Losing Trust in the World

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?

Leonard Grob is professor emeritus of philosophy at Fairleigh Dickinson University. John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights), Claremont McKenna College. The other contributors are Margaret Brearley, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Dorota Glowacka, Peter J. Haas, Björn Krondorfer, David Patterson, Sarah K. Pinnock, and Didier Pollefeyt.

Prologue | The Questions of Torture / Leonard Grob and John K. Roth

Part One | What Is Torture?

1. Torture during the Holocaust: Responsible Witnessing / Leonard Grob

2. Torture / Björn Krondorfer

3. Speech under Torture: Bearing Witness to the Howl / Dorota Glowacka

Part Two | Is Torture Justifiable?

4. Johann Baptist Neuhäusler and Torture in Dachau / Suzanne Brown-Fleming

5. The Emerging Halachic Debate about Torture / Peter J. Haas

6. Torture in Light of the Holocaust: An Impossible Possibility / Didier Pollefeyt

7. The Justification of Suffering: Holocaust Theodicy and Torture / Sarah K. Pinnock

Part Three | What Can Be Done about Torture?

8. Assuaging Pain: Therapeutic Care for Torture Survivors / Margaret Brearley

9. Torture and the Totalitarian Appropriation of the Human Being: From National Socialism to Islamic Jidhadism / David Patterson

10. Crying Out: Rape as Torture and the Responsibility to Protect / John K. Roth

Epilogue | Again, the Questions of Torture / Leonard Grob and John K. Roth

Selected Bibliography

Editors and Contributors

Index