UW Press: Some Measure of Justice

Some Measure of Justice
The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s
Michael R. Marrus
Foreword by William A. Schabas

“Marrus is on target nearly every step of the way. He combines a deep knowledge of twentieth-century history with an expertise in legal matters.”
—Anthony Sebok, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University

Can there ever be justice for the Holocaust? During the 1990s—triggered by lawsuits in the United States against Swiss banks, German corporations, insurance companies, and owners of valuable works of art—claimants and their lawyers sought to rectify terrible wrongs committed more than a half century earlier. Some Measure of Justice explores this most recent wave of justice-seeking for the Holocaust: what it has been, why it emerged when it did, how it fits with earlier reparation to the Jewish people, its significance for the historical representation of the Holocaust, and its implications for justice-seeking in our time.

Writings on the subject of Holocaust reparations have largely come from participants, lawyers, philosophers, journalists, and social scientists specializing in restitution. In Some Measure of Justice Michael Marrus takes up the issue as a historian deeply involved with legal issues. He engages with larger questions about historical understanding and historical interpretation as they enter the legal arena. Ultimately this book asks, What constitutes justice for a great historic wrong? And, Is such justice possible?

Author. Photo credit, Name. Michael R. Marrus is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto and author, among other works, of The Holocaust in History, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century, and The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46. He is coauthor, with Robert Paxton, of Vichy France and the Jews. In 2008 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he delivered the George L. Mosse Lectures, upon which this book is based.