Between Justice and Truth: The Legal Prosecution of Third Reich Crimes in Giulio Ricciarelli’s Labyrinth of Lies
What contributions can fictional narratives and their examination with the tools of literary scholarship make to transitional justice scholarship? This book chapter by Western Academy Postdoctoral Scholar Pascal Michelberger examines Giulio’s Ricciarelli’s 2014 film Labyrinth of Lies, a fictionalized re-telling of the investigations that led to the historic Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in West Germany (1963–65). It demonstrates how the film both problematizes simplified understandings of legal prosecutions in transitional environments and envisions the trial at its centre as a transitional justice device with intentions similar to those of a truth commission.
Michelberger, Pascal. “Between Justice and Truth: The Legal Prosecution of Third Reich Crimes in Giulio Ricciarelli’s Labyrinth of Lies” In Narrating Transitional Justice: Memory in the Age of Truth and Reconciliation edited by Paul Ugor and Bonny Ibhawoh, 203-223. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780228026242-012
Pascal Michelberger
Western Academy Postdoctoral Scholar