L'ENFER REGLEMENTE.

This exceptional book addresses the issue of law in the concentration camps. Prefaced by Stéphane Hessel, this original and innovative text is an essential contribution to the history of concentration camps.

Since the liberation of the concentration camps, many theories have tried to explain how it was possible for human beings to participate in this hell. One major aspect of detention has been neglected until now: the existence and implementation of a coherent set of regulations, orders and circulars carefully controlling the lives of inmates. This book provides a fresh perspective on this material, hitherto overlooked or misinterpreted. Illustrated by analysis of a wide range of legal proceedings from German archives and with passages borrowed from written testimony, the book succeeds in showing how rules and procedures were applied to correspondence, disciplinary punishment and forced labor. The daily life of inmates was thus not determined arbitrarily; on the contrary, it most often conformed to rules with specific characteristics, as suggested by Hannah Arendt. The book goes beyond this analysis by exploring the impact the pseudo-legal system had on those in charge of the camps. The rules could seem justified to them because they appeared to be legal and rational. The example of Syria perfectly illustrates this mechanism today: Since the international community banned the use of chemical weapons by the regime, the destruction of the Syrian people is out of the news. It seems that a war is perceived as acceptable when it takes place according to certain rules, regardless of whether the number of deaths decreases in reality. Given the increasing “legalization” of our societies, we have an urgent need to promote a critical approach to the law and its effects. Nicolas Bertrand, a researcher at the University of Bourgogne/CNRS center of “Savoirs: normes et sensibilities” (Knowledge: standards and sensibilities), has a doctorate in law. For his work on the detention regime in Nazi concentration camps, he received the 2012 thesis prize from Humboldt University's law school (Berlin). He teaches law at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and lives in Berlin.