Norbert Wollheim (April 26, 1913 – November 1, 1998) was a chartered accountant , tax advisor, previously a board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a functionary of other Jewish organisations.
135-596: Wollheim grew up in Berlin. He studied jurisprudence and political economy , but had to cease his studies in 1933 because of his Jewish origin. He then worked as a welder for a metal export firm until the outbreak of war in 1939. During that same period he played a key role in running the Kindertransport which transported 10,000 Jewish children out of the Nazi government's reach and into safety. Wollheim engaged himself strongly in
270-538: A British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life. Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of
405-531: A camp originally designed to hold about 10,000 inmates. At this point also, the special status of the exchange prisoners no longer applied. All inmates were subject to starvation and epidemics. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had three satellite camps. These were at regional armament works. Around 2,000 female concentration camp prisoners were forced to work there. Those who were too weak or sick to continue with their work were brought to Bergen-Belsen. Außenlager Bomlitz-Benefeld at Bomlitz near Fallingbostel
540-402: A dominant social group. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen ( pronounced [ˈbɛʁɡn̩ˌbɛlsn̩] ), or Belsen , was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany , southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle . Originally established as a prisoner of war camp , in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this
675-480: A forced labourer and compensation for damages. His lawsuit was the first test case of a former forced labourer against a company in Germany. In 1953, Frankfurt's Landgericht convicted IG Farben i.L. and ordered them to pay, at the first hearing, DM 10,000 in punitive damages to Wollheim. At the second hearing, Frankfurt's Oberlandesgericht settled the lawsuit with a global settlement awarding several thousand of
810-581: A further 50,000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food, and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of typhus , tuberculosis , typhoid fever , and dysentery ; leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 people in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation. The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division . The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around
945-410: A law, especially when the "particular" law of one's own city was adverse to the case being made, not that there actually was such a law. Aristotle, moreover, considered certain candidates for a universally valid, natural law to be wrong. Aristotle's theoretical paternity of the natural law tradition is consequently disputed. Thomas Aquinas is the foremost classical proponent of natural theology , and
1080-532: A moral virtue derived as the mean between opposing vices, just like every other virtue he describes. His longest discussion of his theory of justice occurs in Nicomachean Ethics and begins by asking what sort of mean a just act is. He argues that the term "justice" actually refers to two different but related ideas: general justice and particular justice. When a person's actions toward others are completely virtuous in all matters, Aristotle calls them "just" in
1215-462: A new theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s. The theory can generally be traced to American legal realism and is considered "the first movement in legal theory and legal scholarship in the United States to have espoused a committed Left political stance and perspective". It holds that the law is largely contradictory, and can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of
1350-481: A norm. Joseph Raz's theory of legal positivism argues against the incorporation of moral values to explain law's validity. In Raz's 1979 book The Authority of Law , he criticised what he called the "weak social thesis" to explain law. He formulates the weak social thesis as "(a) Sometimes the identification of some laws turn on moral arguments, but also with, (b) In all legal systems the identification of some law turns on moral argument." Raz argues that law's authority
1485-428: A pivotal book on Hart (second edition published in 2008), which further refined and offered some important criticisms that led MacCormick to develop his own theory (the best example of which is his Institutions of Law , 2007). Other important critiques include those of Ronald Dworkin , John Finnis, and Joseph Raz . In recent years, debates on the nature of law have become increasingly fine-grained. One important debate
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#17328559356961620-605: A section of it), was "of a privileged nature", compared to others. A lawsuit filed by the Jewish community in Thessaloniki against 55 alleged collaborators claims that 53 of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen "as a special favor" granted by the Germans. When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent
1755-572: A sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience". H. L. A. Hart criticized Austin and Bentham's early legal positivism because the command theory failed to account for individual's compliance with the law. Hans Kelsen is considered one of the preeminent jurists of the 20th century and has been highly influential in Europe and Latin America, although less so in common law countries. His Pure Theory of Law describes law as "binding norms", while at
1890-422: A system of law, or to give it our respect. Thus, the law must have a morality that goes beyond the societal rules under which laws are made. Sophisticated positivist and natural law theories sometimes resemble each other and may have certain points in common. Identifying a particular theorist as a positivist or a natural law theorist sometimes involves matters of emphasis and degree, and the particular influences on
2025-532: A theory of ius gentium (law of nations), and thus is an important figure in the transition to modernity. He extrapolated his ideas of legitimate sovereign power to international affairs, concluding that such affairs ought to be determined by forms respecting of the rights of all and that the common good of the world should take precedence before the good of any single state. This meant that relations between states ought to pass from being justified by force to being justified by law and justice. Some scholars have upset
2160-417: Is the case. So analysing and clarifying the way the world is must be treated as a strictly separate question from normative and evaluative questions of what ought to be done. The most important questions of analytic jurisprudence are: "What are laws?"; "What is the law?"; "What is the relationship between law and power/sociology?"; and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Legal positivism
2295-411: Is a necessary truth that there are vices that a legal system cannot possibly have (for example, it cannot commit rape or murder). Legal realism is the view that a theory of law should be descriptive and account for the reasons why judges decide cases as they do. Legal realism had some affinities with the sociology of law and sociological jurisprudence. The essential tenet of legal realism is that all law
