gang kept him deeply indebted to the women. Aarti Devi (22) said:

My father is an educated man. He has a double Masters from the university despite being a Dalit. He has always had to fight for his rights and the dignity of local villagers. About six months back, an upper-caste man raped a local Dalit woman. Police refused to register the case. When my father protested, he and two others were taken into custody. I went to Sampat Devi and asked for help. That same day I joined the gang and, led by Sampat Devi, we stormed the police station demanding the release of my father and the other villagers. The police still refused to register the case against the rapist. We ended up beating a policeman black-and-blue with lathis. I cannot take injustice lying down. My father is a great inspiration to me, he was very proud when he saw me in a pink sari demonstrating and shouting slogans, rubbing shoulders with the rest of the Gulabi Gang. [42]

Other villagers who have socially and financially benefited from gang activities now openly support their Gulabi wives, sisters, mothers and grandmothers, occasionally giving bus fares to women who travel great distances to carry out gang work and at other times by accompanying them when they go out to tackle a difficult case.

Sundar, in her in-depth exploration of contemporary vigilante practices in India, states, “A long tradition of writing about peasant or working-class resistance addresses issues of morality, people's culpability for violence and notions of justice in situations where the protection of the law is unequally available to different classes of citizens” (2010, 116). She goes on to argue that these forms of small struggles highlight the ways in which hierarchies of gender, caste, and class taint formal processes of law (2010, 117). However, if a rebellious (imaginary) community takes up arms against local injustices, the state, with all its legal shortcomings, will attempt to reclaim its position as the only legitimate deliverer of violent punishment (Anderson 2006). Even though controversies about state torture in Middle-Eastern countries, as well as humiliating interrogation techniques at US military-bases are currently grabbing headlines, the supreme position of the state in managing retributive justice has not been open to global policy negotiation. Despite the fact that state-related organizations openly outsource protection to security agencies across the world, at the end of the day, these groups remain accountable to their state's machinery (Sen and Pratten 2007). These power relations place women's vigilantism in a peculiar position; not only do these vigilante groups exist outside the purview of the state, but they further emasculate the malfunctioning state by highlighting its paternal failure to protect vulnerable women. According to Sundar, subaltern insurgencies or Robin Hood-style vigilantism are aimed less at reorganizing the state and directed more toward obligating it to live up to its promises (2010, 116). But (a) if the state steps up and delivers goods and services to the poor, and assumes legal responsibilities on their behalf, then the Gulabis may be rendered useless and might eventually disband; and (b) if women defy the state machinery to the extent that the local police ban the gang—clamping down on low-caste women—then the Gulabis may have to transform themselves into a secret society. [43] Hence, there is particular pressure on women vigilantes to don moderate identities as activists and as “clean” politicians in order to remain visible and indispensible within rural societies.

Violence and its Limits: Some Concluding Comments

Focusing media and scholarly attention entirely on the sensational activities of the gang diminishes the innumerable accounts of covert, everyday resistance against gender discrimination that have been devised by poor women in rural societies across India. Having said that, the popularity of the Gulabis, illustrated in this case study, suggests the limits of the women's capacity, however subjugated, to tolerate sexual violence and social classifications. Even though most scholars and activists assume that rural, repressive patriarchies “normalize” intimate violence against women, the case study of the Pink Sari Gang is a testament to the power of informal women's collectives to implement change without elite intervention or leadership. Sandoval Girón, in her research on vigilantism in post-conflict Guatemala, argues that most populations living under conditions of intense tyranny do not comprehend or imagine any framework for seeking justice beyond the use of armed violence (2005, 12). Hence fragile communities, faced with a corrupt state administration and political ‘clientelism,' often seek out vigilantism as a form of social control. In this context it is important to highlight that vigilantism may have been the immediate choice available to Banda women surviving violence-prone rural societies, but through their public actions women also received exposure to other possibilities and spaces for sustaining militant activism. And despite their initial failure to enter politics, they tried again, finally occupying a number of other democratic spaces.

There has also been a limit to the degree to which these poor women's vigilante groups have been able to proffer a façade of internal unity. As this case study has highlighted, the upward social mobility of a small cluster of women (like Sampat Pal and her commanding officers), and their desire for political visibility had already led to a divergence over the long-term ideologies of gang leaders and everyday gang actions. The Congress Party, currently in power at the Center, has been trying for over two decades to challenge the popularity of their rival, the BSP, in Uttar Pradesh. According to recent press releases, the secular Congress has invited Sampat to take on the challenge of the BSP in the 2012 state elections, by offering the vigilante leader a political platform in a constituency dominated by low-caste communities. [44] This strategic form of attention from the leading Indian political party sets Sampat definitively apart from the rest of her ordinary crew, as she enters the game of caste politics in the region. In addition, political activism by marginalized women, who are realizing their potential as agents for the first time, often results in tensions over domestic responsibilities. For example, Ciotti's ethnographic depictions of low-caste women activists in the BSP show that the latter bring in “docile” daughters-in-law to take on the household burden so that activists can mobilize themselves outside the home (2009, 123-4). The author argues that various versions of women's activism in Uttar Pradesh are difficult to align with feminist theories, as Dalit women campaigners continue to reinforce the oppressive gender hierarchies that they claim to contest in public (125). In my research on poor women in the Bombay slums, I came across similar forms of domestic strife, for example, when two women from the same family were members of their local vigilante group and openly argued over daily chores (Sen 2007). Even though gang women at present receive an extent of familial support, it remains debatable whether they will continue to encourage all women in their families to play activist roles without ensuring that someone be designated as responsible for household and farming duties. Thus, power mongering, domestic tension, and emerging political hierarchies are likely to take a toll on the selfless female solidarity displayed by the gang.

This brings me to the question of illegal violence and its limits. According to a number of feminist psychologists (Meth 2004; Grindstaff 1998; Barnard 1993), female vigilantism in non-Western societies could be viewed through the lens of feminist opposition, but only as long as the vigilantes remained within the limits of ethical, extra-constitutional violence. The legitimacy of collective violence in the pursuit of political ends reflects a retributive model of justice (Gelles and Loseke 2005); the latter emphasizes “proportionate” punishment as a morally acceptable response to crimes against women (White and Rastogi 2009). This is in contrast to restorative models of justice that emphasize cooperation and healing relations between perpetrators and victims (White and Rastogi 2009, 323). Even though White and Rastogi (2009) suggest that the Gulabi Gang's violent actions could be deemed a fusion of both models (as they engaged in delivering brutal justice and social redevelopment), I would argue that complex patriarchies have insufficient tolerance for women's violent self-determination. Even though the Gulabi women did not kill their victims, it was important for the gang to partially distance itself from violence, use the secular language of human rights, and to accept the support of rural men in order to lend ethical legitimacy to their collective actions. I would further argue that there are historical limits to viewing ordinary, non-militaristic women as perpetrators of violence and persecutors of men. Carden-Coyne (2008), in her exploration of the testimonies of wounded soldiers manhandled by female nurses as feminist revenge during the First World War, suggests that these acts instigate public amnesia after an initial round of applause for the women. Thus, women who are good “bad citizens” occupy an uncomfortable position in the public imagination (Sharma 2011). Without any institutional backing, it was also important for the now renowned Gulabi women to retain the sympathy of the common people (especially in light of recent accusations of rape and intimidation against gang members). “ [45] Hence their gamut of actions (and not just violent vigilantism) underline the long-term, collective vision of rural women to position and reposition themselves between various discourses of justice, and subsequently remain alive in public memory. “We don't want to be forgotten,” said Banwari Devi. [46]

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La violence des surveillantes des camps de concentration national-socialistes (1939-1945) : réflexions sur les dynamiques et logiques du pouvoir

Elissa Mailänder, EHESS, Mars 2012

SOMMAIRE

I. Les surveillantes SS engagées dans les camps de concentration

II. Les voies vers les camps : le recrutement des surveillantes

III. Initiation au travail de surveillante : discipliner les futures gardiennes par l'architecture et l'uniforme

IV. Violence physique au quotidien : microphysique du pouvoir et de la violence

Les survivants et les chercheurs se représentent généralement le camp de concentration comme une institution totale par excellence. Exécutée avec zèle par les employés de la Schutzstaffel (SS, escadron de protection) des camps, la terreur fut, en effet, méticuleusement planifiée par les dirigeants SS – dont Heinrich Himmler en premier lieu (Sofsky, 1995 ; Armanski, 1993 ; Herbert, Orth et Dieckmann, 1998 ; Benz et Distel, 2005).Mais cette image d'une organisation systématique de la terreur demeure quelque peu trompeuse.

