‘Show/Trials’: The Performative Aspect of the Late Prosecution of Nazi Crimes

The present paper examines the criminal proceedings against former staff members of the StutthofStutthof concentration camp as ‘show/trials’. In contradistinction to the conventional meaning of the term, we are not concerned with tribunals that have a predetermined outcome and flout due process and the rule of lawrule of law; rather, our concept of the ‘show/trial’ foregrounds the performative aspect of the recent trials against nonagenarian Nazi perpetrators, in which the frail bodies of the elderly defendants have often taken centre stage. Drawing on research from the field of theatre studies, we investigate the effect of these highly medialised events on the processing of Germany’s Nazi past in both the legal and the public sphere. In doing so, we argue that the specific mise-en-scène of said trials reveals where their true significance lies: not in the allocation of guilt or the meting out of punishment, but rather in the social verdict delivered by their (direct and indirect) audiences.