2430-416: Is based on "first principles": ... this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this ... The desires to live and to procreate are counted by Aquinas among those basic (natural) human values on which all other human values are based. Francisco de Vitoria was perhaps the first to develop
2565-490: Is commonly said that Hobbes's views on human nature were influenced by his times. The English Civil War and the Cromwellian dictatorship had taken place; and, in reacting to that, Hobbes felt that absolute authority vested in a monarch, whose subjects obeyed the law, was the basis of a civilized society. John Austin and Jeremy Bentham were early legal positivists who sought to provide a descriptive account of law that describes
2700-425: Is conceptually distinct from morality. While law might contain morality, the separability thesis states that "it is in no sense a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality, though in fact they have often done so." Legal positivists disagree about the extent of the separability thesis. Exclusive legal positivists, notably Joseph Raz , go further than the standard thesis and deny that it
2835-485: Is from this cultural movement that Justinian 's Corpus Juris Civilis was born. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was based on the first principles of natural law , civil law , and the law of nations . Natural law holds that there are rational objective limits to the power of rulers, the foundations of law are accessible through reason, and it is from these laws of nature that human laws gain force. The moral theory of natural law asserts that law
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#17328559356962970-528: Is identifiable purely through social sources, without reference to moral reasoning. This view he calls "the sources thesis". Raz suggests that any categorisation of rules beyond their role as authority is better left to sociology than to jurisprudence. Some philosophers used to contend that positivism was the theory that held that there was "no necessary connection" between law and morality; but influential contemporary positivists—including Joseph Raz, John Gardner , and Leslie Green —reject that view. Raz claims it
3105-446: Is inherent in nature and constitutive of morality, at least in part, and that an objective moral order, external to human legal systems, underlies natural law. On this view, while legislators can enact and even successfully enforce immoral laws, such laws are legally invalid. The view is captured by the maxim: " an unjust law is no law at all ", where 'unjust' means 'contrary to the natural law.' Natural law theory has medieval origins in
3240-424: Is made by humans and thus should account for reasons besides legal rules that led to a legal decision. There are two separate schools of legal realism: American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. American legal realism grew out of the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes . At the start of Holmes's The Common Law , he claims that "[t]he life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience". This view
3375-585: Is open to the public and includes monuments to the dead, including a successor to the wooden cross of 1945, some individual memorial stones and a "House of Silence" for reflection. In addition to the Jewish, Polish and Dutch national memorials, a memorial to eight Turkish citizens who were killed at Belsen was dedicated in December 2012. Millions of words have been written about these horror camps, many of them by inmates of those unbelievable places. I've tried, without success, to describe it from my own point of view, but
3510-554: Is possible for morality to be a part of law at all. The discretion thesis states that judges create new law when they are given discretion to adjudicate cases where existing law underdetermines the result. Hobbes was a social contractarian and believed that the law had peoples' tacit consent. He believed that society was formed from a state of nature to protect people from the state of war that would exist otherwise. In Leviathan , Hobbes argues that without an ordered society life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." It
3645-467: Is the dominant theory, although there is a growing number of critics who offer their own interpretations. Historical jurisprudence came to prominence during the debate on the proposed codification of German law . In his book On the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence , Friedrich Carl von Savigny argued that Germany did not have a legal language that would support codification because
3780-563: Is today known as Bergen-Hohne Training Area . It is used by the NATO armed forces. The workers who constructed the original buildings were housed in camps near Fallingbostel and Bergen, the latter being the so-called Bergen-Belsen Army Construction Camp. Once the military complex was completed in 1938–39, the workers' camp fell into disuse. However, after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939,
3915-420: Is within legal positivism. One school is sometimes called "exclusive legal positivism" and is associated with the view that the legal validity of a norm can never depend on its moral correctness. A second school is labeled "inclusive legal positivism", a major proponent of which is Wil Waluchow, and is associated with the view that moral considerations may , but do not necessarily, determine the legal validity of
4050-515: The Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics ). Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages, though more recent translations render them more literally. Aristotle's theory of justice is bound up in his idea of the golden mean . Indeed, his treatment of what he calls "political justice" derives from his discussion of "the just" as
4185-565: The BBC 's Richard Dimbleby , who accompanied them: ...Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at
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4320-691: The Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp . Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved to the displaced persons (DP) camp . Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp's administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence. The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves. The personnel were given starvation rations, not allowed to use gloves or other protective clothing, and were continuously shouted at and threatened to make sure that they did not stop working. Some of
4455-810: The Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone (" Zentralkomitee der befreiten Juden in der britischen Zone ") and was cofounder of the Jewish Trust Corporation in the British zone. Later he became chairman of the Association of Northwestern Germany's Jewish Congregations (German: Verband der Jüdischen Gemeinden Nordwestdeutschlands ) and member of the board of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. In 1950 Norbert Wollheim sued I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in liquidation for his salary as