Le règlement du camp donnait certes aux surveillantes comme aux officiers SS, le droit de punir les prisonniers. Une procédure stricte le réglementait cependant, et plus encore celui de tuer (Mailänder Koslov 2011 ;Strebel, 2003).Le personnel de surveillance SS n'a jamais eu, officiellement, le droit de les violenter arbitrairement, et moins encore de les tuer(les pistolets de service devaient seulement servir pour se défendre).Il devait au contraire se plier à une codification stricte des punitions. Sa tâche principale était d'assurer une surveillance et une gestion ordonnées du camp. Mais malgré ces instructions et l'interdiction de toucher aux prisonniers, le personnel de garde exerçait son travail quotidien de manière brutale et sanglante. Un large fossé séparait donc dans les faits les directives de la pratique.

Ce fossé nous oblige à une étude micro-analytique qui se saisisse de la violence physique comme d'une pratique sociale (Lüdtke et Lindenberger, 1995 ; Sofsky, Kramer et Lüdtke 2004). En plaçant l'échelle d'observation sur l'étude d'un camp spécifique – le camp de concentration et d'extermination de Majdanek où, entre l'automne 1942 et le printemps 1944, 28 surveillantes SS se sont succédé– nous mettons l'accent sur le « jeu des acteurs » et les expériences, pratiques et interactions quotidiennes du personnel SS féminin.

À cette fin, nous souhaitons comparer, à titre d'exemple, la carrière de deux surveillantes de camps, l'une réputée pour sa violence extrême, l'autre jugée « humaine » par les survivantes. La première, Hermine Braunsteiner, née à Vienne en 1919, commença comme simple surveillante au camp de Ravensbrück (août 1939-octobre 1942),et termina surveillante-chef du camp de Genthin (janvier 1944-mai 1945), dépendant de Sachsenhausen, après être passée par le poste de surveillante-chef adjointe à Majdanek (octobre 1942-janvier 1944). La seconde, Herta Ehlert (née en 1905 à Berlin), arriva à Ravensbrück en décembre 1939, où elle resta quatre ans. Elle fut transférée en janvier 1943 au camp de concentration et d'extermination de Majdanek.

La Viennoise Braunsteiner et la Berlinoise Ehlert étaient des surveillantes de la première heure, et appartiennent aux doyennes du groupe de Majdanek. Qu'est-ce qui les a conduites au camp de concentration ? Comment menaient-elles à bien leur travail de surveillance ? Qu'est-ce qui les y fit rester six ans et demi ? Comment les surveillantes exerçaient-elle leur pouvoir sur les prisonnières ? Quel rôle jouait la violence physique dans ce jeu d'acteurs ?

En comparant les comportements d'une Braunsteiner, qui bat les prisonniers à mort, et d'une « douce Ehlert », on peut analyser les marges de manœuvre dans l'exercice de la violence dans les camps, et tenter de comprendre les réappropriations de la violence et du pouvoir dans une perspective micro-analytique. Nous adhérons ici à la conception du pouvoir de Michel Foucault, qui l'avait placée au centre de son travail. Il ne s'agit donc pas d'analyser le pouvoir du point de vue de sa rationalité interne, mais d'examiner les relations de pouvoir à travers l'affrontement des stratégies. L'exercice du pouvoir n'exclut pas l'usage de la violence, qui s'exerce directement sur les corps et les choses, et qui « force, plie, brise, détruit » (Foucault, 2011a : 1055).Mais les deux font souvent route ensemble. À l'échelle micro historique et microsociale, pouvoir et violence restent quasi indissociables.

Comme nous allons l'expliquer par la suite, les formes de violence dans le camp se développent selon des situations spécifiques, mais aussi en fonction des personnes qui y évoluent, de leur position dans le camp et dans la hiérarchie des surveillantes. Il s'agit alors de localiser les pouvoirs hétérogènes dans leur spécificité historique et leurs asymétries sociales. Cet article se focalise ainsi sur la logique du pouvoir en acte. Il traite de la socialisation situationnelle à la violence (effets d'environnement soutenus par des gratifications), des pressions exercées par les pairs en la matière et de l'influence réciproque de l'ensemble des acteurs en présence, qu'ils soient actifs ou passifs.

I. Les surveillantes SS engagées dans les camps de concentration

Selon une stricte séparation des sexes, les surveillantes (SS-Aufseherinnendans la nomenclature SS) étaient uniquement employées dans les camps de concentration pour femmes, conformément aux souhaits d'Heinrich Himmler lui-même. L'organisation de ces camps était peu ou prou similaires à celle des camps de concentration pour hommes instauré en 1933-1934(Erpel, 2007 ; Schwartz, 2009 : 167-182 ; Schwartz, à paraître). Dans les premiers camps pour femmes qui ressemblaient à des prisons, les camps de Mohringen (1933-1937) et de Lichtenburg (1937-1939), ce sont des gardiennes de prison, de simples membres du parti nazi ou des militantes de la ligue des femmes nationales-socialistes (NS-Frauenschaft) qui surveillaient les prisonnières [1] Créé en mai 1939, Ravensbrück fut le premier véritable camp de concentration SS pour femmes (Frauenkonzentrationslager). Avec lui, Himmler instaura aussi un nouveau profil de surveillante.

Elles avaient un statut particulier dans la hiérarchie. D'un côté, comme les hommes SS, elles bénéficiaient du statut d'employées du Reich, et dépendaient de la juridiction SS. De l'autre, et à la différence de leurs homologues masculins, elles n'étaient pas formellement membres de la SS, elles n'appartenaient pas à la SS-Sippschaft, au clan (Schwarz, 1997). Leur classification officielle dans la terminologie « cortège (Gefolge) féminin de la Waffen-SS » est caractéristique de cette position spéciale : elles étaient des employées civiles au sein d'une organisation paramilitaire. Leurs possibilités de promotion étaient limitées « selon les capacités et activités de chacune », tel qu'indiqué dans le formulaire de candidature de Ravensbrück. On pouvait devenir chef d'un camp annexe ou surveillante-chef (Oberaufseherin) [2]. Les surveillantes dépendaient de la Kommandantur, c'est-à-dire du commandant du camp et des hauts gradés de la SS, car les responsables et commandants des camps de femmes étaient toujours des hommes.

Cependant, leur attribuer un simple statut de subordonnées ne rend pas totalement compte de la réalité historique. Responsables des appels quotidiens, de la répartition des prisonnières dans les kommandos (colonnes) et de la surveillance des femmes dans les baraques comme au travail, les surveillantes exerçaient un pouvoir direct sur les détenues.

Pour le travail de surveillante, les SS recrutaient des femmes âgées de 21 à 45 ans, de préférence célibataires, et « sans formation précise » – pour reprendre la formulation d'un document de recrutement [3] . Ce travail y était annoncé comme « facile » et « bien rémunéré ». Dans un premier temps, les femmes étaient recrutées sur candidature spontanée. Selon une ancienne détenue de Ravensbrück, Erika Buchmann, les surveillantes étaient recrutées par des annonces dans les journaux (Buchmann, 1959). À partir de 1940, les affectations des surveillantes se faisaient en général par le biais des agences publiques pour l'emploi installées dans toutes les villes du Reich (Oppel, 2006). Avec le Livret de travail (Arbeitsbuch) qui, instauré à partir de 1935, répertoriait les différents emplois de toute personne salariée, ces agences représentaient un carrefour du marché du travail. C'était un moyen de contrôle très efficace car tous les salariés devaient figurer dans leurs listes. Après s'être opposés au travail des femmes en les renvoyant au foyer, les nazis durent adapter leur politique aux nécessités économiques. À la veille de la guerre, en 1938, les mesures d'enregistrement touchaient non seulement les femmes salariées, mais également les femmes au foyer, qui devaient posséder un livret de travail (Berger, 1988 ; Tröger, 1981). Une nouvelle vague de mobilisation, plus sévère encore, eut lieu à la fin de l'année 1942 et s'accentua à partir de la proclamation de la guerre totale en 1943. C'est à cette époque que les cadres SS du camp de Ravensbrück commencèrent à recruter directement dans les usines. À partir de 1944, toute femme entre 17 et 50 ans devait être enregistrée auprès de l'agence pour l'emploi (Meldepflicht). Ainsi, l'État pouvait disposer de la force de travail dont il avait besoin. Seules les femmes enceintes ou ayant plus de deux enfants de moins de 14 ans en étaient dispensées.

Jusqu'en juin 1941, Ravensbrück était le seul camp de femmes. Avec le déclenchement de la guerre contre l'Union soviétique en juin 1941 et la politique nationale-socialiste d'expansion vers les territoires soviétiques, le système concentrationnaire connut un développement considérable. Les déportations massives des femmes européennes d'origine juive dans les camps de concentration, mais aussi des prisonnières politiques et des femmes exclues de la « communauté du peuple » (Volksgemeinschaft), ont rapidement nécessité un personnel de garde féminin plus nombreux. Jusqu'à la fin de la guerre, 13 camps féminins ont été ouverts, sans compter les innombrables camps annexes réservés aux femmes, dont le chiffre exact n'a pas encore pu être établi.

