La Mémoire vaine

Discusses the issue of crime against humanity and its limits. States that despite historical experience and the Nuremberg Tribunal, there is not yet a forum of international justice which can truly punish crimes against humanity as such. The massacre of Armenians by the Turks in 1915 was internationally deplored, with no consequence; today there is no clear-cut distinction between war crimes and crimes against humanity, which were restricted to war periods only. Argues that when the last survivor among the Nazis will die, there will be no more inculpations but the criminal practices will not end. Refers to the importance of Klaus Barbie's trial, which reestablished the link, broken by the administrative machine turned criminal, between the man and his crime. Barbie's lawyers, taking advantage of legal loopholes, extended the accusation of crime against humanity to colonial wars, said that the Jews were victims of the Western world's own racism, and compared Sabra and Shatila (in the Lebanon War, 1982) with Auschwitz, qualifying the Jews as racists.