Dehumanizing dehumanized: executioners and victims relationship in Esther Mujawayo and Robert Antelme

Abstract

The object of this research are the ways in which inter - relationships between victims and perpetrators are represented and recorded by survivors in their testimonies or fictional works that deal with extreme experiences of violence , as the Jewish genocide, the Holocaust and Tutsi , the Itsembabatutsi . We assume , already explored by Todorov and Des Pres that the rules of sociability does not cease to exist in the concentration camps , but not the same out of them . This assumption would also be applied to other cases of extreme violence , as Itsembabatutsi . In all cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing can find the construction of an enemy that must be excised by expulsion or annihilation . The destruction of this enemy is only possible through their social exclusion through a process of dehumanization that accuses it a condition of inferiority in relation to each other that is preceded by an identity discourse that adds a population under common traits : culture, nationality, language , history , race, religion . The dichotomy and opposition between these two elements and the transformation of another enemy underlie cases of extreme violence From this opposition between "us " and "them " is that develop or transform the social relations of the two groups . We intend to analyze how these groups relate and how these relationships are transposed to the testimony of survivors . We chose the works of Robert Antelme , Holocaust survivor , author of The Human Species (2013 ) and Esther Mujawayo survivor of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 , the author of La Fleur de Stéphanie (2006 ) , by reflecting on these relationships established between the tormentors and victims .