Tableau :

À l'exception de Ravensbrück, tous les autres camps étaient des enclaves féminines à l'intérieur de camps d'hommes (Strebel, 1998).Les surveillantes étaient chargées du même travail de surveillance que leurs collègues masculins, les opérations de mise à mort exceptées. Tuer était un métier réservé aux hommes SS. Elles ne participaient ni aux gazages, ni aux fusillades mais procédaient aux sélections et surveillaient les prisonniers devant les chambres à gaz.

On ne peut qu'estimer le nombre total de surveillantes qui servirent le système concentrationnaire nazi de mai 1939 à mai 1945. Les statistiques nazies indiquent, pour janvier 1945, 3 508 gardiennes de camps contre 37 674 hommes SS [4] Les chiffres varient en fonction de l'évolution de la guerre et de l'expansion du système concentrationnaire. Cependant, ils sont constants quant aux proportions hommes/femmes : un groupe de quelques douzaines de femmes, pour des milliers d'hommes. Il n'y a qu'au camp de Ravensbrück que les employées féminines de la SS étaient majoritaires.

II. Les voies vers les camps : le recrutement des surveillantes

Comme la plupart des surveillantes recrutées par la SS, Hermine Braunsteiner et Herta Ehlert venaient de milieux populaires. Elles avaient toutes deux quitté l'école après les huit années obligatoires et étaient célibataires avant de rejoindre la SS. Dans son adolescence, Braunsteiner avait travaillé à Vienne comme femme de chambre, puis comme ouvrière non spécialisée. Elle vivait avec sa famille dans une certaine précarité [5] . Elle avait tenté de quitter le pays en crise et rejoindre les Pays-Bas puis d'obtenir une place dans une formation pour devenir infirmière, mais en vain. En 1936, Braunstainer avait accepté un poste de fille au pair à Londres mais elle l'avait quitté après l'annexion de l'Autriche par l'Allemagne nazie le 13 mars 1938 par crainte qu'un conflit n'éclate, mais aussi dans l'espoir que cette nouvelle conjoncture lui offre la possibilité de réaliser enfin son rêve : devenir infirmière. Ces perspectives étaient illusoires. Tout ce qu'elle obtint, ce fut un poste dans une usine près de Berlin. Ce travail dans l'industrie de l'armement, épuisant et mal payé (64 Reichsmark (RM) net par mois, auxquels il fallait enlever 9,60 RM pour le logement et le transport), ne lui plaisait guère. Mais elle souhaitait gagner sa vie et quitter sa famille (Mailänder Koslov, 2003 : 96-116). Lorsque le propriétaire de l'appartement qu'elle louait en région berlinoise, un policier, lui apprit que le commandant du camp de Ravensbrück, tout récemment installé à 80 km de Berlin, cherchait du personnel de surveillance féminin, la jeune femme de 20 ans postula sans hésitation.

Le 15 août 1939, Braunsteiner arriva donc à Ravensbrück avec le numéro de service 38 [6]. Sa collègue Herta Ehlert, vendeuse de formation, dirigeait la filiale d'un magasin quand elle avait, selon ses propres indications, été recrutée de force par une agence pour l'emploi [7]. Ce discours semble peu vraisemblable, et nous ne disposons pas de documentation concernant son affectation en date du 15 novembre 1939. Il est fort probable qu'elle était au chômage et/ou qu'elle se soit portée volontaire, comme la plupart des surveillantes recrutées dès l'ouverture du camp.

Braunsteiner et Ehlert correspondaient au groupe ciblé par la SS : des femmes entre 21 et 45 ans, issues de milieux populaires, sans formation professionnelle particulière. La SS comptait sur la reconnaissance et la loyauté de ce personnel malléable. Pour ces femmes qui devaient gagner leur vie elles-mêmes, et parfois contribuer à celles de leurs familles, le service dans la SS signifiait une ascension sociale considérable, et une sécurité financière bienvenue.

En effet, en tant que surveillantes, les femmes obtenaient le statut d'employées du Reich, avec un salaire fixe, établi selon les grilles de la fonction publique du Reich. Une surveillante célibataire de 25 ans percevait, d'après le formulaire de candidature de Ravensbrück, 185,68 RM par mois. Cela équivalait, une fois déduits les cotisations de sécurité sociale, les impôts et les frais de nourriture et d'hébergement dans un logement de fonction dans l'aile SS du camp, à 105,10 RM nets (l'équivalent de 1 365 francs de l'époque) [8] À titre de comparaison, une employée célibataire dans l'industrie de textile gagnait en 1944 un salaire mensuel brut d'environ 76 RM (Winkler, 1977 : 202 ; Heike, 1994 : 224). Braunsteiner gagnait presque le double de sa rémunération d'ouvrière. Le salaire de surveillante était donc intéressant pour une jeune fille sans formation.

L'insatisfaction professionnelle ou la pénibilité du travail avait majoritairement motivé sa candidature à Majdanek : en majorité, ces femmes étaient soit chômeuses, soit astreintes à un emploi ouvrier fatigant et monotone (Mailänder Koslov, 2009 : 93-125). En entrant au service de la SS, elles bénéficiaient d'un travail stable et, pour leur milieu social, bien payé, avec des privilèges (logement à bas prix, repas inclus, uniforme…). La candidature spontanée à un tel poste n'était donc pas nécessairement synonyme d'adhésion politique ou de motivation idéologique, mais plutôt de désir d'ascension sociale et d'un certain confort de vie.

Les historiens s'étonnent habituellement que ces femmes se soient portées volontaires, mais notre lecture montre la logique de leur parcours. Il est vrai cependant que ces jeunes femmes recrutées en 1939, en pleine marche triomphale du nazisme, ne se faisaient pas trop de scrupule. Des rumeurs et des informations sur les camps de concentration, réservés surtout, jusqu'en 1940, aux opposants politiques allemands et autrichiens, circulaient dans la société nationale-socialiste [9] Mais il est vraisemblable que les nouvelles recrues n'avaient pas d'idée claire sur leur nouveau lieu de travail et ne se posaient généralement pas trop de questions. Car il faut bien tenir compte du fait que la grande majorité des Allemands estimaient que ces camps étaient des lieux adéquats et légitimes pour interner les opposants politiques et les personnes jugées « asociales ».

En revanche, une question demeure : comment une simple ouvrière et vendeuse peut-elle se transformer, en quelques semaines seulement, en surveillante SS « prête à l'emploi » ? À leur arrivée à Ravensbrück, Braunsteiner, Ehlert et les autres recrues n'étaient pas des « expertes en terreur » (Orth, 2002). Elles le sont devenues dans un contexte social et un espace institutionnel spécifiques.

Il est donc crucial de s'attarder sur leur première « expérience concentrationnaire » (Pollack, 1988, 2000), car le camp de concentration s'entend, ici, comme un environnement socio-culturel, et une réalité de vie et de travail que les surveillantes ont expérimentée, interprétée et se sont appropriée de façons diverses et contradictoires. Michael Pollack avait développé le concept d'« expérience concentrationnaire » pour saisir les processus d'adaptation à la vie concentrationnaire et les combats de survie des survivantes d'Auschwitz. On pourra ajouter que les surveillantes SS ont vécu elles aussi, lors de leur formation obligatoire à Ravensbrück qui durait trois mois, une « expérience concentrationnaire » – bien entendu fort différente de celles des détenues.

C'est donc dans ce camp que les surveillantes SS [10] ont été confrontées à « l'univers concentrationnaire » (Rousset, 1946) pour la première fois. Rescapée de Ravensbrück, l'ethnologue Germaine Tillion décrit comment une recrue devient surveillante SS :

Les débutantes avaient l'air généralement effarées à leur premier contact avec le camp, et elles mettaient quelques temps avant d'atteindre le même niveau de cruauté et de débauche que les anciennes. C'était, pour certaines d'entre nous, un petit jeu assez amer que de chronométrer le temps que mettait une nouvelle Aufseherin avant d'atteindre ses chevrons de brutalité. Pour une petite Aufseherin de vingt ans, qui, le jour de son arrivée, était tellement peu au fait des bonnes manières du camp qu'elle disait « pardon » lorsqu'elle passait devant une prisonnière, et qui avait été visiblement effrayée par les premières brutalités qu'elle avait vues, il a fallu exactement quatre jours avant qu'elle ne prît ce même ton et ces mêmes procédés, qui étaient cependant, d'une façon tout à fait nette, nouveaux pour elle. Cette petite était sans doute particulièrement douée dans ce registre spécial que nous étudions en ce moment. Pour les autres, on peut dire que huit à quinze jours, un mois au plus, représentaient une moyenne très normale d'adaptation. (Tillion, 1988 : 140)

Quelques semaines suffisaient pour métamorphoser des débutantes choquées, apeurées et maladroites en surveillantes sûres d'elles, capables d'agresser verbalement et physiquement les prisonnières. Ce contraste saisissant, décrit par de nombreuses survivantes, entre les premières réactions d'effroi et un comportement « adapté », soulève de nouvelles questions. Que se passait-il pendant les premières semaines ? Comment procédait-on à la formation ? Qu'est-ce que cela signifiait, pour une jeune recrue, de vivre dans un camp de concentration et de porter un uniforme ? Et enfin, qu'est-ce qui rendait ce travail « attrayant » et retenait les jeunes recrues au camp ?

