Acts of Justice, Public Events: World War II Criminals on Trial

This conference originates from the encounter of three projects: a Russian-French project on trials in the USSR (FMSH/RGNF), the micro-project of the Labex Création, Arts, Patrimoines ‘Images de la justice”, and the WW2CRIMESONTRIAL1943-1991 project supported by the French National Research Agency.

Find out more about the ANR project “Nazi War Crimes in Court” here

Partners: CEFRES, March Bloch Center, CERCEC, CEFR, GDR “CEM” and CERHEC
Time & Venue: 12-14 Octobre 2017, CEFRES, Prague
Language: English

Read the call for papers here

Program

Thursday 12 October 

9.00 Opening Remarks

Media narratives and their reception
9.30-11.30 
Panel I: Mediatization As a Turning Point: Attractive Features & Risks 
Discussant: Françoise Mayer

  • Ornella Rovetta: Judging War Criminals in the 1920s: A Pioneering Precedent in Making Post-War Justice Visible?
  • Radu Stancu: Capital Punishment for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in Romania after World War II
  • Enrico Heitzer: The “Norwegians”: a Nearly Forgotten Group of German and Austrian Nazi and War Criminals in Front of Soviet Courts 1946/47

Coffee Break

11.45-1.45
Panel II: Fixed Components of Media Narrative and Its Consequences 
Discussant: Dimitri Astashkin

  • Alexander Epifanov: Information Support to Trials over Hitler’s War Criminals and Accomplices in the USSR in 1941–1956
  • Elena Kokkoken: Pskov Regional Press: The Trials over Russian Collaborators
  • Marie-Bénedicte Vincent: Ernst Kaltenbrunner in the Trial of Nuremberg: Which Reception in the Press Under Military Control of Occupied West Germany?

Lunch Break

Social Mobilisation and Justice
3.00-5.00
Panel III: Sparking off social commitment
Discussant: Audrey Kichelewski

  • Agnieszka Smelkowska: Revenge and justice on display: rehabilitacja in post-war Poland
  • Gabriel Finder: Jews, Poles, and Justice in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
  • Nadège Ragaru: Differentiated Publicity: The Sandglass of the (In-) visibilization of the Trials for Anti-Jewish Crimes in Bulgaria (1944-1945)

Friday 13 October
Social Mobilization and Justice 

9.30-11.30
Panel IV: Victims and Witnesses: Driving Forces for Justice (1)
Discussant: Vanessa Voisin

  • Natalia Aleksiun: Survivor Networks and the Polish Post-War Trials
  • Giovanni Focardi, Andrea Martini: Shadows and lights in Trials against Fascists: Transitional Justice in Italy (1943-1953)
  • Maxilimian Becker: Victims’ Unions’ Reception of Trials: The Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem 1961 and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963-1965

Coffee Break

11.45-1.15
Panel V: Victims and Witnesses: Driving Forces for Justice (2)
Discussant: Emilia Koustova

  • Máté Zombory: Arrow Cross atrocities on trial: the public trajectory of a key witness in Budapest (1945-1949)
  • Birte Klarzyk, Anne Klein: Dynamics and Multiperspectivity of Justice: The “FFDJF” and the “Lischka Trial” of Kurt Lischka, Herbert Hagen and Ernst Heinrichsohn in Cologne, 1979/80

Lunch Break

1.50-2.30
Film projection: The Victims Accuse (Moscow/Minsk, 1963). Commented by Jasmin Söhner and Vanessa Voisin

2.40-4.40
Panel VI: The Limits of Social Mobilization
Discussant: Alain Blum

  • Eric Le Bourhis, Irina Tcherneva: Soviet citizens write to the press and to the general prosecutor: the reception of the Kacherovski trial in Riga (1959)
  • Regina Kazyulina: The Contingency of Postwar Justice in the Crimean Countryside
  • Andrea Pető: Post WWII Trials and Perpetrators in Hungarian Cinema. The Missing Composure

Saturday 14 October
Transnational Justice in Postwar Europe

9.30-11.30
Panel VIII: Reception of Propaganda and Political Fallout
Discussant: Clara Royer

  • James Ryan: Ideology on Trial: Ideology on Trial: The Prosecution of Leftists and Pan-Turkists at the Dawn of the Cold War in Turkey, 1944-1947
  • Fabien Théofilakis: The Eichmann Trial (1961) on the Front Page”: How did the Western European Press deal with the Nazi Past?
  • Jasmin Söhner: Presenting unambiguous results: the case of Erwin Schüle

Coffee Break

11.45-1.45
Panel IX: Media Impact on Judicial Procedures
Discussant: Sylvie Lindeperg

  • Steven Remy: The Visual Politics of Infamy: The Malmedy Massacre Trial and its Aftermath
  • Kateřina Králová: In the Shade of Eichmann: Prosecution of Max Merten in Greece and Beyond
  • Vojtěch Kyncl: Judicial scandal in the “Malloth” process

1.45-2.45: Concluding Remarks