title: Holocaust survivors

text: As Allied forces fought their way across Europe and captured areas that had been occupied by the Germans, they discovered the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In some places, the Nazis had tried to destroy all evidence of the camps to conceal the crimes that they had perpetrated there. In other places, the Allies found only empty buildings, as the Nazis had already moved the prisoners, often on death marches, to other locations. However, in many camps, the Allied soldiers found hundreds or even thousands of weak and starving survivors. Soviet forces reached Majdanek concentration camp in July 1944 and soon came across many other sites but often did not publicize what they had found; British and American units on the Western front did not reach the concentration camps in Germany until the spring of 1945.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: When Allied troops entered the death camps, they discovered thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors suffering from starvation and disease, living in the most terrible conditions, many of them dying, along with piles of corpses, bones, and the human ashes of the victims of the Nazi mass murder. The liberators were unprepared for what they found but did their best to help the survivors. Despite this, thousands died in the first weeks after liberation. Many died from disease. Some died from refeeding syndrome since after prolonged starvation their stomachs and bodies could not take normal food. Survivors also had no possessions. At first, they still had to wear their concentration camp uniforms as they had no other clothes to wear.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: During the first weeks of liberation, survivors faced the challenges of eating suitable food, in appropriate amounts for their physical conditions; recuperating from illnesses, injuries and extreme fatigue and rebuilding their health; and regaining some sense of mental and social normality. Almost every survivor also had to deal with loss of many loved ones, many being the only one remaining alive from their entire family, as well as the loss of their homes, former activities or livelihoods, and ways of life.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: As survivors faced the daunting challenges of rebuilding their broken lives and finding any remaining family members, the vast majority also found that they needed to find new places to live. Returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust proved to be impossible. At first, following liberation, numerous survivors tried to return to their previous homes and communities, but Jewish communities had been ravaged or destroyed and no longer existed in much of Europe, and returning to their homes frequently proved to be dangerous. When people tried to return to their homes from camps or hiding places, they found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others. Most did not find any surviving relatives, encountered indifference from the local population almost everywhere, and, in eastern Europe in particular, were met with hostility and sometimes violence.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Jewish survivors who could not or did not want to go back to their old homes, particularly those whose entire families had been murdered, whose homes, or neighborhoods or entire communities had been destroyed, or who faced renewed antisemitic violence, became known by the term ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" (). Most of the survivors comprising the group known as "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" originated in central and eastern European countries, while most of those from western European countries returned to them and rehabilitated their lives there.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Most of these refugees gathered in displaced persons camps in the British, French and American occupation zones of Germany, and in Austria and Italy. The conditions in these camps were harsh and primitive at first, but once basic survival needs were being met, the refugees organized representatives on a camp-by-camp basis, and then a coordinating organization for the various camps, to present their needs and requests to the authorities, supervise cultural and educational activities in the camps, and advocate that they be allowed to leave Europe and immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine or other countries.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The first meeting of representatives of survivors in the DP camps took place a few weeks after the end of the war, on 27 May 1945, at the St. Ottilien camp, where they formed and named the organization ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. After most survivors in the DP camps had immigrated to other countries or resettled, the Central Committee of "She'arit Hapleta" disbanded in December 1950 and the organization dissolved itself in the British Zone of Germany in August 1951.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The term ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" is thus usually used in reference to Jewish refugees and displaced persons in the period after the war from 1945 to about 1950. In historical research, this term is used for Jews in Europe and North Africa in the five years or so after World War II.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: After the end of World War II, most non-Jews who had been displaced by the Nazis returned to their homes and communities. For Jews, however, tens of thousands had no homes, families or communities to which they could return. Furthermore, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, many wanted to leave Europe entirely and restore their lives elsewhere where they would encounter less antisemitism. Other Jews who attempted to return to their previous residences were forced to leave again upon finding their homes and property stolen by their former neighbors and, particularly in central and eastern Europe, after being met with hostility and violence.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Since they had nowhere else to go, about 50,000 homeless Holocaust survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Emigration to the Mandatory Palestine was still strictly limited by the British government and emigration to other countries such as the United States was also severely restricted. The first groups of survivors in the DP camps were joined by Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe, fleeing to the British and American occupation zones in Germany as post-war conditions worsened in the east. By 1946, an estimated 250,000 displaced Jewish survivors – about 185,000 in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy – were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and DP camps administered by the militaries of the United States, Great Britain and France, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Survivors initially endured dreadful conditions in the DP camps. The camp facilities were very poor, and many survivors were suffering from severe physical and psychological problems. Aid from the outside was slow at first to reach the survivors. Furthermore, survivors often found themselves in the same camps as German prisoners and Nazi collaborators, who had been their tormentors until just recently, along with larger number of freed non-Jewish forced laborers, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the Soviet army, and there were frequent incidents of anti-Jewish violence. Within a few months, following the visit and report of President Roosevelt's representative, Earl G. Harrison, the United States authorities recognized the need to set up separate DP camps for Jewish survivors and improve the living conditions in the DP camps. The British military administration, however, were much slower to act, fearing that recognizing the unique situation of the Jewish survivors might somehow be perceived as endorsing their calls to emigrate to Palestine and further antagonizing the Arabs there. Thus, the Jewish refugees tended to gather in the DP camps in the American zone.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The DP camps were created as temporary centers for facilitating the resettlement of the homeless Jewish refugees and to take care of immediate humanitarian needs, but they also became temporary communities where survivors began to rebuild their lives. With assistance sent from Jewish relief organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in the United States and the Jewish Relief Unit in Britain, hospitals were opened, along with schools, especially in several of the camps where there were large numbers of children and orphans, and the survivors resumed cultural activities and religious practices. Many of their efforts were in preparations for emigration from Europe to new and productive lives elsewhere. They established committees to represent their issues to the Allied authorities and to a wider audience, under the Hebrew name, "Sh'erit ha-Pletah", an organization which existed until the early 1950s. Political life rejuvenated and a leading role was taken by the Zionist movement, with most of the Jewish DPs declaring their intention of moving to a Jewish state in Palestine.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The slow and erratic handling of the issues regarding Jewish DPs and refugees, and the substantial increase of people in the DP camps in 1946 and 1947 gained international attention, and public opinion resulted in increasing political pressure to lift restriction on immigration to countries such as the US, Canada, and Australia and on the British authorities to stop detaining refugees who were attempting to leave Europe for Palestine, and imprisoning them in internment camps on Cyprus or returning them to Europe. Britain's treatment of Jewish refugees, such as the handling of the refugee ship "Exodus", shocked public opinion around the world and added to international demands to establish an independent state for the Jewish people. This led Britain to refer the matter to the United Nations which voted in 1947 to create a Jewish and an Arab state. Thus, when the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948, the State of Israel was established, and Jewish refugee ships were immediately allowed unrestricted entry. In addition, the United States also changed its immigration policy to allow more Jewish refugees to enter under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act, while other Western countries also eased curbs on emigration.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The opening of Israel's borders after its independence, as well as the adoption of more lenient emigration regulations in Western countries regarding survivors led to the closure of most of the DP camps by 1952. Föhrenwald, the last functioning DP camp closed in 1957. About 136,000 Displaced Person camp inhabitants, more than half the total, immigrated to Israel; some 80,000 emigrated to the United States, and the remainder emigrated to other countries in Europe and the rest of the world, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: As soon as the war ended, survivors began looking for family members, and for most, this was their main goal once their basic needs of finding food, clothing and shelter had been met.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. Parents sought the children they had hidden in convents, orphanages or with foster families. Other survivors returned to their original homes to look for relatives or gather news and information about them, hoping for a reunion or at least the certainty of knowing if a loved one had perished. The International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations set up tracing services to support these searches, but inquiries often took a long time because of the difficulties in communications, and the displacement of millions of people by the conflict, the Nazi's policies of deportation and destruction, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Location services were set up by organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. This resulted in the successful reunification of survivors, sometimes decades after their separation during the war. For example, the Location Service of the American Jewish Congress, in cooperation with other organizations, ultimately traced 85,000 survivors successfully and reunited 50,000 widely scattered relatives with their families in all parts of the world. However, the process of searching for and finding lost relatives sometimes took years and, for many survivors, continued until their end of their lives. In many cases, survivors searched all their lives for family members, without learning of their fates.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In Israel, where many Holocaust survivors emigrated, some relatives reunited after encountering each other by chance. Many survivors also found relatives from whom they had been separated through notices for missing relatives posted in newspapers and a radio program dedicated to reuniting families called "Who Recognizes, Who Knows?"