Pour explorer les processus d'initiation et d'adaptation des SS à la réalité des camps, nous proposons ici deux pistes : le pouvoir d'agir et l'expérience du pouvoir à travers l'architecture et l'uniforme.

III. Initiation au travail de surveillante : discipliner les futures gardiennes par l'architecture et l'uniforme

Certes, dans les camps de concentration, on enfermait et on surveillait, sur critères d'abord politiques, puis raciaux. Mais pour le personnel SS, ces mêmes camps étaient aussi des lieux d'habitation et de travail gérés selon des règles militaires. L'architecture du camp de Ravensbrück, et plus particulièrement du site d'habitation SS, exprime l'intention de surveiller et de discipliner le personnel. La vie au camp était casernée, si l'on entend par caserne un lieu encerclé d'habitation et de travail dont l'accès est réglementé et surveillé. Les surveillantes ne pouvaient en sortir que par un accès officiel, et uniquement si elles étaient en possession d'un laissez-passer. Leur emploi du temps, leur espace, leurs mouvements et leurs activités étaient organisés et réglementés selon des codes militaires.

Comme Foucault l'a expliqué, la discipline organise un espace analytique qui distribue la circulation et les mouvements des gens et répartit les corps dans l'espace et dans le temps (Foucault, 2002 : 159-195, 201-227). Il s'agit« d'exercer […] une coercition ténue, d'assurer des prises au niveau même de la mécanique – mouvement, gestes, attitudes, rapidité : pouvoir infinitésimal sur le corps actif » (ibid. : 161). Les institutions comme le couvent, l'internat, la manufacture, l'usine, la caserne, l'hôpital recourent, tout comme les camps de concentration, aux mêmes techniques minutieuses, d'apparence innocente et qui, jusqu'à présent, n'ont rien perdu de leur puissance. Elles visent à optimiser l'efficacité du travail et à neutraliser les effets de « contre-pouvoir » ou, pour parler avec Alf Lüdtke, du « sens de soi » qui est une mise à distance momentanée, une prise de recul face aux situations de contraintes, sans pour autant mettre sérieusement en question le cadre (Lüdtke, 1993). Une telle « microphysique du pouvoir » permettait de transformer les recrues en surveillantes « disciplinées » et « aptes ».

Les maisons et appartements construits pour les surveillantes restent uniques dans le système concentrationnaire national-socialiste. Dans tous les autres camps de femmes, comme par exemple à Majdanek, le personnel de surveillance féminin logeait dans des baraques ou dans des infrastructures préexistantes. C'est à Ravensbrück, camp de concentration central pour femme, que Himmler fit construire des habitations dédiées au nouveau personnel de garde féminin en 1939.

photo 1 : Habitations des surveillantes construites en 1939, photo prise par le service photographique SS, Ravensbrück 1940 ou 1941. Archive du mémorial de Ravensbrück MGR/SBG Fo II/D10-1639

Les maisons des surveillantes ont été photographiées par le service photographique du camp pour un album SS officiel élaboré en 1940 ou 1941 à des fins de propagande interne (visites de délégations internationales ou des hauts dignitaires SS). Elles existent par ailleurs toujours et hébergent aujourd'hui une exposition ainsi qu'un centre de rencontre géré par le mémorial de Ravensbrück.

Huit maisons étaient disposées symétriquement en deux rangées autour d'une grande place donnant une certaine majesté à cet ensemble architectural. D'après l'anthropologue Insa Eschebach, la disposition et le volume des bâtiments expriment une auto-affirmation de la SS. Elle documente le cadre idéologique dans lequel évoluait le personnel SS (Eschebach, 1997).

Chaque maison comprenait dix studios étalés sur deux étages hébergeant chacun une personne, et quatre chambres sous les toits, pouvant donc loger jusqu'à 14 surveillantes. Les appartements, qui mesuraient entre 25 et 30 m², comprenaient une chambre et une pièce de vie, avec un placard aménagé et un lavabo (Plewe et Köhler, 2001). Sur chaque étage, cinq colocataires partageaient des toilettes, une salle de bains et une petite cuisine. Si l'on considère le milieu d'où étaient issues la plupart des surveillantes qui avaient jusqu'alors vécu avec leur famille, comme Braunstainer, à sept dans un petit trois-pièces, il s'agissait d'un confort et d'une modernité considérables.

Les uniformes ont eux aussi leur importance dans l'expérience du pouvoir. Ils furent introduits à l'automne 1940, suite à la visite de Himmler.

Photo 2 : Visite officielle d'Heinrich Himmler du camp de Ravensbrück, photo prise par le service photographique SS, Ravensbrück 1940 ou 1941. Archive du mémorial de Ravensbrück MRG/SBG, FoII/D, 10-1622a

Les nouvelles recrues recevaient à leur arrivée deux uniformes (été et hiver), deux paires de bottes, une paire de gants, des collants, des chemisiers, un couvre-chef et une tenue de sport [11]

Dès ses débuts, la société nationale-socialiste fut une société d'uniformes. Les femmes en portaient depuis leur entrée massive sur le marché du travail, pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, en tant que factrices, contrôleuses, etc. Les nombreuses associations nationales-socialistes pour les femmes (Bund DeutscherMädel, la Ligue des jeunes filles allemandes, NS-Frauenschaft, la Ligue des femmes nationales-socialistes, NS-Volkswohlfahrt, Reichsarbeitsdienst, etc.) fournissaient, elles aussi, des uniformes. Mais l'uniforme prit un tout autre sens sous le nazisme. Ce n'était plus un simple habillement de travail, mais un signe d'appartenance à une communauté, à une élite politique établie selon des critères raciaux. Celui des surveillantes était à la fois une tenue de travail (vêtements pratiques, imperméables et solides, qui protègent du froid, de la pluie, du vent et du soleil et qui, par sa coupe sobre et sévère, avait pour fonction de neutraliser toute connotation sexuelle), et un uniforme au sens (para)militaire du mot.

Si le statut et la fonction des surveillantes étaient comparables à ceux des hommes, de fines distinctions se reflétaient toutefois dans le code vestimentaire. Les surveillantes femmes n'avaient pas le droit de porter les insignes de la SS (runes et tête de mort). Elles devaient se contenter de l'aigle impérial, un emblème réservé aux fonctionnaires d'État. Toutefois, leur uniforme était lui aussi chargé d'un sens politique et social significatif, aussi bien à l'intérieur qu'à l'extérieur. Il désignait ces employées civiles comme représentantes légitimes de l'État nazi. L'uniforme fait disparaître les traits du visage et du caractère derrière ceux du groupe. Comme le montre la photo prise à Ravensbrück lors d'une visite de Heinrich Himmler en 1940 ou en 1941 (il est impossible d'établir la date exacte de cette photographie), les corps en uniforme donnaient l'image d'un groupe soudé, et cela non seulement aux observateurs, mais aussi aux surveillantes elles-mêmes. Les porteuses bénéficiaient d'un sentiment commun de puissance et d'appartenance.

L'uniforme contribue à forger un esprit de corps, même si cela n'exclut pas des hiérarchies de rangs et les frictions à l'intérieur du groupe. La politologue Paula Diehl a bien mis en évidence, dans son étude sur les hommes SS, la ligne de partage tracée entre ceux qui appartenaient au groupe et ceux qui en étaient exclus. Cette ligne de partage du pouvoir vaut aussi pour les surveillantes (Diehl, 2005 : 166f) : porter un uniforme était une expérience marquante qui signifiait, pour les surveillantes, être membres d'un collectif, et partager une expérience du pouvoir.

