Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
Almost half of all Holocaust victims remain nameless statistics. Just over three million names of Jewish Holocaust victims are known today, representing little more than half of the victims. It is estimated that when all names are retrieved from published and unpublished documents the total number may rise to four million, which leaves two million unknown names. Since memory is closely connected to the identity symbolized by a name, those who cannot be named cannot be remembered. To retrieve a name is to rescue a person from oblivion.
1 The most frequently cited number for the total number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust is six million.Google Scholar
See for example Wolfgang Benz, Dimension des Volksmords: Die Zahl der Jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (1991). Israel Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1995).Google Scholar
2 Whereas the names of Western European Jews have largely been recorded, many names of Holocaust victims in Central and Eastern Europe have remained unknown. Some names of Holocaust victims were found in official records. Most of the deportation lists for Germany and Western Europe still exists (and has served as the basis for memorial books). For Central and East Europe however, equivalent records (including ghetto and execution lists) have disappeared. Researchers have however tried to reconstruct the fate of many central and eastern European Jews from other records. Edward Anders, Juris Dubrovskis Who died in the Holocaust? Recovering Names from Official Records, 17 Holocaust and Genocide Studies 116 (2003).Google Scholar
3 Maoz Azaryahu, The power of commemorative street names, 14 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 311 (1996).Google Scholar
4 See also Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (2000) 125. 137.Google Scholar
5 Azaryahu (note 3) 311.Google Scholar
6 Specifically articles 9 (5) and 14 (6) of the Declaration.Google Scholar
7 See also the United Nations Security Council Resolution on the Establishment of the UN Compensation Commission (1991) and the study by the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) concerning the right to restitution, compensation and rehabilitation for victims of gross human rights violations and fundamental freedoms (1993).Google Scholar
8 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report Vol. 6 (2003) 100. According to the report the principle of legitimate expectation has been accepted in South African law in the case Administrator of the Transvaal and others v Traub and Others 1989 (4) SA 731 (A) at 761 and has also been enshrined in the South African Constitution.Google Scholar
9 Id., 99.Google Scholar
10 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, Act 34 of 1995.Google Scholar
11 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (note 8).Google Scholar
12 AZAPO and Others v The President of the Republic of South Africa 1996 (8) BCLR 1015 (CC) 1020 para. 45Google Scholar
13 For an overview of developments see ‘Conference: Reparations in the Inter-American System’ 56 American University Law Review 1375 – 1464 (2007).Google Scholar
14 Velasquez Rodriguez Case, Judgment of July 29, 1988, Inter–Am.Ct.H.R. (Ser. C) No. 4 (1988).Google Scholar
16 Velásquez Rodríguez (note 14), para 50.Google Scholar
17 Aloeboetoe et al. Case, Reparations (Art. 63(1) American Convention on Human Rights) Judgment of September 10, 1993, Inter–Am.Ct.H.R. (Ser. C) No. 15 (1994) para 18.Google Scholar
18 The men were accused of belonging to the Jungle Commando, a small band of rebels under the leadership of Ronnie Brunswijk, a former bodyguard of Colonel Desi Bouterse. The seven victims denied belonging to the guerrilla operation.Google Scholar
19 Aloeboetoe (note 17), para. 1-6.Google Scholar
20 Id., para 20.Google Scholar
21 Id., para 33.Google Scholar
22 Villagran Morales v Guatamala, Inter-Am Ct. H.R. (ser. C). No.32 (Sept. 11 1997).Google Scholar
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25 See in this regard the interesting views of Sarah Louise Steele on memorialisation in the Rwandan context: Memorialisation and the Land of the Eternal Spring: Transformative practices of memory and the Rwandan Genocide, University of Melbourne Conference Paper (2006) 11 available at http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/cmcl/seminars/Passages_paper_S_Steele_final.pdf Google Scholar
26 Persons who, individually or together with one or more persons, suffered harm in the form of physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, pecuniary loss or a substantial impairment of human rightsGoogle Scholar
(i) as a result of a gross violation of human rights; or (ii) as a result of an act associated with a political objective for which amnesty has been granted; (b) persons who, individually or together with one or more persons, suffered harm in the form of physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, pecuniary loss or a substantial impairment of human rights, as a result of such person intervening to assist persons contemplated in paragraph (a) who were in distress or to prevent victimization of such persons; and (c) such relatives or dependants of victims as may be prescribed.Google Scholar
27 Penelope E Andrews, Reparations for Apartheid's Victims: The Path to Reconciliation?, 53 DePaul Law Review, 1163 (2004).Google Scholar