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Initially, survivors simply posted hand-written notes on message boards in the relief centers, Displaced Person's camps or Jewish community buildings where they were located, in the hope that family members or friends for whom they were looking would see them, or at the very least, that other survivors would pass on information about the people whom they were seeking. Others published notices in DP camp and survivor organization newsletters, and in newspapers, in the hopes of reconnecting with relatives who had found refuge in other places. Some survivors contacted the Red Cross and other organizations who were collating lists of survivors, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which established a Central Tracing Bureau to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Various lists were collated into larger booklets and publications, which were more permanent than the original notes or newspaper notices. One such early compilation was called ""Sharit Ha-Platah"" ("Surviving Remnant"), published in 1946 in several volumes with the names of tens of thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust, collected mainly by Abraham Klausner, a United States Army chaplain who visited many of the Displaced Persons camps in southern Germany and gathered lists of the people there, subsequently adding additional names from other areas.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The first "Register of Jewish Survivors" ("Pinkas HaNitzolim I") was published by the Jewish Agency's Search Bureau for Missing Relatives in 1945, containing over 61,000 names compiled from 166 different lists of Jewish survivors in various European countries. A second volume of the "Register of Jewish Survivors" ("Pinkas HaNitzolim II") was also published in 1945, with the names of some 58,000 Jews in Poland.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Newspapers outside of Europe also began to publish lists of survivors and their locations as more specific information about the Holocaust became known towards the end of, and after, the war. Thus, for example, the German-Jewish newspaper ""Aufbau"", published in New York City, printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, from September 1944 until 1946.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Over time, many Holocaust survivor registries were established. Initially these were paper records, but from the 1990s, an increasing number of the records have been digitized and made available online.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Following the war, Jewish parents often spent months and years searching for the children they had sent into hiding. In fortunate cases, they found their children were still with the original rescuer. Many, however, had to resort to notices in newspapers, tracing services, and survivor registries in the hope of finding their children. These searches frequently ended in heartbreak — parents discovered that their child had been killed or had gone missing and could not be found. For hidden children, thousands who had been concealed with non-Jews were now orphans and no surviving family members remained alive to retrieve them.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: For children who had been hidden to escape the Nazis, more was often at stake than simply finding or being found by relatives. Those who had been very young when they were placed into hiding did not remember their biological parents or their Jewish origins and the only family that they had known was that of their rescuers. When they were found by relatives or Jewish organizations, they were usually afraid, and resistant to leave the only caregivers they remembered. Many had to struggle to rediscover their real identities.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In some instances, rescuers refused to give up hidden children, particularly in cases where they were orphans, did not remember their identities, or had been baptized and sheltered in Christian institutions. Jewish organizations and relatives had to struggle to recover these children, including custody battles in the courts. For example, the Finaly Affair only ended in 1953, when the two young Finaly brothers, orphaned survivors in the custody of the Catholic Church in Grenoble, France, were handed over to the guardianship of their aunt, after intensive efforts to secure their return to their family.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In the twenty first century, the development of DNA testing for genealogical purposes has sometimes provided essential information to people trying to find relatives from whom they were separated during the Holocaust, or to recover their Jewish identity, especially Jewish children who were hidden or adopted by non-Jewish families during the war.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: After the war, anti-Jewish violence occurred in several central and Eastern European countries, motivated to varying extents by economic antagonism, increased by alarm that returning survivors would try to reclaim their stolen houses and property, as well as age-old antisemitic myths, most notably the blood libel. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom occurred in July 1946 in Kielce, a city in southeastern Poland, when rioters killed 41 people and wounded 50 more. As news of the Kielce pogrom spread, Jews began to flee from Poland, perceiving that there was no viable future for them there, and this pattern of post-war anti-Jewish violence repeated itself in other countries such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine. Most survivors sought to leave Europe and build new lives elsewhere.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Thus, about 50,000 survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy and were joined by Jewish refugees fleeing from central and eastern Europe, particularly Poland, as post-war conditions there worsened. By 1946, there were an estimated 250,000 Jewish displaced persons, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and about 20,000 in Italy. As the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948 and the State of Israel was established, nearly two-thirds of the survivors immigrated there. Others went to Western countries as restrictions were eased and opportunities for them to emigrate arose.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Holocaust survivors suffered from the war years and afterwards in many different ways, physically, mentally and spiritually.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Most survivors were deeply traumatized both physically and mentally and some of the effects lasted throughout their lives. This was expressed, among other ways, in the emotional and mental trauma of feeling that they were on a "different planet" that they could not share with others; that they had not or could not process the mourning for their murdered loved ones because at the time they were consumed with the effort required for survival; and many experienced guilt that they had survived when others had not. This dreadful period engulfed some survivors with both physical and mental scars, which were subsequently characterized by researchers as "concentration camp syndrome" (also known as survivor syndrome).