La question de l'aura de l'uniforme n'a pas été abordée par les anciennes surveillantes. C'est dans les mémoires des anciennes déportées qu'il prend une place très importante. Margarete Buber-Neumann, une ancienne prisonnière politique allemande, eut l'occasion d'observer un groupe d'une vingtaine de jeunes ouvrières d'une usine d'armement débarquées à Ravensbrück:

Avant de recevoir les uniformes, elles s'approchèrent toutes ensemble de la surveillante-chef. La plupart étaient très simples, plutôt pauvrement habillées, elles attendaient l'air timide, gêné dans le bureau. Beaucoup ne savaient pas quoi faire de leurs mains. Langefeld [la surveillante-chef, EM] leur annonça quelles maisonnettes leur étaient attribuées, où elles devaient récupérer leur uniforme, et quand leur service devait commencer. Après, j'ai souvent observé par la fenêtre quand elles passaient par la place centrale, comment elles se poussaient et regardaient les convois de prisonnières avec des yeux effarés. Chez certaines, un changement radical se produisait une fois « habillées ». En bottes, elles se tenaient déjà différemment ; et puis le képi sur la tête, de travers sur l'oreille ; elles étaient de suite plus sûres d'elles. (Buber-Neumann, 1997 : 321)

Le camp de concentration était pour la SS un espace disciplinaire. L'encasernement et l'uniforme permettaient de transformer un ensemble d'individus singuliers en un groupe homogène. Le portail d'entrée marque la limite entre deux mondes : celui de l'enfermement, le camp pour prisonnières (le Schutzhaftlager) ; les lots d'administration (la Kommandantur) et de production (les Werkstättenet Betriebe) ; et les habitations des SS, plus intimes tout en restant dans l'enceinte du camp (para)militaire. Ces lieux d'habitation étaient eux aussi soumis au règlement intérieur du camp, et on y pratiquait l'observation et le contrôle sur soi. Mais ces emprises physiques et mentales sur les surveillantes se faisaient à toute petite échelle. Elles n'avaient à première vue rien des méthodes militaires parfois brutales employées chez les hommes SS, par exemple au camp de Dachau (Broszat, 1999 ; Zámecnik, 2001). C'est bien ce qui fait l'« élégance » de cette disciplinarisation des surveillantes, qui tend à diriger les corps, à agir discrètement, intensivement et préventivement, et qui met en œuvre l'observation de soi et de l'autre.

Vivre au camp signifiait donc, pour les surveillantes, limites et règlements. Mais cela assurait donc aussi un certain standing. Les tâches de cuisine, de nettoyage, de vaisselle, de repassage étaient effectuées par des prisonnières du camp, sous leur surveillance. Les employées n'avaient donc pas à se préoccuper chaque jour de leur linge ou du ménage. Peu de surveillantes auraient pu s'offrir un tel luxe dans la vie civile. En 1945, au cours d'un interrogatoire lors le procès de Bergen-Belsen, Herta Ehlert décrit sa situation à Ravensbrück : « et bien, pour être tout à fait honnête, je n'ai jamais connu une aussi belle vie qu'au début quand je suis arrivée à Ravensbrück » [12].. De toute évidence, la vie au camp offrait aux femmes, tout du moins dans les premiers temps, un confort de vie jusqu'alors inimaginable : une chambre individuelle, des loisirs réguliers et un salaire correct.

Les techniques disciplinaires que subissent aussi les surveillantes ne sont donc pas uniquement à comprendre comme des aspects négatifs de la loi, des interdictions, des règles restrictives et limitatives. Michel Foucault a beaucoup insisté sur l'erreur majeure qui consiste à réduire ces techniques du pouvoir à de simples éléments répressifs et négatifs (tu ne dois pas) (Foucault, 2001b : 1002). Pour pouvoir comprendre le fonctionnement du pouvoir, il faut aussi analyser le pouvoir dans ces mécanismes positifs et productifs : la réglementation du travail et des loisirs, de l'habitat et des vêtements, n'était pas uniquement une contrainte et une obligation, mais donnait aussi des droits, des privilèges, l'opportunité de s'identifier à ses pairs et la possibilité d'exercer du pouvoir sur les détenus.

C'est dans ce sens qu'on peut comprendre une lettre d'une ancienne surveillante adressée le 10 octobre 1942 au commandant du camp de Maidanek, Sturmbannführer Max Koegel. L'ancienne employée de Ravensbrück, qui avait quitté son service en janvier 1942, demande sa réaffectation dans un camp de concentration :

Vous serez surpris de recevoir de moi aujourd'hui ces quelques lignes. J'ai quitté, au 1er janvier de cette année, le camp de concentration pour femmes de Ravensbrück, après trois années de service, et je me retrouve maintenant à Munich comme employée de bureau débutante à la direction du Reich. Comme ce poste ne me plaît pas beaucoup, je viens vous demander si vous auriez une place pour moi, si possible dans un bureau. Je suis très disposée à revenir. Je ne vous adresse pas de CV puisque vous vous souvenez certainement de mon service. Bien sûr, je vous en adresserais un si vous le souhaitiez. Je serai disponible au 1er décembre. Si une place était libre pour moi, je vous serais reconnaissante de me le faire savoir rapidement, car il faudrait alors que je donne ici mon congé. Dans l'attente de votre réponse, Heil Hitler ! Hildegard B. [13]

Pour les prisonniers, le camp de Ravensbrück était un lieu de souffrance et de mise à mort (par la faim, la violence, les épidémies et le meurtre en masse systématique par l'« action d'euthanasie 14f13 » (Strebel, 2005 : 320-339) ; pour le personnel de camps c'était, jusqu'en 1942, un lieu de travail pas si déplaisant.

IV. Violence physique au quotidien : microphysique du pouvoir et de la violence

Cette approche « matérialiste » explique l'affectation et l'acclimatation au camp de Ravensbrück, ainsi que l'adhésion au groupe. Mais que faire de la violence concentrationnaire ? L'observation des pratiques quotidiennes des surveillantes permet une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement du camp de concentration comme institution, mais aussi de la fonction culturelle et sociale de la violence physique.

La tâche principale du personnel SS fut d'assurer une surveillance et une gestion ordonnée du camp [14]. Le règlement, de nombreuses mises en garde émanant de la Centrale des camps d'Oranienburg [15] (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, WVHA), et des courriers de Heinrich Himmler lui-même interdisaient formellement tout usage gratuit de la violence. C'est en cas d'attaque physique ou de tentative de fuite uniquement que les « surveillantes-chefs et les surveillantes avaient le droit d'user de leur arme à feu » [16]. En entrant au service de la SS, chaque homme et chaque femme signait une déclaration sur l'honneur les engageant à ne « décider de la mort d'un ennemi de l'État » que sur ordre d'un supérieur : aucun national-socialiste n'avait le droit « de lever la main sur un ennemi de l'État ou de le maltraiter physiquement » [17].

Le personnel de surveillance SS n'avait donc jamais eu officiellement le droit de violenter les prisonniers, et moins encore de les tuer. Pourtant, les témoignages de déportées et les procès nous montrent que les violences étaient fréquentes. Les plus communes au camp de Majdanek étaient les insultes, les claques et les coups de pied. Lucia Schmidt-Felsen témoigne : « On était frappé pour trois fois rien. Et il y en avait pour tous les goûts : le poing, la paume de la main, une canne, un gourdin. Si c'était un homme, alors aussi avec la crosse de son arme. Il y avait aussi des coups de pied, ou bien ils laissaient faire les chiens qui avaient bien appris à mordre » (Schmidt-Fels, 2004 : 13).

La surveillante Hermine Braunsteiner était particulièrement connue pour ses coups à Ravensbrück et, plus tard, à Majdanek, pour ses coups de pied mortels. Observons cette surveillante dans une banale situation de travail, d'abord à Ravensbrück, puis à Majdanek.

De mai 1941 à octobre 1942, Braunsteiner était responsable du stock des vêtements à Ravensbrück, où elle dirigeait un kommando de 20 prisonnières. La mission de ces prisonnières politiques autrichiennes était de redistribuer des vêtements et des chaussures aux autres prisonnières. La surveillante coordonnait et vérifiait le travail. Les vêtements et chaussures indispensables à la survie étaient rares à Ravensbrück, et il y avait souvent foule devant la chambre aux vêtements. Viktoria Filler témoigne devant le tribunal populaire de Vienne en 1949:

Quand je suis arrivée devant la chambre aux vêtements, l'accusée est sortie, m'a donné un coup de pied et je suis tombée. Elle avait besoin de place, et comme je me tenais là, devant, elle en a profité pour me donner un coup de pied. L'accusée était très nerveuse, et quand elle sortait de la pièce, elle avait toujours besoin de place [18]

Très souvent les gardiennes surveillaient des prisonnières qui effectuaient des tâches qu'elles ne savaient pas faire. On pourrait en déduire que battre les prisonnières était une manière de compenser un manque de compétences, et d'imposer une certaine « autorité ». La violence physique permettait à Braunsteiner de prendre le dessus, de se frayer brutalement et concrètement un chemin en cognant des mains et des pieds. L'usage de la violence était une manifestation de sa domination. En tant que démonstration de puissance, la violence s'adressait d'abord à la victime.

