Destruction and Human Remains
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Destruction and human remains HUMAN REMAINS AND VIOLENCE Destruction and human remains Destruction and Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and human remains genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute Disposal and concealment in the end of the executors’ work. Their victims’ remains are often treated genocide and mass violence and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering with often remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based Edited by ÉLISABETH ANSTETT on extensive primary and archival research to explore why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history. and JEAN-MARC DREYFUS The book opens this line of enquiry by investigating the ideological, technical and practical motivations for the varying practices pursued by the perpetrator, examining a diverse range of historical events from throughout the twentieth century and across the globe. These nine original chapters explore this demolition of the body through the use of often systemic, bureaucratic and industrial processes, whether by disposal, concealment, exhibition or complete bodily annihilation, to display the intentions and socio-political frameworks of governments, perpetrators and bystanders. A NST Never before has a single publication brought together the extensive amount of work devoted to the human body on the one hand and to E mass violence on the other, and until now the question of the body in TTand the context of mass violence has remained a largely unexplored area. Interdisciplinary in scope, Destruction and human remains will appeal to readers interested in the history and implications of genocide and mass DR violence, including researchers in anthropology, sociology, law, politics and modern warfare. E yfus ( Élisabeth Anstett is a Researcher in Social Anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and a Director of the Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide programme funded by the European Research Council Eds Jean-Marc Dreyfus is Reader in Holocaust Studies at the University of Manchester, and a Director of the Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide programme funded ) by the European Research Council ISBN 978-0-7190-9602-0 9 780719 096020 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk HUMAN REMAINS AND VIOLENCE Cover design: www.riverdesign.co.uk Destruction and human remains DHR.indb 1 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM HUMAN REMAINS AND VIOLENCE Human remains and violence aims to question the social legacy of mass violence by studying how different societies have coped with the dead bodies resulting from war, genocide and state-sponsored brutality. However, rather paradoxically, given the large volume of work devoted to the body on the one hand, and to mass violence on the other, the question of the body in the context of mass violence remains a largely unexplored area and even an academic blind spot. Interdisciplinary in nature, Human remains and violence intends to show how various social and cultural treatments of the dead body simultaneously challenge common representations, legal practices and morality. This series aims to provide proper intellectual and theoretical tools for a better understanding of mass violence’s aftermaths. Series editors Jean-Marc Dreyfus & Élisabeth Anstett DHR.indb 2 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM Destruction and Destructionhuman remains and Disposalhuman and concealment remains in genocide and mass violence Disposal and concealment in genocide and mass violence Edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus Edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus Manchester University Press Manchester and New York Manchesterdistributed in the United University States exclusively Press by Palgrave Macmillan Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan DHR.indb 3 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM DHR.indb 3 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM Copyright © Manchester University Press 2014 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7190 9602 0 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 1673 4 paperback ISBN 978 1 5261 2500 2 open access First published 2014 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence. A copy of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Minion and Helvetica by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby Contents List of contributors page vii Acknowledgements xii Introduction: the tales destruction tells 1 Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus Part I: Actors 1 ‘As if nothing ever happened’: massacres, missing corpses, and silence in a Bosnian community 15 Max Bergholz 2 A specialist: the daily work of Erich Muhsfeldt, chief of the crematorium at Majdanek concentration and extermination camp, 1942–44 46 Elissa Mailänder 3 Lands of Unkultur: mass violence, corpses, and the Nazi imagination of the East 69 Michael McConnell Part II: Practices 4 Earth, fire, water: or how to make the Armenian corpses disappear 89 Raymond H. Kévorkian DHR.indb 5 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM vi Contents 5 Sinnreich erdacht: machines of mass incineration in fact, fiction, and forensics 117 Robert Jan van Pelt 6 When death is not the end: towards a typology of the treatment of corpses of ‘disappeared detainees’ in Argentina from 1975 to 1983 146 Mario Ranalletti (with the collaboration of Esteban Pontoriero) Part III: Logics 7 State violence and death politics in post-revolutionary Iran 183 Chowra Makaremi 8 Death and dismemberment: the body and counter- revolutionary warfare in apartheid South Africa 204 Nicky Rousseau 9 The Tutsi body in the 1994 genocide: ideology, physical destruction, and memory 226 Rémi Korman Index 243 DHR.indb 6 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM Contributors Élisabeth Anstett has been a social anthropologist and tenured research scholar at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris since October 2009, and is a member of IRIS (Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social issues). Her area of expertise covers Europe and the post-socialist world, on which she has published extensively. Her recent works focus on the way post-Soviet societies are dealing with the traces left by the Soviet concentration camp system, among which are mass graves, and more broadly on the legacies of mass violence in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia and Belarus. She has published, among other works, Une Atlantide russe: anthropologie de la mémoire en Russie postsoviétique (Paris: La Découverte, 2007) and co-edited with Luba Jurgenson Le Goulag en héritage, pour une anthropologie de la trace (Paris: Pétra, 2009). Max Bergholz is the James M. Stanford Professor in Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Trained as a historian, he is an expert on the Balkans and Eastern Europe, with a special focus on the history of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. His research interests include the micro dynamics of communal peace and discord, mass violence, and post-conflict remembrance. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, where he researched in central and provincial archives and conducted oral history DHR.indb 7 5/15/2014 12:51:02 PM viii List of contributors interviews in small towns and villages. His research has been funded by grants and fellowships from Fulbright, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), among others. He is currently working on a book entitled None of Us Dared Say Anything: Mass Killing in a Bosnian Community During World War II and the Postwar Culture of Silence. Based in Concordia University’s Department of History, he is the Associate Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Jean-Marc Dreyfus is Reader in Holocaust Studies within the Department of History at the University of Manchester. His research interests include: Holocaust studies; genocide studies and the anthropology of genocide; the history of the Jews in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in France; the economic history of France and Germany; Holocaust memory and the politics of memory; the modern history of Alsace; and the rebuilding of post-war societies. He is the author of four monographs, including Pillages sur ordonnances: La confiscation des banques juives en France et leur restitution, 1940–1953 (Paris: Fayard, 2003), with Sarah Gensburger, Nazi Labor Camps in Paris (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012) and Il m’appelait Pikolo: un compagnon de Primo Levi raconte (He Called Me Pikolo: A Companion of Primo Levi Tells His Story) (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2007). He is the co- editor of the Dictionnaire de la Shoah (Dictionary of the Holocaust) (Paris: Larousse, 2009). Raymond H. Kévorkian is a director of research emeritus at the University of Paris 8-Saint-Denis. Of Armenian origin, he has written extensively on both the medieval and the modern history of Armenia, and is the author of eighteen books. He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and a board member of the International Association of Armenian Studies.