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Nonetheless, many survivors drew on inner strength and learned to cope, restored their lives, moved to a new place, started a family and developed successful careers.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: After the war, many Holocaust survivors engaged in efforts to record testimonies about their experiences during the war, and to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities. These efforts included both personal accounts and memoirs of events written by individual survivors about the events that they had experienced, as well as the compilation of remembrance books for destroyed communities called Yizkor books, usually printed by societies or groups of survivors from a common locality.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Survivors and witnesses also participated in providing oral testimonies about their experiences. At first, these were mainly for the purpose of prosecuting war criminals and often only many years later, for the sake of recounting their experiences to help process the traumatic events that they had suffered, or for the historical record and educational purposes.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Several programs were undertaken by organizations, such the as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, to collect as many oral history testimonies of survivors as possible. In addition, survivors also began speaking at educational and commemorative events at schools and for other audiences, as well as contributing to and participating in the building of museums and memorials to remember the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Some survivors began to publish memoirs immediately after the war ended, feeling a need to write about their experiences, and about a dozen or so survivors' memoirs were published each year during the first two decades after the Holocaust, notwithstanding a general public that was largely indifferent to reading them. However, for many years after the war, many survivors felt that they could not describe their experiences to those who had not lived through the Holocaust. Those who were able to record testimony about their experiences or publish their memoirs did so in Yiddish.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The number of memoirs that were published increased gradually from the 1970s onwards, indicating both the increasing need and psychological ability of survivors to relate their experiences, as well as a growing public interest in the Holocaust driven by events such as the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the existential threats to Jews presented by the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the broadcasting in many countries of the television documentary series ""Holocaust"" in 1978, and the establishment of new Holocaust memorial centers and memorials, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The writing and publishing of memoirs, prevalent among Holocaust survivors, has been recognized as related to processing and recovering from memories about the traumatic past. By the end of the twentieth century, Holocaust memoirs had been written by Jews not only in Yiddish, but also other languages including Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian. They were written by concentration/death camp survivors, and also those who had been in hiding, or who had managed to flee from Nazi-held territories before or during the war, and sometimes they also described events after the Holocaust, including the liberation and rebuilding of lives in the aftermath of destruction.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Survivor memoirs, like other personal accounts such as oral testimony and diaries, are a significant source of information for most scholars of the history of the Holocaust, complementing more traditional sources of historical information, and presenting events from the unique points of view of individual experiences within the much greater totality, and these accounts are essential to an understanding of the Holocaust experience. While historians and survivors themselves are aware that the retelling of experiences is subjective to the source of information and sharpness of memory, they are recognized as collectively having "a firm core of shared memory" and the main substance of the accounts does not negate minor contradictions and inaccuracies in some of the details.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Yizkor (Remembrance) books were compiled and published by groups of survivors or "landsmanshaft" societies of former residents to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities and was one of the earliest ways in which the Holocaust was communally commemorated. The first of these books appeared in the 1940s and almost all were typically published privately rather than by publishing companies. Over 1,000 books of this type are estimated to have been published, albeit in very limited quantities.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Most of these books are written in Yiddish or Hebrew, while some also include sections in English or other languages, depending on where they were published. The first Yizkor books were published in the United States, mainly in Yiddish, the mother tongue of the "landsmanschaften" and Holocaust survivors. Beginning in the 1950s, after the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors to the newly independent State of Israel, most of the Yizkor books were published there, primarily between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. From the later 1970s, there was a decline in the number of collective memorial books but an increase in the number of survivors' personal memoirs. Most of the Yizkor books were devoted to the Eastern European Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Hungary, with fewer dedicated to the communities of south-eastern Europe.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Since the 1990s, many of these books, or sections of them have been translated into English, digitized, and made available online.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In the immediate post-war period, officials of the DP camps and organizations providing relief to the survivors conducted interviews with survivors primarily for the purposes of providing physical assistance and assisting with relocation. Interviews were also conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence about war crimes and for the historical record. These were among the first of the recorded testimonies of the survivors Holocaust experiences.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Some of the first projects to collect witness testimonies began in the DP camps, amongst the survivors themselves. Camp papers like "Undzer Shtimme" ("Our Voice"), published in Hohne Camp (Bergen-Belsen), and "Undzer Hofenung" ("Our Hope"), published in Eschwege camp, (Kassel) carried the first eyewitness accounts of Jewish experiences under Nazi rule, and one of the first publications on the Holocaust, "Fuhn Letsn Khurbn", ("About the Recent Destruction"), was produced by DP camp members, and was eventually distributed around world.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In the following decades, a concerted effort was made to record the memories and testimonials of survivors for posterity. French Jews were amongst the first to establish an institute devoted to documentation of the Holocaust at the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. In Israel, the Yad Vashem memorial was officially established in 1953; the organization had already begun projects including acquiring Holocaust documentation and personal testimonies of survivors for its archives and library.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The largest collection of testimonials was ultimately gathered at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which was founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 after he made the film "Schindler’s List". Originally named the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, it became a part of the University of Southern California in 2006. The foundation’s mission was to videotape the personal accounts of 50,000 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, a goal which it achieved in 1999 and then surpassed.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In 2002, a collection of Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivor testimonies opened at the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg, Germany.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: A wide range of organizations have been established to address the needs and issues of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Immediately following the war, ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" was established to meet the immediate physical and rehabilitation needs in the Displaced Persons camps and to advocate for rights to immigrate. Once these aims had largely been met by the early 1950s, the organization was disbanded. In the following decades, survivors established both local, national and eventually international organizations to address longer term physical, emotional and social needs, and organizations for specific groups such as child survivors and descendants, especially children, of survivors were also set up. Starting in the late 1970s, conferences and gatherings of survivors, their descendants, as well as rescuers and liberators began to take place and were often the impetus for the establishment and maintenance of permanent organizations.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In 1981, around 6,000 Holocaust survivors gathered in Jerusalem for the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In 1988, the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, was established to as an umbrella organization of 28 Holocaust survivor groups in Israel to advocate for survivors' rights and welfare worldwide and to the Government of Israel, and to commemorate the Holocaust and revival of the Jewish people. In 2010 it was recognized by the government as the representative organization for the entire survivor population in Israel. In 2020, it represented 55 organizations and a survivor population whose average was 84.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Child survivors of the Holocaust were often the only ones who remained alive from their entire extended families, while even more were orphans. This group of survivors included children who had survived in the concentration/death camps, in hiding with non-Jewish families or in Christian institutions, or had been sent out of harm's way by their parents on Kindertransports, or by escaping with their families to remote locations in the Soviet Union, or Shanghai in China. After the war, child survivors were sometimes sent to be cared for by distant relatives in other parts of the world, sometimes accepted unwillingly, and mistreated or even abused. Their experiences, memories and understanding of the terrible events they had suffered as child victims of the Nazis and their accomplices was given little consideration.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In the 1970s and 80s, small groups of these survivors, now adults, began to form in a number of communities worldwide to deal with their painful pasts in safe and understanding environments. The First International Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors took place in 1979 under the auspices of Zachor, the Holocaust Resource Center. The conference and was attended by some 500 survivors, survivors’ children and mental health professionals and established a network for children of survivors of the Holocaust in the United States and Canada.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held its first international conference in New York City in 1984, attended by more than 1,700 children of survivors of the Holocaust with the stated purpose of creating greater understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world and establishing contacts among the children of survivors in the United States and Canada.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants was founded in 1985 to bring child survivors together and coordinate worldwide activities. The organization began holding annual conference in cities the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. Descendants of survivors were also recognized as having been deeply affected by their families’ histories. In addition to the annual conferences to build community among child survivors and their descendants, members speak about their histories of survival and loss, of resilience, of the heroism of Jewish resistance and self-help for other Jews, and of the Righteous Among the Nations, at schools, public and community events; they participate in Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies and projects; and campaign against antisemitism and bigotry.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The "second generation of Holocaust survivors" is the name given to children born after World War Two to a parent or parents who survived the Holocaust. Although the second generation did not directly experience the horrors of the Holocaust, the impact of their parents' trauma is often evident in their upbringing and outlooks, and from the 1960s, children of survivors began exploring and expressing in various ways what the implications of being children of Holocaust survivors meant to them. This conversation broadened public discussion of the events and impacts of the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The second generation of the Holocaust has raised several research questions in psychology, and psychological studies have been conducted to determine how their parents' horrendous experiences affected their lives, among them, whether psychological trauma experienced by a parent can be passed on to their children even when they were not present during the ordeal, as well as the psychological manifestations of this transference of trauma to the second generation.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Soon after descriptions of concentration camp syndrome (also known as survivor syndrome) appeared, clinicians observed in 1966 that large numbers of children of Holocaust survivors were seeking treatment in clinics in Canada. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were also over-represented by 300% among the referrals to a child psychiatry clinic in comparison with their representation in the general population.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: A communication pattern that psychologists have identified as a communication feature between parents who experienced trauma and their children has been referred to as the "connection of silence". This silent connection is the tacit assent, in the families of Holocaust survivors, not to discuss the trauma of the parent and to disconnect it from the daily life of the family. The parent's need for this is not only due to their need to forget and adapt to their lives after the trauma, but also to protect their children's psyches from being harmed by their depictions of the atrocities that they experienced during the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Awareness groups have thus developed, in which children of survivors explore their feelings in a group that shares and can better understand their experiences as children of Holocaust survivors. Some second generation survivors have also organized local and even national groups for mutual support and to pursue additional goals and aims regarding Holocaust issues. For example, in November 1979, the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors was held, and resulted in the establishment of support groups all over the United States.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Many members of the "second generation" have sought ways to get past their suffering as children of Holocaust survivors and to integrate their experiences and those of their parents into their lives. For example, some have become involved in activities to commemorate the lives of people and ways of life of communities that were wiped out during the Holocaust. They research the history of Jewish life in Europe before the war and the Holocaust itself; participate in the renewal of Yiddish culture; engage in educating others about the Holocaust; fight against Holocaust denial, antisemitism and racism; become politically active, such as with regard to finding and prosecuting Nazis, or by taking up Jewish or humanitarian causes; and through creative means such as theater, art and literature, examine the Holocaust and its consequences on themselves and their families.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In April 1983, Holocaust survivors in North America established the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants; the first event was attended by President Ronald Reagan and 20,000 survivors and their families.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: Amcha, the Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation was established in Jerusalem in 1987 to serve survivors and their families.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: One of the most well-known and comprehensive archives of Holocaust-era records, including lists of survivors, is the "Arolsen Archives-International Center on Nazi Persecution" founded by the Allies in 1948 as the "International Tracing Service" (ITS). For decades after the war, in response to inquiries, the main tasks of ITS were determining the fates of victims of Nazi persecution and searching for missing people.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The "Holocaust Global Registry" is an online collection of databases maintained by the Jewish genealogical website JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust; it contains thousands of names of both survivors trying to find family and family searching for survivors.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: "The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database", maintained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, contains millions of names of people persecuted under the Nazi regime, including concentration camp or displaced persons camp lists that can be searched by place name or keywords.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The "Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors", created in 1981 by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to document the experiences of survivors and assist survivors and their families trying to trace missing relatives and friends, includes over 200,000 records related to survivors and their families from around the world.


title: Holocaust survivors

text: In partnership with the Arolsen Archives, the family history website Ancestry began digitizing millions of Holocaust and Nazi-persecution records and making them searchable online in 2019. Two distinct databases included in the records are the "Africa, Asia and European passenger lists of displaced persons (1946 to 1971)" and "Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Individuals Persecuted (1939–1947)".


title: Holocaust survivors

text: The "Holocaust Survivor Children: Missing Identity" website addresses the issue of child survivors still hoping to find relatives or people who can tell them about their parents and family, and others who hope to find out basic information about themselves such as their original names, dates and place of birth, and parents’ names, based on a photograph of themselves as a child.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Winfield Scott Moore III (December 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016) was an American guitarist who formed The Blue Moon Boys in 1954, Elvis Presley's backing band. He was studio and touring guitarist for Presley between 1954 and 1968.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Rock critic Dave Marsh credits Moore with inventing power chords, on the 1957 Elvis hit "Jailhouse Rock", the intro of which Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, according to the latter, "copped from a '40s swing version of 'The Anvil Chorus"." Moore was ranked 29th in "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2011. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015. Rolling Stones' lead guitarist Keith Richards said of Moore:When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel", I knew what I wanted to do in life. It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like the way Scotty Moore did. Everyone wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Winfield Scott Moore III was born near Gadsden, Tennessee, to Mattie (née Hefley) as the youngest of four boys by 14 years. He learned to play the guitar from family and friends at age eight. Although underage when he enlisted, Moore served in the United States Navy in China and Korea from 1948 through January 1952.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore's early background was in jazz and country music. A fan of the guitarist Chet Atkins, Moore led a group called the Starlite Wranglers before Sam Phillips at Sun Records put him together with then-teenage Elvis Presley. The trio was completed with double bass player Bill Black, who brought a "rhythmic propulsion" that much pleased Phillips. In 1954, Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what would become the first Presley hit, the Sun Studios session cut of "That's All Right", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll history.