Au camp de Majdanek, Braunsteiner frappait plus souvent et plus fort, comme Janina Rawska-Bot en témoigne lors du procès de Majdanek à Düsseldorf : « Elle m'a frappé deux fois et j'en ai eu le sourcil et la joue arrachés et déchirés » [19] . Pour frapper, le personnel SS utilisait toutes sortes de fouets et de bâtons (notamment pour éviter le contact direct avec la main, et se protéger ainsi des risques de contagion). En outre, ces instruments décuplaient la puissance des coups et ajoutaient l'humiliation au supplice. Lila Givner, arrivée début mai 1943 à Majdanek, décrit une rencontre avec Braunsteiner devant le tribunal de Düsseldorf en 1978 :

La Kobyla [Braunsteiner, EM] était grande, elle rentrait littéralement dans les gens, elle allait pour ainsi dire droit sur eux. La Kobyla m'est rentrée dedans, j'en ai encore des cicatrices. C'est arrivé plus d'une fois. Elle traversait les baraques ou le camp. Quand quelqu'un se trouvait sur son chemin, elle levait la jambe et frappait. C'était comme ça avec moi aussi : je suis tombée sur elle dans le camp et je ne me suis pas poussée à temps. Elle m'a donné un tel coup de pied que je suis tombée. Quand j'étais à terre, elle a continué. Puis quand je me suis relevée, elle m'a frappée dans le dos et je suis tombée sur le ventre. Elle a continuée à me piétiner, elle est partie et m'a laissée comme ça [20]

Le piétinement a marqué une étape supplémentaire dans le processus de dégradation de la victime. C'est un acte de mépris plus fort que des coups portés au visage, car il accentue l'asymétrie entre la tortionnaire et sa victime. Ici, la victime gît à terre, aux pieds de la surveillante. L'uniforme, c'est-à-dire les bottes de cuir destinées à éviter toute blessure et tout contact physique direct, sert littéralement d'arme. La force de frappe était également plus importante avec les pieds. Braunsteiner visait juste et ciblait les zones les plus sensibles, comme le ventre et le bas-ventre ou le dos. Ses « coups de bottes » devinrent son symbole à Majdanek et lui valurent son surnom de Kobyla [21] , la jument.

On peut parler d'un climax de la violence, d'une véritable progression qualitative et quantitative des actes violents. Comment expliquer cette radicalisation des comportements ? Pour cela, il faut prendre en compte le contexte géopolitique de ce camp.

La décision d'installer un camp de concentration dans le district de Lublin au sein du Gouvernement général de la Pologne occupée remonte à l'été 1941. Durant son existence, d'octobre 1941 à juillet 1944, le camp a eu plusieurs fonctions : camp de prisonniers de guerre soviétiques ; camp de travail forcé pour les hommes juifs de la région ; camp de concentration pour les résistants polonais masculins ; camp d'extermination pour les déporté(e)s juifs (juin 1942-novembre 1943) ; camp de concentration pour les résistantes polonaises et les femmes et les enfants juifs (octobre 1942-avril 1944) ; et camp d'internement pour les otages civiles polonaises et soviétiques (population rurale) (Schwindt, 2005 ; Kuretsidis-Haider et al., 2011).

L'arrivée du premier groupe de surveillantes envoyé de Ravensbrück à Majdanek le 15 octobre 1942 est concomitante de la mise en application de la Solution finale et du gazage de masse des Juifs d'Europe. Toutefois, les deux tiers des victimes de Majdanek (estimés à 78 000 personnes, dont 59 000 personnes d'origine juive) ne sont mortes ni dans les chambres à gaz, ni sous le feu des commandos d'exécution, mais en raison des conditions d'hygiène désastreuses, des mauvais traitements et des brutalités quotidiennes du personnel de garde, féminin comme masculin (Kranz et Majdanka, 2005).

Des surveillantes restées en retrait à Ravensbrück sont devenues très agressives à Majdanek. La radicalisation des comportements comme celui de Braunsteiner s'explique par une conjonction de plusieurs facteurs. En octobre 1942, la mutation à Majdanek a provoqué un véritable choc chez les surveillantes. Les conditions sanitaires particulièrement critiques ont affecté directement le personnel de surveillance, plus que dans d'autres camps. Les gardiennes ont ressenti le contact avec des détenues (pour la plupart juives, polonaises et russes) dans un état physiologique épouvantable comme une dégradation des conditions de travail dont elles jouissaient à Ravensbrück. L'organisation du camp de Majdanek était chaotique, et le surpeuplement allait de pair avec un manque de personnel : 17 surveillantes pour 6 000 détenues en moyenne. À Ravensbrück, les gardiennes connaissaient d'autres conditions de travail, avec un ratio de 110 surveillantes pour 5 300 à 6 600 prisonnières (Strebel, 2005 : 51, 180).

Même si les surveillantes semblaient apprécier, à Majdanek, les avantages de la société « d'apartheid » que l'Allemagne avait instauré en Pologne occupée, et la possibilité de s'approprier des biens enlevés aux déportés juifs et stockés en masse, ces incommodités réelles (épidémies, distance avec la famille, conditions de travail et climatiques inhabituelles, habitat modeste comparé au camp de Ravensbrück) ou imaginaires (mépris pour la culture et le climat polonais, proximité relative du front de l'Est radicalisant la figure de l'ennemi) doivent être prises au sérieux. Elles provoquent des sentiments de déracinement, de frustration, de peur de la contamination et de dégoût violent pour les prisonnières. Tout cela a contribué à une radicalisation des comportements. S'y ajoutaient les relations des surveillantes entre elles, ainsi qu'avec les hommes SS, largement majoritaires. Le rapport aux hommes était parfois conflictuel, les surveillantes étant difficilement intégrées à la communauté SS. Cela n'a pas empêché pas les plus expérimentées – comme Hermine Braunsteiner – de s'affirmer et de faire front.

L'exercice du pouvoir est crucial pour comprendre la société concentrationnaire, et en particulier la société SS des camps. Dans une perspective foucaldienne, le pouvoir « n'existe qu'en acte » (Foucault, 2001a : 1055). Il n'agit pas toujours directement et immédiatement, mais joue aussi sur les actions réalisées ou éventuelles, présentes ou futures des individus. Ainsi, le pouvoir est un mode d'action sur les actions des autres. Il les induit, les détourne, les rend plus faciles ou plus difficiles (ibid. : 1056). Cette conception se prête bien à l'analyse des relations complexes entre les officiers SS, les simples gardiens et les surveillantes. Mais comme cet exercice du pouvoir est fonction d'un certain degré de consentement entre partenaires, nous ne pourrons l'adopter pour analyser les relations entre SS et prisonniers car celles-ci ne relèvent pas d'un rapport de pouvoir, mais d'un rapport dissymétrique, où les SS ont tout pouvoir sur les prisonniers. En nous référant aux réflexions d'Elias Canetti,nous utiliserons plutôt la notion de « toute-puissance » (Übermacht). Ce concept désigne une relation de pouvoir caractérisée par une dissymétrie totale du rapport de force entre le tortionnaire (les SS) d'un côté, et les victimes de leur extrême violence (les prisonniers) de l'autre (Canetti, 1999). Foucault souligne que le pouvoir ne découle pas d'une seule instance de pouvoir centrale, mais que l'exercice du pouvoir met en jeu les relations entre individus ou groupes : la société SS des camps ne constituait pas, en effet, un corps unitaire, mais, pour le dire avec Foucault, « une juxtaposition, une liaison, une coordination, une hiérarchie de différents pouvoirs » (Foucault, 2001b : 1006).

L'exercice quotidien de la violence à l'égard des déportées de toute origine ne servait pas uniquement, comme la recherche sur les camps l'a affirmé jusqu'à présent, à dominer, à briser et à détruire les prisonniers. Cette violence s'adressait aussi, parfois avant tout, aux collègues qui observaient – femmes et hommes confondus. Les actes de violence servaient aussi à négocier les rapports de pouvoir au sein du personnel SS. Elle permettait la codification « morale » des rapports. « Montrer de quoi l'on était capable » était une façon de s'affirmer, de négocier son statut à l'intérieur de la communauté de travail SS, et doit être considéré comme un mode de communication dans la sphère du personnel. Il n'y a pas une très grande différence entre les surveillantes et les surveillants SS quant au nombre et à la fréquence de violences physiques perpétrées. Mais une dynamique que l'on pourra qualifier de « genrée » se mettait en place à Majdanek : les surveillants hommes et femmes ont systématiquement accéléré et augmenté la violence de leurs actes en présence d'un collègue de sexe opposé (MailänderKoslov, 2009 : 435-350). Il s'agissait d'« impressionner » et/ou de « choquer » ses homologues et supérieurs par des actes de violence spécifique, et de « prouver » son « autorité » et son « adresse » aux collègues.

