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15 - In Search of Global Justice: Holocaust, Genocide, Law

from Part III - Culture and Ideas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2025

By
James Loeffler
Edited by
Laura Jockusch  and
Devin O. Pendas
Laura Jockusch
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Devin O. Pendas
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Summary

We almost cannot think today about mass atrocities without Holocaust references. Holocaust analogies frame and enflame our ethical debates. Holocaust words dominate our humanitarian lexicon. Yet the deep linkage between the Holocaust and global justice is accompanied by a marked crisis of confidence in international law. Many question whether global legal institutions can ever prevent and properly punish atrocity crimes. The more we invoke the Holocaust, it seems, the less certain we become about the legal world built in its name. This chapter traces this development, from the first discussions of what would come to be called “genocide” in the 1930s, through private litigation geared toward restorative justice. Each legal mode of dealing with the Holocaust has served as a model for how to approach other atrocities, and each has been unavoidably politicized, despite law’s promise to depoliticize the response to political crimes.

Keywords

HolocaustGenocideHuman RightsReparationsRestitutionRaphael LemkinNuremberg TrialsGeneva ConventionsUniversal Declaration of Human RightsEichmann Trial

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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Holocaust , pp. 353 - 373
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

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