Losing Trust in the World

Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture

John K Roth editor Leonard Grob editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Washington Press

Published:5th Dec '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Losing Trust in the World cover

The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture, then and now.

In July 1943, the Gestapo arrested an obscure member of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When his torture-inflicting interrogators determined he was no use to them and that he was a Jew, he was deported to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945, Jean Améry went on to write a series of essays about his experience. No reflections on torture are more compelling.

Améry declared that the victims of torture lose trust in the world at the “very first blow.” The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture then and now. Their inquiry grapples with the euphemistic language often used to disguise torture and with the question of whether torture ever constitutes a “necessary evil.” Differences of opinion reverberate, raising deeper questions: Can trust be restored? What steps can we as individuals and as a society take to move closer to a world in which torture is unthinkable?

"A compelling body of essays. . . . Readable and challenging. In the end, I’m not sure I know exactly how to ‘confront’ torture. But I am better equipped to try."

-- Kelly McFall * New Books in Genocide Studies (NBN) *

"Losing Trust in the World: Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture, in which Holocaust scholars employ their expertise to target the crime of torture, is long overdue. . . . [Survivors of torture] know that the only way to put an end to the horror of such abuse is by telling their stories and building alliances with others. . . . The very existence of the book signals that these Holocaust scholars intend to be powerful allies in that struggle."

* Human Rights Quarter

ISBN: 9780295998466

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 363g

245 pages