title: Scotty Moore

text: This session, held on the evening of July 5, 1954, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled,All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool and then Bill picked up his bass and he started acting the fool too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open...he stuck his head out and said, "What are you doing?" And we said, "We don't know." "Well, back up," he said, "try to find a place to start and do it again." Phillips quickly began taping as this was the sound he had been looking for.During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed to be "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" as the B-side.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Phillips' rhythm-centered vision led him to steer Moore away from Chet Atkins style, the one which had been adopted by Merle Travis' finger-picking style, now dubbed as "travis picking", which he deemed fine for pop or country but not for the simple, gutsy sound Phillips was aiming at. "Simplify" was the keyword.


title: Scotty Moore

text: By his performance at the Louisiana Hayride in October 1954, Presley, Black and Moore were called the Blue Moon Boys.


title: Scotty Moore

text: For a time, Moore served as Presley's personal manager. They were later joined by the drummer D.J. Fontana.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Beginning in July 1954, the Blue Moon Boys toured and recorded throughout the American South. Subsequently, Elvis' popularity rose amongst teenage girls, they began touring nationwide, appearing on distinguished shows like "The Ed Sullivan Show", which, at the time, was the hallmark for success for young artists. On April 3 of that year, they performed Shake, Rattle and Roll," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "Blue Suede Shoes" on "The Milton Berle Show." Elvis and the band appeared on "The Steve Allen Show" in a comedy sketch performing "Hound Dog" to an actual hound dog. Presley was prohibited from doing the gyrations that elicited screams from the audience, which would produce good reviews, but those reviews were nothing compared to the scandals they would face thanks to Elvis. Elvis never understood why the girls screamed out of control when he sang. It was Moore who told him why. "It's your leg, man. The way you shake your left leg." Elvis Presley: The Early Years | Mississippi History Now


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings, including "That's All Right," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Milkcow Blues Boogie," "Baby Let's Play House" (where Elvis introduced the vocal stutter to the music pundits), "Heartbreak Hotel," "Mystery Train," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog," "Too Much,""Jailhouse Rock," and "Hard Headed Woman." He called his solo on "Hound Dog" "ancient psychedelia."


title: Scotty Moore

text: During the filming and recording of "Loving You" in Hollywood in early 1957, Moore and Black drove boredom away by jamming with Presley between takes but they usually saw little of Presley, although he stayed only a couple of floors away from them. They grew hurt and resentful at the separation, which they came to perceive as willfully organized.


title: Scotty Moore

text: They did not accompany Presley on the soundtrack recordings for his first movie, "Love Me Tender", because 20th Century Fox had refused to allow him to use his own band, with the excuse that the band could not play country. By December 1956, they were experiencing financial difficulties because there had been few performances since August. When there were performances, they received $200 a week (US$ in dollars), but only $100 (US$ in dollars) when there were not performing. Moore and his wife were forced to move in with her three sisters and brother-in-law. In an interview with the Memphis "Press-Scimitar" that December, they spoke about their lack of performances and contact with Presley himself. The interview was the vehicle for their announcement that management had given them permission to record an instrumental album of their own, which RCA Victor would release, permission which was needed in order for them appear as a group without Presley.


title: Scotty Moore

text: During Presley's 1957 tour of Canada, the concert promoter Oscar Davis offered to represent them as their manager. Moore and Black, who had seen Presley become a millionaire while they were still earning $200 or $100 a week themselves, were willing to work with Davis but the backing vocalists, the Jordanaires, were not amenable, because they did not trust Davis. They had usually been living off $100 a week since 1956, as has Elvis, however, once Hollywood had been introduced, Presley's salary experienced a dramatic rise, while Moore and Black continued at $100 a week. They only received one raise in two years and with the lack of personal appearances it was getting to be too financially difficult.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Tension hit a breaking point right after the September 1957 sessions for Presley's first Christmas album. Moore and Black had been promised an opportunity to jam with Elvis after the session, on Presley's studio time. Yet when the session was over, they were told to pack up and leave. That same evening, the duo wrote a letter of resignation.


title: Scotty Moore

text: They deduced (correctly) the Colonel was working against them. They had been denied virtually all access to Presley and felt as if "they were no longer even permitted to talk to him.” Colonel Parker didn't interfere but RCA Victor executive Steve Sholes, who had little regard for the ability of Presley's band, hoped the separation would be permanent. Back in Memphis, a journalist found out about the split and interviewed the duo. Presley responded to the article with a press statement wishing them good luck, saying things could have been worked out if they had come to him first instead of bringing it to the press. In an accompanying interview, Presley revealed that during the previous two years, people had tried to convince him to get rid of his band so from his point of view he had stayed loyal to them.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Presley was scheduled to appear in Tupelo within the next two weeks and started to audition new musicians. He performed with Hank Garland on guitar and D.J. Fontana's friend, Chuck Wiginton, on bass, but despite their musical ability, it didn't feel the same to him. The week after his Tupelo engagement he hired back Moore and Black on a per diem basis. In the meantime, the duo had played "a miserable two-week engagement at the Dallas State Fair." Moore declared there were no hard feelings, though Presley himself, according to biographer Guralnick, seems to have taken a more melancholic view. One day, Guralnick writes, Presley heard "Jailhouse Rock" on the radio "and declared, 'Elvis Presley and his one-man-band,' with a rueful shake of his head."


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore and the Blue Moon Boys performed (and had additional small walk-on and speaking roles) with Presley in four of his movies ("Loving You", "Jailhouse Rock", "King Creole", and "G.I. Blues") filmed in 1957, 1958, and 1960.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Early in 1958, when Presley was drafted, Moore began working at Fernwood Records and produced a hit record, "Tragedy," for Thomas Wayne Perkins, the brother of Johnny Cash's guitarist Luther Perkins.


title: Scotty Moore

text: In 1960, Moore commenced recording sessions with Presley at RCA Victor and also served as production manager at Sam Phillips Recording Service, which involved supervising all aspects of studio operation. Moore played on such Presley songs as "Fame and Fortune," "Such a Night," "Frankfort Special," "Surrender," "I Feel So Bad," "Rock-a-Hula Baby," "Kiss Me Quick," "Good Luck Charm," "She's Not You," "(You're The) Devil in Disguise," and "Bossa Nova Baby." Moore remained as a guitarist for the majority of the songs recorded after Presley's work was dominated by Hollywood sessions. Moore mostly played rhythm guitar, however, with his last lead guitar work occurring by 1962 with "(You're The) Devil in Disguise." Moore also played on sessions for Roy Orbison (most notably on “Crying”) and others.


title: Scotty Moore

text: In 1964, Moore released a solo album on Epic Records called "The Guitar That Changed the World", played using his Gibson Super 400. Phillips was not unaware of the project., and once he got wind of it, Moore was fired. He reunited with Fontana and Presley for the NBC television special known as the "'68 Comeback Special", again with his Gibson Super 400, which was also played by Presley. This special was the last time these musicians would play with Presley, and for Moore, it was the last time he ever saw him.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore's playing on his Gibson with his unique finger-picking style using a thumbpick, as on the Sun and early RCA Victor recordings, represented a move of the Chet Atkins style into a more rockabilly mode.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Of Presley's first single "That's All Right," the critic Dave Marsh wrote that "Moore's guitar—especially the solo—toughens the song up and forces it to rock." Though Marsh credits Presley with introducing "the vocal stutter" on "Baby Let's Play House," Marsh states, "Other than that, it's guitarist Scotty Moore's show and he sets a few precedents of his own." Of the other Sun recordings, Marsh cited the "urgent Scotty Moore guitar lick" as a standout element of "Mystery Train," while "Good Rockin' Tonight" displays his "stinging guitar."


title: Scotty Moore

text: In Marsh's description, the teamwork of Moore and other musicians turned the 1957 single and movie title song "Jailhouse Rock" into an "enduring smash for at least three reasons: the great walking bass, Scotty Moore's invention of power chording, and D.J. Fontana's drumming, which is halfway between strip joint rhumba and the perfect New Orleans shuffle."