4590-547: The Daoists , Confucians , and Legalists all had competing theories of jurisprudence. Jurisprudence in ancient Rome had its origins with the periti —experts in the jus mos maiorum (traditional law), a body of oral laws and customs. Praetors established a working body of laws by judging whether or not singular cases were capable of being prosecuted either by the edicta , the annual pronunciation of prosecutable offences, or in extraordinary situations, additions made to
4725-570: The Gestapo and brought to the gathering point for Jews in the Große Hamburger Straße [ de ] in Berlin, Germany. On March 12, 1943, the whole family was deported to Auschwitz . While Wollheim was singled out for slave labour , his sister, wife and child were gassed in the concentration camp. Wollheim was brought to Auschwitz camp III, Monowitz , where he had to work as a slave labourer for I.G. Farbenindustrie AG , helping build
4860-494: The Männerlager (the male section of the "recovery camp"), inmates suffered even more from lack of care, malnourishment, disease and mistreatment by the guards. Thousands of them died. In the summer of 1944, at least 200 men were murdered by orders of the SS by being injected with phenol . There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, since the mass-murders took place in the camps further east. Nevertheless, current estimates put
4995-494: The Waffen SS (see Bitburg controversy ). Shortly before Reagan's visit on May 5, there had been a large memorial event on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the camp's liberation, which had been attended by German president Richard von Weizsäcker and chancellor Helmut Kohl . In the aftermath of these events, the parliament of Lower Saxony decided to expand the exhibition centre and to hire permanent scientific staff. In 1990,
5130-513: The Wehrmacht began using the huts as a prisoner of war (POW) camp. The camp of huts near Fallingbostel became known as Stalag XI-B and was to become one of the Wehrmacht ' s largest POW camps, holding up to 95,000 prisoners from various countries. In June 1940, Belgian and French POWs were housed in the former Bergen-Belsen construction workers' camp. This installation was significantly expanded from June 1941, once Germany prepared to invade
5265-424: The edicta . A iudex (originally a magistrate , later a private individual appointed to judge a specific case ) would then prescribe a remedy according to the facts of the case. The sentences of the iudex were supposed to be simple interpretations of the traditional customs, but—apart from considering what traditional customs applied in each case—soon developed a more equitable interpretation, coherently adapting
5400-481: The "special camp" for Polish Jews, the "neutrals camp" for citizens of neutral countries and the "Star camp" for Dutch Jews). Between the summer of 1943 and December 1944 at least 14,600 Jews, including 2,750 minors were transported to the Bergen-Belsen "holding" or exchange camp. Inmates were made to work, many of them in the "shoe commando" which salvaged usable pieces of leather from shoes collected and brought to
5535-473: The 60th anniversary of the liberation and many ex-prisoners and ex-liberating troops attended. In October 2007, the redesigned memorial site was opened, including a large new Documentation Centre and permanent exhibition on the edge of the newly redefined camp, whose structure and layout can now be traced. Since 2009, the memorial has been receiving funding from the Federal government on an ongoing basis. The site
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5670-524: The American legal realists of the early twentieth century, legal realism sought to describe the way judges decide cases. For legal realists such as Jerome Frank , judges start with the facts before them and then move to legal principles. Before legal realism, theories of jurisprudence turned this method around where judges were thought to begin with legal principles and then look to facts. It has become common today to identify Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as
5805-536: The Belsen personnel were tried by later military tribunals in 1946 and 1948, with five of them being executed. Denazification courts were created by the Allies to try members of the SS and other Nazi organisations. Between 1947 and 1949 these courts initiated proceedings against at least 46 former SS staff at Belsen. Around half of these were discontinued, mostly because the defendants were considered to have been forced to join
5940-494: The Bergen-Belsen camp. This was the first ever permanent exhibit anywhere in Germany on the topic of Nazi crimes. However, there was still no scientific personnel at the site, with only a caretaker as permanent staff. Memorial events were only organized by the survivors themselves. In October 1979, the president of the European Parliament Simone Veil , herself a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, came to
6075-410: The British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. The first two to reach the camp were a British Special Air Service officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance. American soldiers attached to the British forces also helped liberate
6210-455: The Dean of Harvard Law School , used this term to characterise his legal philosophy . In the United States, many later writers followed Pound's lead or developed distinctive approaches to sociological jurisprudence. In Australia, Julius Stone strongly defended and developed Pound's ideas. In the 1930s, a significant split between the sociological jurists and the American legal realists emerged. In
6345-458: The German public saw the Belsen memorial as primarily a Jewish place of remembrance. Nevertheless, the memorial was redesigned in 1960–61. In 1966, a document centre was opened which offered a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Jews, with a focus on events in the nearby Netherlands – where Anne Frank and her family had been arrested in 1944. This was complemented by an overview of the history of
6480-420: The Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen. For a long time, however, remembering Bergen-Belsen was not a political priority. Periods of attention were followed by long phases of official neglect. For much of the 1950s, Belsen "was increasingly forgotten as a place of remembrance". Only after 1957 did large groups of young people visit the place where Anne Frank had died. After anti-Semitic graffiti
6615-468: The Jewish life and became a managing director of the federation of German-Jewish Werkleute youth [ de ] . After the night of the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht in 1938, he helped to organise the transports of Jewish children to Great Britain and Sweden . In 1939, he also personally accompanied Kindertransports to Sweden, but immediately returned to Berlin after leaving
6750-676: The Mittelbau-Dora subcamp at Gross Werther were not subject of the trial. It was based on British military law and the charges were thus limited to war crimes. Substantial media coverage of the trial provided the German and international public with detailed information on the mass killings at Belsen as well as on the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eleven of the defendants were sentenced to death. They included Kramer, Volkenrath and Klein. The executions by hanging took place on December 13, 1945, in Hamelin. Fourteen defendants were acquitted (one
