Concentration Camp Rituals: Narratives of Former Bosnian Detainees

In: Humanity & society, Band 41, Heft 1, S. 73-94

Abstract

In the German camps during the Second World War, the aim was to kill from a distance, and the camps were highly efficient in their operations. Previous studies have thus analyzed the industrialized killing and the victims' survival strategies. Researchers have emphasized the importance of narratives but they have not focused on narratives about camp rituals or analyzed postwar interviews as a continued resistance and defense of one's self. This article tries to fill this gap by analyzing stories told by former detainees in concentration camps in the Bosnian war during the 1990s. This article aims to describe a set of recounted interaction rituals as well as to identify how these rituals are dramatized in interviews. The retold stories of humiliation and power in the camps indicate that there was little space for individuality and preservation of self. Nevertheless, the detainees seem to have been able to generate some room for resistance, and this seems to have granted them a sense of honor and self-esteem, not least after the war. Their narratives today represent a form of continued resistance.