Les membres de la société SS étant liés entre eux par l'ensemble de leurs actions qui « s'induisent et se répandent sur les autres » (Foucault, 2011a : 1052), l'exercice du pouvoir sur les autres ne peut jamais être définitif. Il doit être sans cesse renouvelé, affirmé, négocié. À l'échelle des camps de concentration, cette association implique à la fois une relation de toute-puissance du personnel SS par rapport aux détenues, mais aussi un réseau complexe de dépendances et d'interdépendances dans les relations de pouvoir. Agir en dehors ou au-delà était impossible : personne ne pouvait échapper au filet de ces relations de pouvoir complexes. Même lorsque les surveillantes s'évitaient, restaient passives ou essayaient de s'ignorer, elles ne pouvaient pas ne pas se voir et se rencontrer, ni éviter de réagir les unes par rapport aux autres.

L'usage immodéré de la violence corporelle à Ravensbrück, à Majdanek, et dans tous les camps de concentration, peut s'expliquer en grande partie par les relations nouées à l'intérieur du camp SS. Bien que les relations entre gardiennes et prisonnières aient été d'évidence dissymétrique, ces mêmes gardiennes devaient chaque jour faire preuve de leur autorité et la renouveler, tant auprès des déportées que face à leurs collègues ou à leurs supérieurs hiérarchiques. En usant de la violence physique, les surveillantes exerçaient un pouvoir sur les prisonnières, mais aussi sur leurs collègues. La domination physique était bien la preuve de ce dont elles étaient « capables ». Parallèlement, elle exprimait une véritable soif de pouvoir. Martyriser le corps des prisonnières au quotidien permettait aux surveillantes d'affirmer leur place dans le camp SS. Braunsteiner, par exemple, avait gagné la confiance de la surveillante en chef, Ehlert, et était ainsi devenue son adjointe. Offert aux blessures, le corps des détenues était toujours au centre du champ de pouvoir composé des multiples liens tendus entre surveillantes, collègues mâles, supérieurs et prisonnières.

V. La surveillante passive : le rôle constituant des spectateurs

Pourtant, toutes les surveillantes n'ont pas agi comme Braunsteiner. Sa collègue Herta Ehlert se tenait à l'écart de la violence. Était-elle pour autant beaucoup moins violente ? Margarete Buber-Neumann, déportée de Ravensbrück, a décrit Ehlert comme « la bonne grosse Walkyrie blonde » (Buber-Neumann, 1997 : 305) plutôt sympathique et agréable, partageant ses repas avec celles de sa colonne. Les témoignages de Majdanek confirment cette impression. Danuta Medrik-Brosko se souvient d'elle comme d'une femme « calme et sans intérêt particulier, il n'y a rien à en dire » [22] .Elle était considérée comme « bonne, humaine, correcte » parce qu'elle consentait de temps à autres à quelques dérogations, et parce qu'elle frappait moins que les autres surveillantes. Certains témoignages de survivantes sont presque positifs. On y décèlerait même une sorte de « reconnaissance », comme le souligne l'anthropologue Insa Eschebach. L'absence de coups a certainement soulagé le quotidien des détenues amaigries et malades qui voyaient cela comme un privilège. Malgré cette apparente non-violence, d'autres formes de domination et d'humiliation subsistent (Eschebach, 1996 : 46).

À Ravensbrück, Ehlert avait l'habitude de forcer son kommando à chanter sa chanson préférée « Ahoi, ahoi ! » tout au long de la journée de travail (Buber-Neumann, 1997 : 305). Ce genre de comportement montre un type de coercition, une forme d'abus de pouvoir de la part des surveillantes qui passe inaperçu au regard de la violence extrême exercée par les autres collègues.

Le comportement d'Ehlert, en apparence anodin, est un geste de domination : elle force bien « ses » prisonnières à chanter cette chanson. Son caractère « humain » devient plus douteux encore si l'on considère le poste qu'elle avait à Majdanek, où elle travaillait à la lingerie. Certes, elle ne se livrait pas aux maltraitances « performatives » de ses collègues pendant les appels ou dans le kommando de travail. Mais ce lieu de travail était exactement en face du crématorium. Ehlert travaillait donc au cœur de la destruction de masse. La stratégie qu'elle choisit pour supporter ce travail fut d'ignorer l'extermination, de prétendre ne pas la voir ni l'entendre, ce qui était impossible car elle y était confrontée à tout moment. Ehlert se refugiait dans son travail, silencieuse et passive. Se refuser à voir était un moyen de préserver sa conscience et sa fonction dans le camp, ce qui peut être qualifié avec Lüdtke comme une forme de sens de soi (Eigen-Sinn). Humeur rebelle et comportement déviant, le sens du soi renvoie à une attitude individualiste qui répond à des besoins et des intérêts ponctuels, sans pour autant mettre en question le cadre politique et institutionnel.

Ne pas agir comme refuser de voir correspond bien, dans un contexte de violence collective, à une caution silencieuse. Elle confirme auprès de ceux et celles qui agissent que les règles fondamentales d'entraide ne sont plus valides ici. Pour comprendre les excès de violence, il faut aussi prendre en compte le rôle de celles qui restèrent passives, tout aussi générateur de violence. Le psycho-sociologue Harald Welzer insiste sur la sous-estimation de la « dimension active de l'observation d'actes de violence » : « Les spectateurs, par leur simple présence et par leur non-intervention, cautionnent le cadre de référence choisi par les actants ; ils le valident en ne le remettant pas en question » (Welzer, 2055 : 148). Parallèlement, les collègues brutaux servent de « référence négative ». Ils permettent de se considérer soi-même comme « normal », voire, par contraste, comme humain et compatissant. Comparée à sa collègue Braunsteiner, Ehlert pouvait ainsi se sentir bien dans sa peau et tout à fait humaine. Et pourtant, elle contribuait tout autant à la radicalisation des comportements.

Comme l'anthropologue française Véronique Nahoum-Grappe l'a montré, une personne excessivement violente, voire cruelle, ne peut exister que dans une situation où elle se sent autorisée à des actes de violence diffamatoires et humiliants. Ce contexte d'impunité et d'acceptation sociale est une condition essentielle, mais non déterminante, des comportements monstrueux (Nahoum-Grappe, 1996 : 301, 308). Ce contexte est créé par tous. Il doit être constamment renouvelé et confirmé, tout autant par ceux qui perpétuent directement cette violence que par ceux qui demeurent passifs en la matière. Et ce contexte microsocial enclenche automatiquement un processus d'accélération : plus on accepte, pire on accepte. Un tel champ de pouvoir crée par les surveillantes passives permettait et régulait l'action des surveillantes violentes.

Conclusions : comment évaluer la violence des femmes au service de la SS ?

L'approche microsociale de l'histoire de la vie quotidienne révèle la facilité avec laquelle de jeunes et simples recrues se transforment, dans les camps, en surveillantes cruelles et violentes. Le processus a certainement été marqué par des ruptures, des doutes, mais il n'y avait pas de fossé à franchir. À la différence des surveillantes, les hommes SS disposaient ou bien d'une véritable formation militaire chez les Sturmabteilung (SA, section d'assaut) ou SS qui remontait aux années 1930 (Reichardt, 2002 ; Buggeln, 2009), ou bien visaient clairement, après les 12 ans contractuels de service SS, une carrière dans la police (MailänderKoslov, 2009 : 126-136). Les surveillantes ont glissé tardivement dans cet univers concentrationnaire, où elles s'adaptent tout de même assez rapidement, et ce, précisément parce que le camp fonctionnait à première vue comme d'autres espaces disciplinaires (avant tout l'école et l'usine) qu'elles avaient connus auparavant, avec toutefois des particularités comme le cadre militaire, la violence physique et la mort. Une fois accoutumées à cet espace paramilitaire, elles généraient elles-mêmes la violence.

Dans les pratiques de violence, on relève cependant une différence significative : alors que les femmes utilisaient volontiers, comme les hommes, leurs bottes en cuir pour maltraiter les prisonniers, faisant de leur uniforme une véritable arme, elles recouraient rarement aux armes à feu. Pourtant, le règlement leur permettait d'utiliser leur pistolet de fonction, dans la limite des règles instaurées, à l'instar de leurs collègues masculins. Cela éclaire le dicton qui circulait au camp de Majdanek entre les hommes SS, que rapporte une surveillante lors d'un interrogatoire : « Lorsque les femmes commencent à tirer, il faut évacuer le camp » [23]. Cette « tabouisation » des armes à feu se faisait uniquement à l'intérieur du camp par le personnel lui-même. La supposée maladresse de « la » femme vis-à-vis des armes, formulée par les SS hommes, mais intériorisée par les surveillantes, réconfortait les hommes, apparemment consternés par la présence de femmes en uniforme et armées dans l'espace paramilitaire du camp, et recréait un espace exclusivement « masculin » dans le maniement des armes.

