4 results
4 - Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- Edited by Remco Ensel, Evelien Gans
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- Book:
- Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 11 December 2020
- Print publication:
- 08 November 2016, pp 107-126
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Summary
After 1945, more than 100,000 Dutch were imprisoned on suspicion of treason, aiding the enemy, joining a foreign army, personal enrichment or acts of violence. Many were detained in camps without a clear notion of the legal consequences. In this legal no man's land guards could act independently and take violent and humiliating sanctions against prisoners. An alleged target of this (partly) private justice was Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, virulent antisemite, prominent member of the National Socialist Movement (nsb), mp and chairman of the Dutch National Bank during the occupation. After the war, his wife, F.S. (Florrie) Rost van Tonningen-Heubel (1914-2007), embarked on a personal campaign to prove that her husband had been terrorised and either killed in imprisonment or driven to commit suicide. There is no evidence for this allegation, says Van Tonningen's biographer David Barnouw, but the widow's campaign does reflect a broad-based, deeply-felt sense of injustice among ‘war veterans’ and political delinquents. ‘Black Widow Rost van Tonningen’ became a key figure in one of these small groups of ‘war veterans’ as well as an icon of the persistent yet marginal presence of National Socialism in postwar Dutch society. In 1969, the Dutch public was first introduced to this stately lady and her posh accent in a documentary on Anton Mussert, leader of the nsb, by the starting director Paul Verhoeven (b. 1938). More media appearances ensued. Rost van Tonningen consistently played down the Holocaust, praising Adolf Hitler, expressing resentment about the handling of her husband and complaining about the incessant misreading of the honest intentions of her ideological kin. Her villa Ben Trovato in the small town of Velp became a meeting place for neo-Nazis and Flemish nationalists. Under the name ‘Consortium De Levensboom’ (‘The Tree of Life Consortium’), the villa doubled up as the distribution centre of publications about neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial, including Die Auschwitz-Lüge by Thies Christophersen, published in 1973. Rost van Tonningen was handed several convictions for distributing these publications as well as for the publication of her autobiography.
Thanks to her extravagance and elitist diction, the ‘black widow’ seemed able to neutralise the weight of postwar neo-Nazism. As if by celebrating the summer solstice – big news in 1983 – Nazism became German folklore celebrated by naive people.
False confessions after repeated interrogation: the Putten Murder Case
- WILLEM A. WAGENAAR
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- Journal:
- European Review / Volume 10 / Issue 4 / October 2002
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 October 2002, pp. 519-537
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Suggestive or misleading interrogation techniques may have the effect that innocent people start to remember having committed a serious crime. Confessions are therefore not the best possible evidence, especially not when it is obvious that the interrogation contained elements of suggestion and deception. The problem is illustrated by a case that has become famous in The Netherlands, because two innocent men were imprisoned for about eight years, after obviously false confessions. The confessions were obtained during long and repeated interrogations in which various types of psychological deception were used. In the end, the amount of contradiction, and even of sheer impossibilities, made it clear that the confessions were false and the men innocent. Some of the literature on the creation of false memories is reviewed. It is argued that the practice of criminal investigation may elicit even stronger effects, because empirical research is constrained by ethical limits. The objective of criminal investigation seems to put no limit on what is deemed acceptable, even though we know quite well that the elicitation of false confessions is a serious risk. European agreements about criminal interrogation techniques may provide an effective protection against undesirable practices; but it will not be easy to convince the European legislators of this.
7 - Autobiographical memory in court
- Edited by David C. Rubin, Duke University, North Carolina
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- Book:
- Remembering our Past
- Published online:
- 14 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 January 1996, pp 180-196
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Summary
Without falling into the trap of portraying autobiographical memory as a wholly inadequate device, we can safely say that it is not precise. Every chapter in this book can be used as a reference to support this statement. The fact is so obvious that no legal system in the world is based upon an absolute trust in witness memory. An exception is the absolute trust in the memory of a police officer, enshrined in Dutch criminal law. For other witnesses the relevant question is not whether their memories are precise, but whether they are sufficiently precise to answer the questions asked in the courtroom. These questions can be detailed, like the exact times at which things happened; the exact wording of a statement made a long time ago; the voice of a person met only once; the face of a person seen driving a car at high speed in the middle of the night. To psychologists such questions may seem stupid, because obviously they cannot be answered with complete precision. To the lawyer, however, it is obvious that without answers to such questions there can be no criminal justice, and hence no safety in our society. There is no alternative to getting the best possible answers from witnesses, even though it is realized that these answers can be wrong.
10 - Is memory self-serving?
- Edited by Ulric Neisser, Emory University, Atlanta, Robyn Fivush, Emory University, Atlanta
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- Book:
- The Remembering Self
- Published online:
- 04 August 2010
- Print publication:
- 28 October 1994, pp 191-204
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Summary
In the preparation of this volume the question was put to me whether forgetting in autobiographical memory is of a self-serving nature; whether the forgetting and remembering of events from one's own life serve the selfish goal of preserving a positive self-image. Suggestions of that kind were made by Greenwald (1980) and of course before by a large number of clinical psychologists. Ross (1989) contested this view, arguing that what looks like a preservation of self-esteem may in reality be only a preservation of consistency. But even that would be an instance of selfish forgetting. Is there any empirical evidence that autobiographical memories are tainted by such phenomena?
While reflecting upon this question, it occurred to me that the relationship between autobiographical memory and the self can be rather complex. Autobiographical memory is a loose term, ill founded in psychological theory. It refers to a type of experiment in which questions about one's personal life are asked; it definitely does not refer to a specific sort of memory store or mechanism. The self or selves, on the other hand, refer to highly abstract concepts, not to a specific type of experiment. Although it is true that the existence and maintenance of these concepts rely on memory, it is not obvious that the memory of concepts has anything to do with autobiographical memory. It is possible that there is no relationship between autobiographical memory and the remembered self, one being defined by an experimental method, the other being a rather broad and abstract concept.