6885-400: The SS for the labour supplied. Wage taxes were also levied by local authorities. Current estimates put the number of prisoners who passed through the concentration camp during its period of operation from 1943 to 1945 at around 120,000. Due to the destruction of the camp's files by the SS, not even half of them, around 55,000, are known by name. As mentioned above, treatment of prisoners by
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#17328559356967020-553: The SS varied between individual sections of the camp, with the inmates of the exchange camp generally being better treated than other prisoners, at least initially. However, in October 1943 the SS selected 1,800 men and women from the Sonderlager ("special camp"), Jews from Poland who held passports from Latin American countries. Since the governments of these nations mostly refused to honour the passports, these people had lost their value to
7155-570: The SS. Those who were sentenced received prison terms of between four and 36 months or were fined. As the judges decided to count the time the defendants had spent in Allied internment towards the sentence, the terms were considered to have already been fully served. Only one trial was ever held by a German court for crimes committed at Belsen, at Jena in 1949; the defendant was acquitted. More than 200 other SS members who were at Belsen have been known by name but never had to stand trial. No German soldier
7290-456: The Soviet Union, becoming an independent camp known as Stalag XI-C (311). It was intended to hold up to 20,000 Soviet POWs and was one of three such camps in the area. The others were at Oerbke (Stalag XI-D (321)) and Wietzendorf (Stalag X-D (310)). By the end of March 1942, some 41,000 Soviet POWs had died in these three camps of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. By the end of the war,
7425-411: The basis of being analogous to the laws of physical science. Natural law is often contrasted to positive law which asserts law as the product of human activity and human volition. Another approach to natural-law jurisprudence generally asserts that human law must be in response to compelling reasons for action. There are two readings of the natural-law jurisprudential stance. Aristotle is often said to be
7560-530: The bodies were so rotten that arms and legs tore away from the torso. Within two months, 17 staff members had died of typhus due to being forced to handle the bodies with no protection. Another committed suicide, and three others were shot and killed by British soldiers after trying to escape. Some civil servants from Celle and Landkreis Celle were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep. Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit documented
7695-404: The camp from all over Germany and occupied Europe. In general the prisoners of this part of the camp were treated less harshly than some other classes of Bergen-Belsen prisoner until fairly late in the war, due to their perceived potential exchange value. However, only around 2,560 Jewish prisoners were ever actually released from Bergen-Belsen and allowed to leave Germany. In March 1944, part of
7830-518: The camp unburied. A memorial with an exhibition hall currently stands at the site. In 1935, the Wehrmacht began to build a large military complex close to the village of Belsen , a part of the town of Bergen, in what was then the Province of Hanover . This became the largest military training area in Germany of the time and was used for armoured vehicle training. The barracks were finished in 1937. The camp has been in continuous operation since then and
7965-404: The camp was redesignated as an Erholungslager ("recovery camp"), where prisoners too sick to work were brought from other concentration camps. They were in Belsen supposedly to recover and then return to their original camps and resume work, but many of them died in Belsen of disease, starvation, exhaustion and lack of medical attention. In August 1944, a new section was created and this became
8100-468: The camp. When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and (including the satellite camps) around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to Allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. The scenes that greeted British troops were described by
8235-653: The children in safety. Until 1941 he was responsible for the vocational training schools of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland and adviser on the training relating to crafts of Jewish Germans. From September 1941 Wollheim worked at a transportation equipment factory in Lichtenberg , Berlin. On March 8, 1943, Wollheim with his sister Ruth Wollheim (born in 1910), his wife Rosa (née Mandelbrod, born in 1912) and their son Peter Uriel (born in 1939) were arrested by
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#17328559356968370-530: The conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945, were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the Imperial War Museum . These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day. According to Habbo Knoch, head of
8505-450: The construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp. In the summer of 1946, a commission presented the design plan, which included the obelisk and memorial walls. The memorial was finally inaugurated in a large ceremony in November 1952, with the participation of Germany's president Theodor Heuss , who called on
8640-468: The content of legal concepts using the methods of social science , analytical jurisprudence seeks to provide a general account of the nature of law through the tools of conceptual analysis . The account is general in the sense of targeting universal features of law that hold at all times and places. Analytic, or clarificatory , jurisprudence takes a neutral point of view and uses descriptive language when referring to various aspects of legal systems. This
8775-550: The difference between civil and criminal law. In addition to analytic jurisprudence, legal philosophy is also concerned with normative theories of law. "Normative jurisprudence involves normative, evaluative, and otherwise prescriptive questions about the law." The English word is derived from the Latin, iurisprudentia . Iuris is the genitive form of ius meaning law, and prudentia meaning prudence (also: discretion, foresight, forethought, circumspection). It refers to
8910-538: The diverse kinds of developing transnational law) and the increasingly important interrelations of law and culture, especially in multicultural Western societies. Legal positivism is the view that the content of law is dependent on social facts and that a legal system's existence is not constrained by morality. Within legal positivism, theorists agree that law's content is a product of social facts, but theorists disagree whether law's validity can be explained by incorporating moral values. Legal positivists who argue against