title: Scotty Moore

text: On the 1961, post-Army Presley single "Little Sister," "Scotty Moore comes up with his greatest post-Sun guitar lick and not only converts a comparatively humdrum Pomus-Shuman teen love triangle number into the best of Elvis's early sixties hits but (together with D.J. Fontana's heavy-footed thunderation) gives more than a few pointers toward the metallic rock to come." According to Presley discographer Ernst Jorgensen, however, Hank Garland was the lead guitarist on the song, while Moore played acoustic guitar.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore is given credit as a pioneer rock 'n' roll lead guitarist, though he characteristically downplayed his own innovative role in the development of the style. "It had been there for quite a while," recalled Moore. "Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old." Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially... an Elvis Presley construction:" "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country." In "That's All Right," the Presley trio's first record, Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."


title: Scotty Moore

text: Although some lead guitarists and vocalists, such as Chuck Berry and the blues legend BB King, had gained popularity by the 1950s, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, instead providing rhythm guitar and leaving the lead duties to Moore. As a guitarist, Moore was a noticeable presence in Presley's performances despite his introverted demeanor. He became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, including George Harrison, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. While Moore was working on his memoir with co-author James L. Dickerson, Richards told Dickerson, "Everyone else wanted to be Elvis—I wanted to be Scotty." Richards has stated many times (in "Rolling Stone" magazine and in his autobiography, "Life") that he could never figure out how to play the "stop time" break and figure that Moore played on "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" (Sun) and that he hopes it will remain a mystery.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Earlier on, Scotty used a '52 Telecaster, which he traded at the Houck Piano Company in Memphis for the now-iconic gold-colored Gibson ES-295 (nicknamed "The Guitar That Changed the World"). He made some modifications to the guitar, mainly he was unhappy with the Les Paul style bridge, which he replaced with a Melita-Synchro Sonic model with adjustable saddles, which enabled fine-tuning of each string; but this bridge further required a different tailpiece--Scotty opted for a Kluson trapeze model as utilized by Gibson on the ES-125. This is the guitar heard on all but the later Sun sessions with Elvis. In July, 1955, Scotty traded this guitar for a blonde-finish 1954 Gibson L-5 CESN, with which he recorded the last Sun sessions (including "Mystery Train"), as well as several RCA cuts, and in 1957 he switched to a Gibson Super 400. This Super 400 was the guitar heard on "Jailhouse Rock", "King Creole", as well as the earlier post-army sessions.


title: Scotty Moore

text: One of the key pieces of equipment in Moore's sound on many of the recordings with Presley, besides his guitars, was the Ray Butts EchoSonic, first used by Chet Atkins, a guitar amplifier with a tape echo built in, which allowed him to take his trademark slapback echo on the road. It is important to note, however, that this amplifier was not used until 1955--which means that the earlier Sun sessions (including "That's All Right Mama") were not recorded with this amplifier.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Moore had to give up playing guitar a few years before his death because of arthritis. Quite likely his last appearance on a recording came as a guest on the 2011 album "61 & 49" by the Mike Eldred Trio. That group's leader, guitarist Mike Eldred, had been a friend of Moore's since the early 1990s. As a member of Lee Rocker's Big Blue, Eldred also helped bring Moore (then semi-retired) aboard as a guest on that group's first album.


title: Scotty Moore

text: Scotty Moore co-wrote the songs "My Kind of Carrying On" and "Now She Cares No More" which were released as Sun 202 on Sun Records in 1954 when he was a member of the group Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers with Bill Black as the double bass player. He co-wrote the instrumental "Have Guitar Will Travel" in 1958 with Bill Black, which was released as a 45 single, 107, on the Fernwood Records label.


title: Scotty Moore

text: For his pioneering contribution, Moore has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2000, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Glyptodon

text: Glyptodon (from Greek for 'grooved or carved tooth': γλυπτός 'sculptured' and ὀδοντ-, ὀδούς 'tooth') is a genus of glyptodont (an extinct group of large, herbivorous armadillos) that lived from the Pleistocene, around 2.5 million years ago, to the Early Holocene, around 11,000 years ago, in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. It was the first named extinct cingulate and is the type genus of Glyptodontinae, and, or, Glyptodontinae. Many species have been named for the genus, though few are considered valid, and it is one of, if not the, best known genus of glyptodont. Hundreds of specimens have been referred to the genus, but the holotype, or name specimen, of the type species, "G. clavipes", was described in 1839 by notable British paleontologist Sir Richard Owen. It was roughly the same size and weight as a Volkswagen Beetle, 800–840 kg (1,760–1,850 lb). With its rounded, bony shell and squat limbs, it superficially resembled a turtle, and the much earlier dinosaurian ankylosaur – providing an example of the convergent evolution of unrelated lineages into similar forms. In 2016 an analysis of "Doedicurus" mtDNA found it was, in fact, nested within the modern armadillos as the sister group of a clade consisting of Chlamyphorinae and Tolypeutinae. For this reason, glyptodonts and all armadillos but "Dasypus" were relocated to a new family, Chlamyphoridae, and glyptodonts were demoted from the former family Glyptodontidae to a subfamily.


title: Glyptodon

text: The first, and for a long time the only, fossil brought to Europe was described in the 1823 first edition of Cuvier's "Ossemens Fossiles" as belonging to "Megatherium", a type of giant ground sloth. Cuvier said that the genus was loricated, had a protective shell or plates. It was briefly mentioned in a letter from Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga. He had found "a femur... It was about seven pounds, and maybe six or eight inches wide", as well as part of a tail. A man named Sellow found some carapace plates in three-foot deep clay in Uruguay four years later. That discovery only made the professors even more certain that the discoveries were of "Megatherium", since the bones of this prehistoric giant sloth were usually found in similar conditions.


title: Glyptodon

text: In 1831 the diplomat Woodbine Parish at Buenos Ayres was shown fossil bones found in the Salado River, and recognised that they matched the description of ""Megatherium"". He arranged a search which found fossil skeletons at two more locations, each accompanied by "an immense shell, or case", and sent these fossils to Britain. William Clift described the skeletons in a June 1832 paper, but most of the bones associated with the shell crumbled before being examined. In a lecture to the British Association later that month, William Buckland commented on their "coat of mail like the armadillos, which also obtain their food by the act of continual digging in the ground".


title: Glyptodon

text: In September 1832 the "Beagle" survey stopped for a while at Punta Alta in the Buenos Ayres area, and Charles Darwin collected fossils. On 8 October he found a jawbone and tooth which he identified as "Megatherium" from Bory de Saint-Vincent's "Dictionnaire classique", and a large surface of polygonal plates of bony armour. He immediately thought this was from an enormous armadillo, but was persuaded otherwise by Cuvier's misleading description and a newspaper report about Parish's specimens.


title: Glyptodon

text: Some believed that the armor resembled that of the modern armadillo, but the popular opinion was the "Megatherium" theory. It was not until Professor E. D’Alton wrote a memoir to the Berlin Academy in 1833 comparing the extreme similarities of these mysterious fossils to that of the armadillo, that the scientific world seriously considered that the pieces of carapaces and fragments of bone could belong to some prehistoric version of "Dasypus". D’Alton said that "all the peculiarities of the former ["Dasypus"] may be paralleled to the latter [fossil pieces]" He concluded that the fossils belonged to some prehistoric version of an armadillo. However, since a full skeleton was not available at the time, he said that his idea was not conclusive. This uncertainty in the fossil remains continued until a man named Dr. Lund identified the remains as a new genus in his 1837 memoir.


title: Glyptodon

text: When scholars first acknowledged the genus "Glyptodon", there was not a consensus on its name. In 1837 Dr. Lund, a professor who wrote a memoir on Brazil's ancient fauna, suggested these creatures be recognized as the new genus "Hoplophorus". In 1838, another scientist, Professor Bronn, published in the second edition of his book "Lethaea Geognostica" a proposal for the new genus to be called "Chlamydotherium". In Professor D’Alton's 1839 memoir, it was called "Pachypus". The director at the Museum of Natural History in Dijon at the time, M.L. Nodot, had named the genus "Schistopleuron".


title: Glyptodon

text: It was finally given a single name when English scholar Richard Owen noticed the similarities of the genera his colleagues were describing in their publications. Owen realized they were all the same genus from their depictions, from carapace to tooth structure. He decided on "Glyptodon", which means "grooved or carved tooth". The name was originally coined by Sir Woodbine Parish, the man who had sent some "Glyptodon" fossils to Europe. Those fragments of carapace and bones he sent had been heavily studied at the time and had assisted in the recognition of the new genus.


title: Glyptodon

text: After unifying the name of this genus, Owen continued working on its taxonomy. In 1845, after analyzing the fossils of his colleagues, he named four species within the genus: "G. clavipes", "G. reticulatus", "G. ornatus", and "G. tuberculatus". "G. clavipes" is considered the type species of "Glyptodon" and "G. reticulatus" is a valid species of "Glyptodon", but "G. ornatus" is now the type species of "Neosclerocalyptus" and "G. tuberculatus" was moved to the genus "Panochthus."


title: Glyptodon

text: In 1888, Edward Cope reported the discovery of a dermal scute from a Glyptodont from southern Texas and named it "Glyptodon petaliferus""." The fossil was the first of its kind from north of Mexico, but the name was declared a nomen nudum and the scute was referred to "Glyptotherium".


