Avoiding Central Realities: Narrative Terror and the Failure of French Culture Under the Occupation

Authors

• Richard H. Weisberg, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of LawFollow

Publication Date

5-1983

Journal

Human Rights Quarterly

Abstract

The article examines how French culture, through both its legal and literary expressions, failed to confront the atrocities of the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation. It argues that this failure was rooted in a collective avoidance of central realities, facilitated by narrative techniques in literature and legalistic language in jurisprudence. The author draws parallels between literary works, such as Gogol's "The Nose" and Kafka's "The Trial," and the legal responses to Nazi racial policies, highlighting how both domains employed mechanisms to distort or ignore the moral and ethical implications of their actions.

Volume

5

Issue

2

First Page

151

Last Page

170

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2307/762252

Disciplines

Comparative and Foreign Law | Courts | Law | Legal History

Comments

Symposium: Terror in the Modern Age: The Vision of Literature, the Response of Law: Part II: The Holocaust

Recommended Citation

Richard H. Weisberg, Avoiding Central Realities: Narrative Terror and the Failure of French Culture Under the Occupation, 5 Hum. Rts. Q. 151 (1983).
https://doi.org/10.2307/762252