ABSTRACT
These terrible words were pronounced by Hanna Schmitz, the central character of the critically acclaimed fiction film The Reader, as she stood trial for brutally causing the death of 300 Jewish women by leaving them in a locked church which was bombed during the evacuation of a camp. Albeit fictitious, these words resound, in all their horror and abjection, as a powerful reminder of what may go on behind barbed wires and prison walls. This reminder must nonetheless be expressly moderated and contextualized in so far as it is obviously not the purpose of the present work to even suggest that contemporary detention facilities, with all the problems they might face and the questions they might raise with respect to human rights law, could ever be equated with Nazi concentration camps. Equally rejected here is the incongruous and revolting idea that today’s prison officers could ever be compared with Nazi camp guards. Still, this quote – although an extract from a fiction film – remains very much realistic and, in its interesting recognition of the responsibility of prison guards over the individuals placed in detention and under their custody, precisely reflects the issue the following analysis proposes to explore.