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" is part of the superorder of placental mammals known as Xenarthra. This clade of mammals also includes anteaters, tree sloths, armadillos, and extinct ground sloths and pampatheres.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" originated in South America. Their remains have been found in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Of the "Glyptodon" species attributed to remains discovered in Brazil, "G. clavipes" had the largest range. Its distribution includes north, northeast, and southeast Brazil. "G. reticulatus" remains have only been found in southern Brazil.


title: Glyptodon

text: Due to poor morphological and taxonomic understanding, many of the species of the genus and their ranges have not been identified. Countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay and western Uruguay have been recently discovered to have been inhabited by members of Glyptodontidae. Material previously assigned to "Glyptodon" in northeast Brazil has been reassigned to "Glyptotherium", restricting the distribution of "Glyptodon" to the southern region of Brazil. However, two osteoderms with characteristics similar to those of "Glyptodon" have been recently found in Sergipe state in the northeast, suggesting that both genera occurred in this region during the Pleistocene.


title: Glyptodon

text: The environments range from forested areas, sub-forested, to warm and humid, while some have become accustomed to open, cold areas where grasslands are the most common. The occurrence of the genus has also been observed in the southwestern part of the Amazon basin, which suggests that the wide diversity of the genus was due to the diverse climates within its range.


title: Glyptodon

text: During the Great American Interchange, a set of migrations that occurred after North and South America were connected by the rising of the volcanic Isthmus of Panama, "Glyptodon" migrated into Central America as far as Guatemala. A closely related genus, "Glyptotherium", reached the southern region of the modern U.S. about 2.5 million years ago.


title: Glyptodon

text: Two main groups of glyptodonts can be distinguished by their feeding habits. Smaller-sized early Miocene propalaehoplophorids had narrow muzzles, while larger post-Miocene glyptodonts developed wider muzzles. The smaller glyptodonts were selective feeders, while the larger glyptodonts were bulk feeders. However, because of their body form and fusion of the cervical vertebrae, all members of "Glyptodon" would have needed to forage near the ground. Their craniomandibular joint limited their jaw to side-to-side movement.


title: Glyptodon

text: The feeding habits of "Glyptodon", based on their jaw morphology, were herbivorous. "Glyptodon" had an "elaboration of the osteodentine ridges in their jaw that provided an effective grinding mill, causing the food particles to be pushed and sheared through constant motion of the mandible, allowing "Glyptodon" to consume their dietary needs." They had a well-developed snout musculature, along with a mobile neck region that helped them secure food.


title: Glyptodon

text: Like most other xenarthrans, glyptodonts had lower energy requirements than most other mammals. They could survive with lower intake rates than other herbivores with similar mass.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" grazed near water sources such as rivers and lakes. Based on stable isotope analysis, it is evident that its diet consisted primarily of dicotyledonous trees and monocotyledonous grasses.


title: Glyptodon

text: Glyptodonts are believed to have taken part in intraspecific fighting. Zoologists presume that since the tail of "Glyptodon" was very flexible and had rings of bony plates, it was used as a weapon in fights. Although its tail could be used for defense against predators, evidence suggests that the tail of "Glyptodon" was primarily for attacks on its own kind. A "G. reticulatus" fossil displays damage done on the surface of its carapace. A group of zoologists calculated the amount of force required to break the carapace of "Glyptodon". The calculation showed that "Glyptodon" tails would be able to break the carapace. "Glyptodon" likely fought each other to settle territorial or mating disputes, much like male-to-male fighting among deer using their antlers.


title: Glyptodon

text: The nasal passage was reduced with heavy muscle attachments for some unknown purpose. Some have speculated that the muscle attachments were for a proboscis, or trunk, much like that of a tapir or elephant. The lower jaws were very deep and helped support massive chewing muscles to help chew coarse fibrous plants. Teeth resembled those of an armadillo, but were fluted on each side by deep grooves. The anterior teeth were compressed, while the posterior teeth were cylindrical. A distinctive bar of bone projects downwards on the cheek, extending over the lower jaw, perhaps providing an anchor for powerful snout muscles. Another suggestion, made by A.E. Zurita and colleagues, is that the large nasal sinuses could be correlated with the cold arid climate of Pleistocene South America.


title: Glyptodon

text: Before the Pleistocene, "Glyptodon’"s osteoderms were attached by syntoses and were found in double or triple rows on the front and sides of the carapace's edges, as well as in the tail armor and cephalic shield. The carapace's osteoderms were conical with a rounded point, while the ones on the tail were just conical. The sulci between these raised structures were deep and wide with parallel lines.


title: Glyptodon

text: In the early 2000s, the presence of osteoderms on "Glyptodon"’s face, hind legs, and underside was confirmed in several species. The fossils with these characteristics were from the Pleistocene. These small to medium-sized ossicles were actually embedded in the dermis and did not connect in a pattern.


title: Glyptodon

text: The appearance of this new trait coincides with the arrival of North American predators in South America as part of the Great American Interchange, after the two continents became connected about three million years ago. For this reason, some scientists hypothesize that the osteoderms developed as a defensive/offensive mechanism. This belief is furthered by the discovery of fractured dorsal armor, which implies that "Glyptodon" had been in physical conflict with other species.


title: Glyptodon

text: It was covered by a protective shell composed of more than 1,000 2.5 cm-thick bony plates, called "osteoderms" or "scutes". Each species of glyptodont had its own unique osteoderm pattern and shell type. With this protection, they were armored like turtles. Unlike most turtles, glyptodonts could not withdraw their heads, but instead had a bony cap on the top of their skull. Even the tail of "Glyptodon" had a ring of bones for protection. Such a massive shell needed considerable support, evidenced by features such as fused vertebrae, short but massive limbs, and a broad shoulder girdle.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon clavipes" had a tail covered in free bony rings of dermal structures that made for a strong, flexible, and mobile appendix. This enabled it to use the muscles along its tail to powerfully swing it. (The rings in other glyptodonts' tails were fused together, making the tail a single piece of rigid bone; an example of this is "Doedicurus".)


title: Glyptodon

text: The accessory ring, or caudal ring 1 has a short double row of small scutes. The proximal row has several small pentagonal scutes; the distal row includes more large pentagonal scutes than the caudal row. The scutes on the proximal row have convex shape, and each scute supports a pair of hair follicles. Ring 2 is the first complete caudal ring and it is the largest ring. It is consisted of two complete rows of firmly sutured scutes. The distal/ending scutes are larger, and their free margins are rounded producing a fanlike shape. Ring 3, the second complete ring, is almost the same as ring 2 except the smaller size and some of the scutes at the ending row reach the proximal margin, crowding the proximal scutes and making the proximal row incomplete despite the same number of 20 scutes in both rows. Rings 4–10 have decreasing diameters and increasing maximum length at the back (from 4 to 10). The rings have double rows, and have decreasing number of scutes in each row from ring 4 to ring 10.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" may have used their tails in competition for resources and also as an ornament when competing for sexual partners.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" had thirteen consecutive vertebrae. Four of the thirteen anterior vertebrae are so close together that they are barely discernible. The other vertebrae are connected by sutures, which become farther apart the closer they are to the posterior. Each centrum is a thin bony plate that curves in such a way that that forms a hollow cylinder. The cylinder in the vertebrae is much larger in diameter near the front rather than the hinder vertebrae. The foremost vertebra is as wide as the posterior part of the trivertebral bone; the following vertebrae narrow rapidly until the fourth vertebra, which is no more than three-fifths as wide as the first.


title: Glyptodon

text: Rod monochromacy is a rare condition characterized by the absence of cone photoreceptor cells in the eyes of vertebrates. It results in colorblindness and low acuity vision in dim-light conditions and blindness in bright-light conditions. Xenarthrans most likely only used vision at night, during twilight, and while in burrows. However, the understory of South America's rainforests may have been dark enough during the day to facilitate limited vision for species that dwelled there. Extinct glyptodonts' tough carapace and large body size might have compensated for their inability to see approaching predators.