28 Richard A. Wilson, Justice and Legitimacy in the South African Transition, in The Politics of Memory, 207 (Alexandra Barahona de Brito, et al. eds., 2001); Mahmood Mamdani, Reconciliation Without Justice, in 46 Southern African Review of Books (1996) (book review) available at <www.uni-ulm.de/~ rturrell/antho3html/Mamdani.html>..>Google Scholar
29 Critics of the TRC pointed out that this distinction between ordinary and extraordinary victims excluded the legal pillars of apartheid: forced removals, pass laws, residential segregation and other forms of racial discrimination. By doing so, it shifted the focus from the complicity and benefits of apartheid to whites as a group to the misdeeds of a smaller group of security force operatives. Naomi Roht Arriaza, Reparations Decisions and Dilemmas, 27 Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 178, (2004).Google Scholar
30 Jennifer Jordan, Structures of Memory, Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (2006), 89.Google Scholar
31 Azaryahu, (note 3) 311- 330.Google Scholar
32 Id., 330.Google Scholar
33 Peter Carrier, Chapter 2: History in Monuments, in Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany since 1989, 33 (2005).Google Scholar
34 Id., 35.Google Scholar
35 Jordan, (note 30), 88.Google Scholar
36 Duncan Light, Street Names in Bucharest, 1990 – 1997: exploring the modern historical geographies of post-socialist change, 30, Journal of Historical Geography, 156 (2004).Google Scholar
37 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Post-socialist Change, 116, (1999).Google Scholar
38 The Freedom Park Trust Annual Report 2006, http://www.freedompark.org.za/backend/newsdocs/Freedom%20park%20front.pdf Google Scholar
39 Wegweiser zu Berlins Strassennamen Mitte (1995), 6Google Scholar
40 Klaus Katzur, Berlins Strassennamen (1968) 5.Google Scholar
41 Id., 8.Google Scholar
42 Id.Google Scholar
43 Id., 9.Google Scholar
44 Stefan Botor, Das Berliner Sühneverfahren – Die letzte Phase der Entnazifierung 37 (2006).Google Scholar
45 Directive No 30, Official Gazette of the Control Council for Germany, Nr. 7, 31 May 1946.Google Scholar
46 Id.Google Scholar
47 Elmer Plischke, Denazification Law and Procedure, 41 American Journal of International Law 823 (1947).Google Scholar
48 When such plans were approved, they were issued as an order by the local German authority, to be accomplished within a certain time, and disobedience of this order constituted a crime punishable by Military Government. USET directive ‘Denazification and Demilitarization of German Street Names and Memorials’ 23 July 1945.Google Scholar
49 Id.Google Scholar
50 Id.Google Scholar
51 Id.Google Scholar
52 Id., 12.Google Scholar
53 Id., 12.Google Scholar
54 Id.Google Scholar
55 Id., 13.Google Scholar
56 Id., 87.Google Scholar
57 Wegweiser zu Berlins Strassennamen Mitte (note 39), 182. Paul von Hindenburg was President of Germany between 1925 and 1934 and prepared the ground for the coming to power of the Fascists. In March 1933 he signed the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave special powers to Hitler's government.Google Scholar
58 After the fall of the Berlin Wall the East Berlin magistracy ordered the removal of all monuments and plaques bearing specific references to Erich Honecker and to the Communist Party (SED). In November 1990 the Social Democratic faction in the district Mitte successfully formed a ‘Commission on the Renaming of Streets and Squares in the District of Mitte’. Jordan (note 30), 85.Google Scholar
59 See in this regard Verdrängte Schuld, Verfehlte Sünde (Sebastian Meissl, Klaus Dieter Mulley and Oliver Rathkolb eds., 1986).Google Scholar
60 See Peter Autengruber, Lexikon der Wiener Strassennamen 10 (2004).Google Scholar
61 Id.Google Scholar
62 James Young, The Texture of Memory 92 (1993).Google Scholar
63 Id. Examples include Anton Schmidt Promenade, Ernst Burger Gasse and Marie Murban Gasse. This also happened in Berlin. Bendler street was renamed Stauffenberg street after the well known resistance fighter von Stauffenberg.Google Scholar
64 Id.Google Scholar
65 Teitel (note 4), 137.Google Scholar
66 Azayahu (note 3), 321-322.Google Scholar
67 Neil Leach, Eracing the Traces: the ‘denazification’ of post-apartheid Johannesburg and Pretoria, in The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis, 92 (Neil Leach ed., 2001).Google Scholar
68 Niren Tolsi, Renaming History, Mail & Guardian, 12, 29 June 2007. available at: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=312659&area=/insight/insight__national/ Google Scholar
69 ‘Potch name-change fight hots up’ 6 March 2007 www.news24.com, available at: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2079344,00.html. In Potschefstroom the town council has recovered 20 street name signs that were removed and dumped in the Vaal River by local right wingers. Several street names were also vandalized. Yolandi Groenewald, Renaming History: Potchefstoorm, Mail & Guardian 29 June 2007.Google Scholar
70 Tolsi, (note 69).Google Scholar
71 Tanya Farber, Name Changes: Cape Town, Mail & Guardian 29 June 2007.Google Scholar
72 University rejects name changes, 30 January 2007, www.news24.com, available at: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,9294,2-7-12_2061674,00.html Google Scholar
73 Fred Khumalo, Deciding whose story is history, Sunday Times 17, 23 July 2006.Google Scholar
74 Id.Google Scholar
75 Jordan (note 30) 195.Google Scholar
76 Id 138.Google Scholar
77 See for example, Unto Every Person there is a Name in Materials on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 130 (2005).Google Scholar