9045-560: The early Roman Empire to the 3rd century, a relevant body of literature was produced by groups of scholars, including the Proculians and Sabinians . The scientific nature of the studies was unprecedented in ancient times. After the 3rd century, juris prudentia became a more bureaucratic activity, with few notable authors. It was during the Eastern Roman Empire (5th century) that legal studies were once again undertaken in depth, and it
9180-501: The empirical methods used by social scientists. Prominent Scandinavian legal realists are Alf Ross , Axel Hägerström , and Karl Olivecrona . Scandinavian legal realists also took a naturalist approach to law. Despite its decline in popularity, legal realism continues to influence a wide spectrum of jurisprudential schools today, including critical legal studies , feminist legal theory , critical race theory , sociology of law , and law and economics . Critical legal studies are
9315-718: The exercise of good judgment, common sense, and caution, especially in the conduct of practical matters. The word first appeared in written English in 1628, at a time when the word prudence meant knowledge of, or skill in, a matter. It may have entered English via the French jurisprudence , which appeared earlier. The terms "philosophy of law" and "jurisprudence" are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology . Ancient jurisprudence begins with various Dharmaśāstra texts of India. Dharmasutras of Āpastaṃba and Baudhāyana are examples. In Ancient China,
9450-468: The extent to which they are binding. Kelsen contends that the extent to which legal norms are binding, their specifically "legal" character, can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or—of great importance in his time—a personified State or Nation. In the English-speaking world, the most influential legal positivist of the twentieth century
9585-624: The facility and to help lay train tracks to it. This was done for the company Hochtief . Außenlager Unterlüß-Altensothrieth (Tannenberglager) east of Bergen was in use from late August 1944 to April 13, 1945. It was located at Unterlüß , where the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG had a large test site. Up to 900 female Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslavian and Czech Jews had to clear forest, do construction work or work in munitions production. Prisoners were guarded by SS staff and received no wages for their work. The companies instead reimbursed
9720-484: The father of natural law. Like his philosophical forefathers Socrates and Plato, Aristotle posited the existence of natural justice or natural right ( dikaion physikon , δικαίον φυσικόν , Latin ius naturale ). His association with natural law is largely due to how he was interpreted by Thomas Aquinas . This was based on Aquinas' conflation of natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of
9855-708: The father of the Thomistic school of philosophy, for a long time the primary philosophical approach of the Roman Catholic Church . The work for which he is best known is the Summa Theologiae . One of the thirty-five Doctors of the Church , he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian. Consequently, many institutions of learning have been named after him. Aquinas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, divine, and human: Natural law
9990-491: The feeding problem. The first, led by A. P. Meiklejohn , included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners. A research team led by Janet Vaughan was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes. The British troops and medical staff tried these diets to feed
10125-429: The field has traditionally focused on giving an account of law's nature, some scholars have begun to examine the nature of domains within law, e.g. tort law, contract law, or criminal law. These scholars focus on what makes certain domains of law distinctive and how one domain differs from another. A particularly fecund area of research has been the distinction between tort law and criminal law, which more generally bears on
10260-560: The first anniversary of the liberation in 1946. On November 2, 1945, a large wooden cross was dedicated as a memorial to the murdered Polish prisoners. Also by the end of 1945 the Soviets had built a memorial at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A memorial to the Italian POWs followed in 1950, but was removed when the bodies were reinterred in a Hamburg cemetery. The British military authorities ordered
10395-464: The former Bergen-Belsen camp fell into neglect after the burning of the buildings and the closure of the nearby displaced persons' camp in the summer of 1950. The area reverted to heath; few traces of the camp remained. However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site. Ex-prisoners began to set up monuments. A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish DPs in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on
10530-624: The former slave labourers of I.G. Farben DM 30 million. The settlement apart from the parties of the lawsuit involved the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany . The settlement was accompanied by a law (German: Aufrufgesetz ) in 1957 passed by the West German Bundestag . Wollheim emigrated to the U.S. in September 1951 and settled in New York City , where he studied to become an accountant. He exercised his profession until
10665-553: The governed to obey. Secondary rules are rules that confer authority to create new primary rules or modify existing ones. Secondary rules are divided into rules of adjudication (how to resolve legal disputes), rules of change (how laws are amended), and the rule of recognition (how laws are identified as valid). The validity of a legal system comes from the "rule of recognition", which is a customary practice of officials (especially barristers and judges) who identify certain acts and decisions as sources of law. In 1981, Neil MacCormick wrote
10800-532: The incorporation of moral values to explain law's validity are labeled exclusive (or hard) legal positivists. Joseph Raz's legal positivism is an example of exclusive legal positivism. Legal positivists who argue that law's validity can be explained by incorporating moral values are labeled inclusive (or soft) legal positivists. The legal positivist theories of H. L. A. Hart and Jules Coleman are examples of inclusive legal positivism. Legal positivism has traditionally been associated with three doctrines:
10935-409: The institution that runs the memorial today: "Bergen-Belsen [...] became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule." Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing "Bren gun" carriers and Churchill Crocodile tanks because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation. As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point,
11070-497: The larger political and social context in which it exists. Jurisprudence can be divided into categories both by the type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence, or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best answered: The terms "philosophy of law" and "jurisprudence" are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology . Whereas lawyers are interested in what
