Three Books on Genocide: From Auschwitz to the Khmer Rouge to the Gulag

Jacques Henric reviews three books that explore the horrors of genocide and totalitarian regimes. Annette Wieviorka's 'L'Heure d'exactitude' (Albin Michel) is a series of interviews with historian Séverine Nikel, in which Wieviorka recounts her family's experience in the Shoah, her own intellectual journey from communism to Maoism, and her two-year stay in China during the Cultural Revolution. She reflects on her career as a historian, her methods, and the importance of precise language in describing genocide. Rithy Panh's 'L'élimination' (Grasset), co-written with Christophe Bataille, describes the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge, focusing on Panh's personal loss of his entire family and his interrogation of the former Khmer Rouge commander Duch. Panh emphasizes that the perpetrators were human, not devils, and notes the unique cruelty of the regime, including the use of torture to extract confessions and the laughter of the executioners. Ivan Tchistiakov's 'Journal d'un gardien du Goulag' (Denoël), prefaced by Luba Jurgenson, is a rare account from a guard's perspective in the Soviet Gulag in 1935-1936. Tchistiakov, forced into his role, describes the brutal conditions, his own suffering, and his eventual arrest and death on the front in 1941. Henric draws parallels between the three genocides, highlighting the role of communist ideology in the Khmer Rouge and Soviet cases, and the silence of the West during the Cambodian genocide.