title: Glyptodon

text: "Glyptodon" may have been preyed upon by animals such as the saber-toothed cats "Smilodon" and "Homotherium", the giant short-faced bear "Arctotherium", dire wolves and terror birds.


title: Glyptodon

text: The evidence for predation on glyptodonts by humans is very scarce, limited to a Pliocene skull ("Glyptotherium") in North America and some latest Pleistocene-early Holocene specimens in South America, with signs of human consumption.


title: Glyptodon

text: Some evidence suggests that humans drove glyptodonts to extinction. Hunters may have used the shells of dead animals as shelters in inclement weather. Evidence from the Campo Laborde and La Moderna archaeological sites in the Argentine Pampas suggests that "Glyptodon"'s relative "Doedicurus" and another glyptodont survived until the Early Holocene, coexisting with humans for a minimum of 4,000 years. This overlap provides support for models showing the South American Pleistocene extinctions resulted from a combination of climatic change and anthropogenic causes. These sites have been interpreted as ones used for butchering of megafauna ("Megatherium" and "Doedicurus"); however, some of the chronology has been problematic and controversial, due to poor preservation of the collagen used for dating.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Manhunt is a stealth video game series developed by Rockstar North, as well as several other Rockstar studios, and published by Rockstar Games. The series began in 2003 with the release of "Manhunt", and concluded in 2007 with "Manhunt 2". The name of the series and its games are derived from the term "manhunt" as used in law enforcement, where it refers to an intensive search for a dangerous fugitive. As of 26 March 2008, the "Manhunt" franchise has sold 1.7 million copies worldwide.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The gameplay consists of a mixture of stealth and psychological horror elements played from a third-person perspective, and has gained controversy for its graphic violence. The games are in a form of an anthology series like many other Rockstar games, and so the plots of the two games are unrelated. Both games focus on protagonists with dark pasts, who must attempt to escape from a particularly dangerous and perverse situation. The antagonist in each game is a character who has betrayed the protagonist, but over whom they exert a great degree of control and trust.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The individual stages of each "Manhunt" installment are typically referred to in a way that relates to the game's plot. In the first game, stages are called "scenes," which relates to the snuff film in which the protagonist is forced to participate. In the second game, stages are called "episodes," relating to the mental state and experiences of the protagonist, an escaped mental patient. In this vein, the gameplay itself in "Manhunt 2" is referred to as "treatment" (for example, instead of a "Load Game" option from the main menu, the option is "Continue Treatment"). Players survive the stages by dispatching enemies occasionally with firearms, but primarily by stealthily executing them, often in bloody over-the-top ways. In order to carry out executions, the player must approach an enemy from behind, undetected. To facilitate this, each stage in both games is full of "dark spots" (shadows where the player can hide). Enemies cannot see into the shadows (unless they see the player actually entering the area). A standard technique in both games is to hide in the shadows and tap a wall to attract the attention of a nearby enemy. When he has examined the area and is moving away, the player can emerge from the shadows behind him, and execute him.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: In the first game, at the end of each scene, the player is graded based on their performance, and awarded one to five stars. Unlockable content becomes available only when the player achieves three or more stars on a certain number of levels. On normal difficulty (called "Fetish"), the player can earn only four stars; one is awarded for completing the scene under a certain amount of time, and one to three stars are awarded based on the brutality of the executions carried out during the scene. On hard difficulty (called "Hardcore"), the player is graded out of five stars; one for speed, one to three for brutality and one for simply completing the scene. To gain the maximum number of stars, a set number of particularly brutal executions must be carried out over the course of each scene; face-to-face fighting does not award stars. The rating system was dropped from the sequel.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Both games feature three 'levels' of execution, with each level progressively more violent and graphic than the last. Level 1 executions are quick and not very bloody, Level 2 are considerably more gory, and Level 3 are over-the-top blood-soaked murders. The player controls which level they use; once the player has locked onto an enemy, the lock-on reticule changes color over time to indicate the level: white (level 1), yellow (level 2), and, finally, red (level 3). As an example, in the first game, if using the plastic bag, a level 1 kill involves the player simply using the bag to suffocate the enemy. A level 2 kill involves placing the bag over the enemy's head and kneeing them repeatedly in the face. A level 3 kill sees the player strangle the enemy and turn them around to punch them in the face, whilst the enemy struggles and gasps for air, until the player snaps the enemy's neck. For the sequel, although the basic gameplay remained the same, numerous changes were made to the mechanics. For example, players were given more choices in terms of executing enemies. As well as the three levels of execution per weapon, players could also use firearms for executions. Two further additions to the execution system were "environmental executions" whereby the player could use elements of the game world (such as manhole covers, telephones, fuse boxes, toilets etc.) to eliminate opponents, and "jump executions" whereby players can attack enemies from above by leaping off a ledge.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The shadow system in the second game was also tweaked. In "Manhunt", unless a hunter saw a player enter a shadow area, he would be unable to detect the player within it. In "Manhunt 2" however, enemy AI was expanded, with some enemies more vigilant than others. When hiding in the shadows, if an enemy investigates the area, the player may have to mimic a combination of buttons or motions (similar to that of a quick time event), in order to regulate the character's breathing so as to ensure that he remains calm and undetected. In the Wii version, the player must hold the controller completely still. In the PC version, the player must keep the cursor inside an on-screen circle. Climbing and crawling were also added to the game to increase the sense of exploration. Another new feature was the ability to smash lights so as to create extra pockets of shadow.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Over the course of both games, the player can use a wide variety of weapons, including plastic bags, baseball bats, crowbars and a variety of bladed items. Later, firearms become available in each game. If the player is running low on health, painkillers are available throughout each stage. In the first game, the player also has a stamina meter which depletes during sprinting, but automatically replenishes while standing still.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt" is set in Carcer City, "Manhunt 2" in Cottonmouth. Both cities exist within the same fictional universe as "Bully" and the "Grand Theft Auto" series. Both games take place in particularly dangerous areas of the city, sometimes to the extent that the area has been wholly abandoned, and subsequently populated by criminals and corruption, whilst cordoned off from the rest of the city. These cities are full of different gangs, distinguishable by their group's trademark outfits, which serve to differentiate them from other gangs. These gangs range from small-time petty criminals to powerful organized syndicates.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt" tells the story of James Earl Cash, a supposedly executed death row inmate who is forced to participate in a series of snuff films for a former film producer turned underground snuff director.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt 2" tells the story of Daniel Lamb and Leo Kasper, two inmates who escape from Dixmor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The game follows them as they try to put together Daniel's past, all the while being hunted by members of a mysterious group known as "The Project".


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt 2" was originally scheduled for a North American and European release in July 2007, but the game was suspended by Take-Two (Rockstar's parent company) when it was refused classification in the United Kingdom, Italy and Ireland, and given an Adults Only (AO) rating in the United States. As neither Sony nor Nintendo allow AO titles on their systems, this effectively meant the game was banned in the US. In response to this, Rockstar edited the game, blurring the screen during the game's executions and removing the scoring system. This edited version was given an M rating by the ESRB and was released in the US on 29 October 2007. The uncensored version would later be released on PC. However, the BBFC refused to classify the edited version for the UK market. Rockstar appealed their decision, and ultimately, the Video Appeals Committee voted that the game could be released with an 18 cert.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The "Manhunt" series has been a source of considerable controversy since the release of the original game.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 28 July 2004, "Manhunt" was linked to the murder of Stefan Pakeerah (14) by his friend Warren Leblanc (17), in Leicestershire, England. Initial media reports claimed that police had found a copy of the game in Leblanc's bedroom, seizing it for evidence, and Giselle Pakeerah, the victim's mother, stated "I think that I heard some of Warren's friends say that he was obsessed by this game [...] If he was obsessed by it, it could well be that the boundaries for him became quite hazy." Stefan's father, Patrick, added "they were playing a game called "Manhunt". The way Warren committed the murder this is how the game is set out, killing people using weapons like hammers and knives. There is some connection between the game and what he has done." Patrick continued "The object of "Manhunt" is not just to go out and kill people. It's a point-scoring game where you increase your score depending on how violent the killing is. That explains why Stefan's murder was as horrific as it was. If these games influence kids to go out and kill, then we do not want them in the shops." During the subsequent media coverage, the game was removed from shelves by some vendors, including both UK and international branches of GAME and Dixons. As the media speculated that the game could be banned completely, there was a "significantly increased" demand for it both from retailers and on Internet auction sites.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Shortly after the murder, US attorney Jack Thompson, who has campaigned against violence in video games, claimed that he had written to Rockstar after the game was released, warning them that the nature of the game could inspire copycat killings, but had been ignored. Soon thereafter, the Pakeerah family hired Thompson with the aim of suing Sony and Rockstar for £50 million in a wrongful death claim. However, on the same day that Thompson was hired, the police officially denied any link between the game and the murder, citing drug-related robbery as the motive, and revealing that the game that had been found in Pakeerah's bedroom was not Leblanc's, as originally reported. The presiding judge during the trial also placed sole responsibility with Leblanc, sentencing him to life. Although the Pakeerahs and Thompson continued to maintain that the game was Leblanc's, their case against Sony and Rockstar was dropped soon thereafter.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Following "Manhunt 2"s announcement on 6 February 2007, Jack Thompson vowed to have the game banned, claiming that the police were incorrect in asserting "Manhunt" had belonged to Pakeerah, and that Take-Two were lying about the incident;


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: [I] have been asked by individuals in the United Kingdom to help stop the distribution of Take-Two/Rockstar's hyperviolent video game "Manhunt 2" in that country due out this summer. The game will feature stealth murder and torture. The last version allowed suffocation of victims with plastic bags. The original "Manhunt" was responsible for the bludgeoning death of a British youth by his friend who obsessively played the game. The killer used a hammer just as in the game he played. Take-Two/Rockstar, anticipating the firestorm of criticism with the release of the murder simulator sequel, is lying to the public on both sides of the pond in stating this week that the game had nothing to do with the murder."