11205-524: The law as it is. Austin explained the descriptive focus for legal positivism by saying, "The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry." For Austin and Bentham, a society is governed by a sovereign who has de facto authority. Through the sovereign's authority come laws, which for Austin and Bentham are commands backed by sanctions for non-compliance. Along with Hume, Bentham
11340-446: The law is on a specific issue in a specific jurisdiction, analytical philosophers of law are interested in identifying the features of law shared across cultures, times, and places. Taken together, these foundational features of law offer the kind of universal definition philosophers are after. The general approach allows philosophers to ask questions about, for example, what separates law from morality, politics, or practical reason. While
11475-467: The law to newer social exigencies. The law was then adjusted with evolving institutiones (legal concepts), while remaining in the traditional mode. Praetors were replaced in the 3rd century BC by a laical body of prudentes . Admission to this body was conditional upon proof of competence or experience. Under the Roman Empire , schools of law were created, and practice of the law became more academic. From
11610-463: The left hand was doing, so we were sent to an adjoining Wehrmacht compound. As the soldiers of the Wehrmacht marched out, we moved in. The confusion was unbelievable; this time it was disorder with German perfection. We were moved into clean barracks, equipped for human beings with excellent bathrooms and clean beds stacked three on top of each other. After all we had experienced in the preceding year, this
11745-514: The main precursor of American Legal Realism (other influences include Roscoe Pound , Karl Llewellyn , and Justice Benjamin Cardozo ). Karl Llewellyn, another founder of the U.S. legal realism movement, similarly believed that the law is little more than putty in the hands of judges who are able to shape the outcome of cases based on their personal values or policy choices. The Scandinavian school of legal realism argued that law can be explained through
11880-399: The mass transport of prisoners from other camps began in December 1944. From 1943 to the end of 1944 around 3,100 died. From January to mid-April 1945 this rose to around 35,000. Another 14,000 died after liberation between April 15 and the end of June 1945, in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp under British authority. After the war, there were allegations that the camp (or possibly
12015-480: The memorial for a speech which focused on the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. This was the first time that an official event in Germany acknowledged this aspect of the Nazi era. In 1985, international attention was focused on Bergen-Belsen. The camp was hastily included in Ronald Reagan 's itinerary when he visited West Germany after a controversy about a visit to a cemetery where the interred included members of
12150-580: The mid-1980s. Wollheim provided his services on a pro bono basis to organisations like the US Holocaust Council and the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Survivors. Jurisprudence Jurisprudence , also known as theory of law or philosophy of law , is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values; as well as
12285-495: The morality enacted as law, not the laws themselves. The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric , where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature. The context of this remark, however, suggests only that Aristotle thought that it could be rhetorically advantageous to appeal to such
12420-683: The name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes , deputy director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and James Johnston , the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. (After liberation 13,994 people died.) Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with
12555-559: The new Buna-factory IV until the evacuation of Auschwitz on January 18, 1945. On one of the so-called death marches of camp inmates being evacuated by the SS, Wollheim managed to flee. He settled in Lübeck , British Zone of Occupation . He soon engaged in the Lübeck Jewish community, elected its president, and helped to rebuild Jewish life in West Germany . He was elected second chairman of
12690-462: The new camp commandant, replacing SS-Hauptsturmführer Adolf Haas [ de ] , who had been in post since the spring of 1943. In January 1945, the SS took over the POW hospital and increased the size of Bergen-Belsen. As eastern concentration camps were evacuated before the advance of the Red Army, at least 85,000 people were transported in cattle cars or marched to Bergen-Belsen. Before that
12825-502: The number of deaths at Belsen at more than 50,000 Jews , Czechs , Poles , anti-Nazi Christians , homosexuals , and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). Among them were French Resistance member Jean Maurice Paul Jules de Noailles , the 6th Duke of Ayen (on April 14, 1945), and Czech painter and writer Josef Čapek (estimated to be in April 1945), who had coined the word robot , popularised by his brother Karel Čapek . The rate at which inmates died at Belsen accelerated notably after
12960-408: The number of prisoners at Belsen had been much smaller. In July 1944 there were 7,300; by December 1944 the number had increased to 15,000; and by February 1945 it had risen to 22,000. Numbers then soared to around 60,000 by April 15, 1945. This overcrowding led to a vast increase in deaths from disease: particularly typhus , as well as tuberculosis , typhoid fever , dysentery and malnutrition in
13095-489: The number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity. The twentieth century has so far produced no more terrifying example of collective human wickedness than the Belsen Concentration Camp, a black spot which it fell to the lot of the British Army to occupy. This book is the personal story of the first British officer to enter
13230-403: The others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these " Kapos " were killed on April 15, 1945. On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies. Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp, which became
13365-465: The pedigree thesis, the separability thesis, and the discretion thesis. The pedigree thesis says that the right way to determine whether a directive is law is to look at the directive's source. The thesis claims that it is the fact that the directive was issued by the proper official within a legitimate government, for example, that determines the directive's legal validity—not the directive's moral or practical merits. The separability thesis states that law
13500-467: The period in which Bergen-Belsen operated as a concentration camp, at least 480 people had worked as guards or members of the commandant's staff, including around 45 women. From September 17 to November 17, 1945, 45 of those were tried by a military tribunal in Lüneburg. They included former commandant Josef Kramer, 16 other SS male members, 16 female SS guards and 12 former kapos (one of whom became ill during
