At its worst — as the Red Cross demonstrated during the Second World War, when the organization offered its services at Nazi death camps, while maintaining absolute confidentiality about the atrocities it was privy to — impartiality in the face of atrocity can be indistinguishable from complicity.
Years later, in her last book, "Regarding the Pain of Others" (2003), she acknowledged the dangers of voyeurism and moral self-aggrandizement, yet she still affirmed the absolute value of journalists' and artists' bearing witness to atrocity.
However President François Hollande, who flew to Nice and toured the hospitals where the injured were being treated, seemed in no doubt about the cause of this latest atrocity, which he described as a "an absolute … monstrosity … The terrorist character [of the attack] cannot be denied," he said.
Any subsequent inquiries or inquests into this atrocity should carry the same sense of humility and absolute commitment to the victims at its core.
This is in keeping with one purpose of the book, which is to ensure that the atrocities of the dictatorship and the dangers of absolute power will be remembered by a new generation.
In an email interview with HuffPost reporter Matt Sledge, Menk said it was "with absolute sadness and disgust that I came to hear about the unacceptable atrocity against innocent lives".
The book itself serves as a reminder of the atrocities of dictatorship, to ensure that the dangers of absolute power will be remembered by a new generation.
It is difficult for Americans to imagine their way into the Middle East: it feels as if we were being presented with two competing stories of a people's absolute righteousness (in both the grand historical sense and the day-to-day atrocity sense) and asked to choose which one to believe.
Not all the members of the Pléiade, however, were as absolute against the Protestant enemy, especially as the century advanced and the atrocities increased.
Atrocity builds on atrocity.