On constate par ailleurs que les surveillantes ne posaient pas uniquement problème aux collègues hommes, mais également aux anciennes détenues qui, elles aussi, donnent une image très sexuée des gardiennes de camps, bien évidemment dans un tout autre contexte et sur une autre échelle que ceux des commandants. Les témoignages des rescapés, hommes et femmes, expriment tout d'abord un choc et une répulsion devant la violence féminine, et s'accrochent aux exemples de « bonnes surveillantes », comme pour donner des preuves de la « nature » pacifique de la femme. Suivant cette logique, les femmes violentes sont représentées comme des femmes « anormales »ou déviantes. Alors que la violence masculine est en quelque sorte socialement « acceptée » ou du moins « explicable », la violence féminine reste tabou. « Du côté de l'extraordinaire et de l'exception se range la femme violente et du côté de l'ordinaire et de la norme la femme victime »– pour reprendre le commentaire de Cécile Dauphin (1997 : 98-99).Le fait que les survivants hommes et femmes se souviennent quantitativement et qualitativement mieux des violences des femmes peut s'expliquer par cette « tabouisation » propre à nos sociétés occidentales (Sjoberg, 2007 ; Browder, 2008). Cela explique aussi en partie pourquoi, dans l'historiographie du nazisme, la question de la violence des femmes est encore peu traitée. D'où la nécessité d'historiciser cette violence en l'ancrant dans un contexte culturel et social.

Pour comprendre le national-socialisme et sa soif de destruction, le quotidien du personnel SS, la manière dont il s'approprie son travail et ses conditions de vie sont centraux. De ce point de vue, les conditions des actions violentes sont certes « données » par le cadre institutionnel et la politique de destruction nationale-socialiste, mais elles sont aussi nuancées, transformées et produites par les simples surveillantes et hommes SS, dans la mesure où ces acteurs ordinaires se sont réappropriées les règles et ont produit leur environnement social par leurs propres pratiques (Lüdtke, 2000).Bien que gérée par des instances centralisées berlinoises (l'inspection des camps de concentration IFK et l'office principal d'administration de l'économie SSWVHA), la force destructrice des camps de concentration dépendait aussi bien des dispositifs d'extermination conçus par les dirigeants que des dynamiques sociales et politiques propres à chaque camp. Car les ordres énoncés à Berlin étaient mis en œuvres, c'est-à-dire modifiés, élargis et développés par le personnel de surveillance sur place. Le camp de concentration était moins une institution figée qu'une arène extrêmement dynamique englobant une multitude d'acteurs. À tout niveau, les surveillantes et surveillants SS disposaient d'une marge de manœuvre d'action et d'interprétation des règlements et des directives et en usaient largement.

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« Femmes de réconfort » de l'armée impériale japonaise : enjeux politiques et genre de la mémoire

Christine LEVY, Maison Franco-japonaise de Tokyo, Mars 2012

Sommaire

Introduction : l'actualité d'une question

Qui étaient les ianfu ?

Leur nombre

Actualité diplomatique

La transgression d'un tabou

Le travail de mémoire et la question des manuels scolaires

I. La représentation des femmes de réconfort

I.1. Un long silence ?

I.2.Œuvres littéraires et cinématographiques

II. Le renouvellement des années 1970 : les critiques de la guerre

II.1. Senda Kakô : des révélations essentielles

II.2. Coercition ou intimidation ?

III. Le changement de paradigme

III.1. La situation en Corée du Sud

III.2. L'histoire et la question du genre

III.3. Les faits et leur reconnaissance

IV. Rôle et limites du Fonds pour les femmes asiatiques

IV.1. Les premières revendications des ianfu en Corée du Sud

IV.2. Réactions au Japon

IV.3. Activités du Fonds pour les femmes asiatiques

Conclusion : le féminisme face à l'antiféminisme et au nationalisme

Bibliographie

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Le livre sera présenté en français par l'auteur, Gerd Hankel, et discuté par Claire Andrieu, professeur d'histoire contemporaine à Sciences Po (CHSP).

recto_gerd_hankel

Conférence

Jeudi 5 juillet à 17h00 au CERI/Sciences Po : 56, rue Jacob 75006 Paris (salle de conférences)

Programme :

Introduction: Elissa Mailänder, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

Chair & Moderation: Claire Andrieu, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

Examination of a War Crime: Hagiang (French Indochina) march 1945 Fabrice Virgili, Directeur de recherche, UMR IRICE-CNRS

Framing Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: What We (May) Fail to See Pascale Bos, Associate Professor, The University of Texas, Austin

Between Analysis and Politics Gabi Mischkowski, Program Advisor on Gender Justice, medica mondiale

The Idea of an international, interdisciplinary Research Network Regina Mühlhäuser, Researcher, Hamburg Institute for Social Research

The International Research Group "Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict" was founded in October 2010 in Hamburg. It aims to bring together empirical and theoretical studies focusing on sexual violence in different theaters of armed conflict in a series of workshops and conferences. Historians, legal scholars, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, experts in cultural studies, and human rights activists develop common research questions and a framework for comparison, present and discuss their work, and explore opportunities for cooperation.

Seminar organized by the Centre d'Histoire de Sciences Po, the UMR "Identités, relations internationales et civilisations de l'Europe", the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence and the Hamburg Institute for Social Research.

Inscriptions sur le site web du CERI : http://sciencespo.fr/ceri/evenements/

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Introduction: The Contemporary Relevance of an Issue

It is now more than twenty years since the issue of the ‘comfort women' (inanfu 慰安婦) was made public in Korea and Japan when, in 1991, Kim Hak-sun (1924–1997) broke the wall of silence. She came forward as a former Korean ‘comfort woman' to bear witness to her story before a packed hall in Tokyo. In December of the same year, she initiated legal action against the Japanese state to obtain an apology and compensation from its representatives.

Who were the ianfu? In addition to Japanese or Korean women recruited in Japan itself, the majority of them were young girls and women from the Japanese colonies of the time – Korea and Taiwan – driven into war zones by deception or force. Women from territories occupied by the Japanese army were likewise recruited in centres of prostitution, but collective rape was much more frequent in their case. With the extension of the conflict, their number grew and continued to do so until the defeat of Japan. In cases where the army was evacuated, the women were abandoned, but there were also instances where they were murdered in the context of ‘collective suicides' – gyokusai 玉砕 – at the end of the war, as in Saipan. (In some cases, the Japanese women died with the soldiers and advised the Korean women to surrender – for example, in Lameng [Senda, 1973: 133].)

Here we shall use the term ianfu – a euphemism referring to women forced into ‘sexual service' in the centres called ‘comfort stations' (ianjo 慰安所), and directly or indirectly run by the army itself. While the reality approximated to ‘sexual slavery', it seems to us legitimate to retain the term ianfu for at least two reasons. The first is that it is always used by Japanese, Korean (wianbu), and Chinese or Taiwanese (weianfu) researchers. The second reason, by contrast, is that it has completely disappeared from Japanese educational textbooks following a fierce campaign against recognition of their status as victims since the declaration of the former Justice Minister, Okuno Seisuke, in 1996 (Suzuki, 1997) via the creation in 1996 of the Association for the Creation of New History Textbooks Atarashii rekishi kyôkasho o tsukuru kai 新しい歴史教科書をつくる会, known by the name of Tsukurukai, and whose textbook was approved by the Education Ministry in 2001. The genesis of the term ianfu derives from the euphemization of a reality that the army sought to conceal (Hayakawa, 2005a: 17-28). This tendency is even more stubborn in South Korea in particular, but also in the North, where the single term teishintai 挺身隊 (volunteer corps) was used to refer both to young girls or young women recruited into factories in Japan and those who were forced into sexual service. This euphemization also masks a refusal to consider the more contemporary reality of the wianbu who worked for troops in the US military bases established in South Korea after independence (Soh, 2008: 71), which Soh characterizes as a ‘nationalist euphemism' (ibid.: 62).

The word ianfu only appears in official Japanese army or administration documents from 1938, while the first occurrence of ianjo (comfort station) dates from 1932 in a navy document which the historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki (1992: 90-92; 2000: 43-5) unearthed. According to a number of researchers, the system of sexual slavery is distinguished from forced prostitution by a lack of remuneration and violence (Kim Puja, 2011: 106; VAWW-NET Japan, 2000: 284-85). These institutions – the ianjo set up and run by the army (or at its request) – in fact involved diverse living and working conditions, as well as forms of conscription (most often, deception or sale by a relative, in other instances violence). Historians who denounce this system, and compare it with sexual slavery on account of the loss of liberty, maltreatment, working conditions (quasi-systematic imprisonment), lack of remuneration or its fictive character (currency valid solely within the army or unreturned forced savings) that characterized it.

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