13635-470: The permanent exhibition was replaced by a new version and a larger document building was opened. Only in 2000 did the Federal Government of Germany begin to financially support the memorial. Co-financed by the state of Lower Saxony, a complete redesign was planned which was intended to be more in line with contemporary thought on exhibition design. On April 15, 2005, there was a ceremony, commemorating
13770-427: The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas , especially in his Treatise on law . In late 20th century, John Finnis revived interest in the theory and provided a modern reworking of it. For one, Finnis has argued that the maxim "an unjust law is no law at all" is a poor guide to the classical Thomist position. In its general sense, natural law theory may be compared to both state-of-nature law and general law understood on
13905-427: The post-1870 period. Francisco Suárez , regarded as among the greatest scholastics after Aquinas, subdivided the concept of ius gentium . Working with already well-formed categories, he carefully distinguished ius inter gentes from ius intra gentes . Ius inter gentes (which corresponds to modern international law) was something common to the majority of countries, although, being positive law, not natural law, it
14040-515: The prisoners, in this order: Some were too weak to even consume the Bengal Famine Mixture. Intravenous feeding was attempted but abandoned. SS doctors had previously used injections to murder prisoners, so some panicked at the sight of the intravenous feeding equipment. Many of the former SS staff who survived the typhus epidemic were tried by the British military at the Belsen trial . Over
14175-446: The regime. Under the pretext of sending them to a fictitious "Lager Bergau", the SS had them transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were sent directly to the gas chambers and murdered. In February and May 1944 another 350 prisoners from the "special camp" were sent to Auschwitz. Thus, out of the total of 14,600 prisoners in the exchange camp, at least 3,550 died, more than 1,400 of them at Belsen, and around 2,150 at Auschwitz. In
14310-428: The relationship between law and other fields of study, including economics , ethics , history , sociology , and political philosophy . Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was based on the first principles of natural law , civil law , and the law of nations . Contemporary philosophy of law addresses problems internal to law and legal systems and problems of law as a social institution that relates to
14445-455: The same time refusing to evaluate those norms. That is, "legal science" is to be separated from "legal politics". Central to the Pure Theory of Law is the notion of a ' basic norm ' ( Grundnorm )—a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the jurist, from which all "lower" norms in the hierarchy of a legal system , beginning with constitutional law , are understood to derive their authority or
14580-507: The second half of the twentieth century, sociological jurisprudence as a distinct movement declined as jurisprudence came more strongly under the influence of analytical legal philosophy; but with increasing criticism of dominant orientations of legal philosophy in English-speaking countries in the present century, it has attracted renewed interest. Increasingly, its contemporary focus is on providing theoretical resources for jurists to aid their understanding of new types of regulation (for example,
14715-401: The sense of "general justice"; as such, this idea of justice is more or less coextensive with virtue. "Particular" or "partial justice", by contrast, is the part of "general justice" or the individual virtue that is concerned with treating others equitably. Aristotle moves from this unqualified discussion of justice to a qualified view of political justice, by which he means something close to
14850-623: The so-called "women's camp". By November 1944 this camp received around 9,000 women and young girls. Most of those who were able to work stayed only for a short while and were then sent on to other concentration camps or slave-labour camps. The first women interned there were Poles, arrested after the failed Warsaw Uprising. Others were Jewish women from Poland or Hungary, transferred from Auschwitz. Margot and Anne Frank died there in February or March 1945. In December 1944 SS- Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer , previously at Auschwitz-Birkenau , became
14985-511: The spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945 Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer SS ) agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, Wehrmacht representatives approached the British, D Squadron of the Inns of Court Regiment , at the bridge at Winsen and were brought to VIII Corps . At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement
15120-444: The standard account of the origins of International law, which emphasises the seminal text De iure belli ac pacis by Hugo Grotius , and argued for Vitoria and, later, Suárez's importance as forerunners and, potentially, founders of the field. Others, such as Koskenniemi, have argued that none of these humanist and scholastic thinkers can be understood to have founded international law in the modern sense, instead placing its origins in
15255-497: The starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses. The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of
15390-411: The subject of modern jurisprudence. Of political justice, Aristotle argues that it is partly derived from nature and partly a matter of convention. This can be taken as a statement that is similar to the views of modern natural law theorists. But it must also be remembered that Aristotle is describing a view of morality, not a system of law, and therefore his remarks as to nature are about the grounding of
15525-666: The suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944, around 1,000 members of the Polish Home Army were imprisoned in a separate section of the POW camp. In April 1943, a part of the Bergen-Belsen camp was taken over by the SS Economic-Administration Main Office ( SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA ). It thus became part of the concentration camp system, run by the SS Schutzstaffel but it
15660-471: The theorist's work. The natural law theorists of the distant past, such as Aquinas and John Locke made no distinction between analytic and normative jurisprudence, while modern natural law theorists, such as John Finnis, who claim to be positivists, still argue that law is moral by nature. In his book Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980, 2011), John Finnis provides a restatement of natural law doctrine. Unlike experimental jurisprudence , which investigates
15795-587: The total number of dead had increased to 50,000. When the POW camp in Bergen ceased operation in early 1945, as the Wehrmacht handed it over to the SS , the cemetery contained over 19,500 dead Soviet prisoners. In the summer of 1943, Stalag XI-C (311) was dissolved and Bergen-Belsen became a branch camp of Stalag XI-B. It served as the hospital for all Soviet POWs in the region until January 1945. Other inmates/patients were Italian military internees from August 1944 and, following
15930-506: The traditions, customs, and beliefs of the German people did not include a belief in a code. Historicists believe that law originates with society. An effort to systematically inform jurisprudence from sociological insights developed from the beginning of the twentieth century, as sociology began to establish itself as a distinct social science , especially in the United States and in continental Europe . In Germany, Austria and France ,
16065-486: The trial). Among them were Irma Grese , Elisabeth Volkenrath , Hertha Ehlert , Ilse Lothe [ de ] , Johanna Bormann and Fritz Klein . Many of the defendants were not just charged with crimes committed at Belsen but also earlier ones at Auschwitz. Their activities at other concentration camps such as Mittelbau-Dora , Ravensbrück , Neuengamme , the Gross Rosen subcamps at Neusalz and Langenleuba , and
16200-502: The words won't come. To me Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy. I saw my father beaten by the SS, and I lost most of my family there... A ransom deal that the Americans attempted saved 2,000 Jews and I was one. I actually went into the gas chamber, but was reprieved. God knows why. After a day’s journey, we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. This concentration camp was hopelessly overcrowded and we were not accepted. The right hand no longer knew what
16335-410: The work of the "free law" theorists (e.g. Ernst Fuchs, Hermann Kantorowicz , Eugen Ehrlich and François Gény ) encouraged the use of sociological insights in the development of legal and juristic theory. The most internationally influential advocacy for a "sociological jurisprudence" occurred in the United States, where, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Roscoe Pound , for many years
16470-515: Was H. L. A. Hart , professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University . Hart argued that the law should be understood as a system of social rules. In The Concept of Law , Hart rejected Kelsen's views that sanctions were essential to law and that a normative social phenomenon, like law, cannot be grounded in non-normative social facts. Hart claimed that law is the union of primary rules and secondary rules. Primary rules require individuals to act or not act in certain ways and create duties for
16605-416: Was a philosophical development that rejected natural law's fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. David Hume argued, in A Treatise of Human Nature , that people invariably slip from describing what the world is to asserting that we therefore ought to follow a particular course of action. But as a matter of pure logic, one cannot conclude that we ought to do something merely because something
16740-524: Was a reaction to legal formalism that was popular the time due to the Christopher Columbus Langdell . Holmes's writings on jurisprudence also laid the foundations for the predictive theory of law. In his article "The Path of the Law", Holmes argues that "the object of [legal] study...is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts." For
16875-665: Was a special case. Having initially been designated a Zivilinterniertenlager ("civilian internment camp"), in June 1943 it was redesignated Aufenthaltslager ("holding camp"), since the Geneva Conventions stipulated that the former type of facility must be open to inspection by international committees. This "holding camp" or "exchange camp" was for Jews who were intended to be exchanged for German civilians interned in other countries, or for hard currency. The SS divided this camp into subsections for individual groups (the "Hungarian camp",
17010-428: Was an "exchange camp", where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to hold Jews from other concentration camps. After 1945, the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war and
17145-423: Was an early and staunch supporter of the utilitarian concept, and was an avid prison reformer, advocate for democracy , and firm atheist . Bentham's views about law and jurisprudence were popularized by his student John Austin . Austin was the first chair of law at the new University of London , from 1829. Austin's utilitarian answer to "what is law?" was that law is "commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from
17280-473: Was ever put on trial for crimes committed against the inmates of the POW camps at Bergen-Belsen, albeit some were tried for participating in death marches headed towards Bergen-Belsen and in the region around it, despite the fact that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg had found in 1946 that the treatment of Soviet POWs by the Wehrmacht constituted a war crime. The area of
17415-418: Was excluded from the trial due to illness). Of the remaining 19, one was sentenced to life in prison but he was executed for another crime. Eighteen were sentenced to prison for periods of one to 15 years; however, most of these sentences were subsequently reduced significantly on appeals or pleas for clemency. By June 1955, the last of those sentenced in the Belsen trial had been released. Ten other members of
17550-550: Was in use from September 3 to October 15, 1944. It was located at the facility of Eibia GmbH, a gunpowder works. Around 600 female Polish Jews were used for construction and production work. Außenlager Hambühren-Ovelgönne (Lager III, Waldeslust) at Hambühren south of Winsen was in use from August 23, 1944, to February 4, 1945. It was an abandoned potash mine, now intended as an underground production site for Bremen plane manufacturer Focke-Wulf . Around 400 prisoners, mostly female Polish or Hungarian Jews, were forced to prepare
17685-487: Was not necessarily universal. On the other hand, ius intra gentes , or civil law, is specific to each nation. Writing after World War II , Lon L. Fuller defended a secular and procedural form of natural law. He emphasised that the (natural) law must meet certain formal requirements (such as being impartial and publicly knowable). To the extent that an institutional system of social control falls short of these requirements, Fuller argued, we are less inclined to recognise it as
17820-540: Was scrawled on the Cologne synagogue over Christmas 1959, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer followed a suggestion by Nahum Goldmann , president of the World Jewish Congress , and visited the site of a former concentration camp for the first time. In a speech at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, Adenauer assured the Jews still living in Germany that they would have the same respect and security as everyone else. Afterwards,
17955-500: Was sheer luxury. There was no mention of the usual camp rituals, no roll calls and no work, but also no food. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it
18090-461: Was signed, designating an area of 48 square kilometers (19 square miles) around the camp as a neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to "uphold order inside the camp". The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops who were returned to the German front lines by the British shortly afterwards. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and Walle ,
18225-499: Was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely
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