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 10 March, he said that he planned to sue Take-Two/Rockstar in an effort to have both "Manhunt 2" and "Grand Theft Auto IV" banned as "public nuisances." However, on 16 March, Take-Two petitioned U.S. District Court, SD FL to block the impending lawsuit, on the grounds that video games purchased for private entertainment could not be considered public nuisances. The following day, Thompson wrote on his website; "I have been praying, literally, that Take-Two and its lawyers would do something so stupid, that such a misstep would enable me to destroy Take-Two. The pit Take-Two has dug for itself will be patently clear next week when I strike back." On 21 March, Thompson filed a counter-suit, accusing Take-Two of multiple violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as well as a continued effort to violate his constitutional rights, beginning in July 2005. He also accused the Entertainment Software Association, Penny Arcade, IGN, GamePolitics.com, GameSpot, GameSpy, Eurogamer, Kotaku, Blank Rome and the US Justice Department of collaborating and conspiring with Take-Two to commit racketeering activities.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The dispute was ultimately settled before it went to the courts; Thompson agreed not to sue, threaten to sue or attempt to block the sale or distribution of any Take-Two game, and not to communicate to Take-Two or any store selling their games any accusation that they have committed a wrongdoing by doing so. For their part, Take-Two agreed to drop a prior suit accusing Thompson of contempt of court concerning the game "Bully", which he attempted to have banned in 2005.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: However, in a letter dated 8 May, to Wendy's CEO Kerrii Anderson, Thompson demanded that the restaurant drop an upcoming promotion featuring children's toys designed after the Wii games "Excite Truck", "Wii Sports" and "Super Mario Galaxy", because "Manhunt 2" was scheduled for release on the console. An excerpt from Thompson's letter states; "["Manhunt 2"] will feature, according to video game news sites, beheadings with hatchets, bludgeonings with baseball bats, the jamming of syringes into eyeballs, cutting opponents' testicles off, and 'environtmental kills' in which common objects in the field of vision, such as electrical cords to strangle victims . One pro-video game industry site is referring to "Manhunt 2" as a "true murder simulator" when played on Wii. A dear friend of mine worked for Wendy's and with Dave Thomas closely for years. From that I know that Dave Thomas never would have tolerated the use of Wendy's good name to promote Nintendo's Wii, not with this game available on the Wii platform." Wendy's did not respond to Thompson, and continued with their Wii promotion.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: In his final involvement with the game, on 12 May, Thompson sent a letter to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and Florida Governor Charlie Crist which read, in part, "Florida retailers are scheduled to sell a very violent video game called "Manhunt 2" which will be available, remarkably, for "play" on the kids-friendly Nintendo Wii gaming platform. The Wii device does not utilize traditional push button game controllers but instead utilizes hand-held motion capture devices [...] It is a training device." This prompted McCollum to look into the situation. In a 6 June interview on Fox News, McCollum subsequently expressed concerns regarding how "Manhunt 2" utilized the Wii Remote in an interactive manner; for instance, in order to stab someone, the player would have to flick the Remote forward, in much the same fashion one would do when actually stabbing with a knife; when cutting someone's throat, the player would have to move the remote from left to right. The immersive nature of the Wii version would go on to become one of the most controversial aspects of the game.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt" was "refused classification" on 28 September 2004 by the Classification Review Board despite the fact that it had already been on sale for almost a year at the time, having earlier received a classification of 15.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Following a meeting in Toronto on 22 December 2003 between Bill Hastings, the Chief Censor of New Zealand, and officials from the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business Services, "Manhunt" became the first computer game in Ontario to be classified as a film and was restricted to adults on 3 February 2004. The British Columbia Film Classification Office reviewed the game after the controversy in Ontario and deemed the Mature rating by the ESRB to be appropriate.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 19 July 2004, the Amtsgericht in Munich confiscated all versions of "Manhunt" for violation of ("representation of violence"). According to the court, the game, portrays the killing of humans as fun, and the more violent, the more fun the killing is. They also said it glorified vigilantism, which they considered harmful "per se".


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Following the BBFC refusal to rate "Manhunt 2", the IFO followed suit, refusing to classify the game, thus making it illegal to sell it. Their statement read, in part; "A prohibition order has been made by IFCO in relation to the video game "Manhunt 2". The Order was made on 18 June 2007 under Sec 7 (1) (b) of the Video Recordings Act 1989 which refers to "acts of gross violence or cruelty (including mutilation and torture)." IFCO recognizes that in certain films, DVDs and video games, strong graphic violence may be a justifiable element within the overall context of the work. However, in the case of "Manhunt 2", IFCO believes that there is no such context, and the level of gross, unrelenting and gratuitous violence is unacceptable." "Manhunt 2" was the first computer game to be banned in Ireland. A poll of 1000 people undertaken by the IFCO showed that 80% of respondents agreed with the ban.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: In 2007, Italian Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni described "Manhunt 2" as, "cruel and sadistic, with a squalid environment and a continuous, insistent encouragement to violence and murder." The game was subsequently banned.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Despite a request by parliament for the Ministry of Security and Justice to intervene in the release of the game, "Manhunt 2" was sanctioned to be released uncut in the Netherlands, as there was no legal mechanism to block its sale. Rockstar ultimately released the censored version that was released in the US and UK markets, with an 18+ PEGI certificate.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: The first game was banned in New Zealand on 11 December 2003, with possession deemed an offence. Bill Hastings, the Chief Censor, stated "it's a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see [...] You have to at least acquiesce in these murders and possibly tolerate, or even move towards enjoying them, which is injurious to the public good."


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt 2" was also banned; "The computer game "Manhunt 2" was classified [...] as objectionable due to the manner in which it depicts and deals with matters of sex, horror, cruelty and violence. This classification means that it is illegal to import, sell, supply or possess this game in New Zealand."


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: "Manhunt 2" was cleared to be released uncut in Norway, but Rockstar released the censored 18+ PEGI version.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 19 June 2007, "Manhunt 2" was refused classification by the BBFC, meaning it was illegal to sell the game anywhere in the UK. David Cooke, Director of the BBFC, issued a statement, which read, in part;


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board's published Guidelines. In the case of "Manhunt 2" this has not been possible. "Manhunt 2" is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game. Although the difference should not be exaggerated the fact of the game's unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying and the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer, together with the different overall narrative context, contribute towards differentiating this submission from the original "Manhunt" game. That work was classified '18' in 2003, before the BBFC's recent games research had been undertaken, but was already at the very top end of what the Board judged to be acceptable at that category. Against this background, the Board's carefully considered view is that to issue a certificate to "Manhunt 2", on either platform, would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors, within the terms of the Video Recordings Act, and accordingly that its availability, even if statutorily confined to adults, would be unacceptable to the public.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: In light of the BBFC decision (coupled with the ESRB decision to rate the game AO in the US), Rockstar decided to censor the game. The primary alteration was the addition of a blurring effect over executions; during an execution the screen turns red, and flashes black-and-white, making it difficult to see what is happening. Another alteration was the removal of innocent characters from certain levels. Originally, the game was structured in such a way that the player had the choice as to whether or not to kill these characters. If they didn't, they got the "Good Ending", if they did, they got the "Bad Ending". Rockstar also removed the rating system. Originally, the game had a rating system similar to the first game, where the player was rated based on speed and severity of execution types. To achieve a maximum rating, one had to perform a set number of gruesome executions in each level. This rating system was completely removed from the edited version.


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 8 October, the BBFC once again refused to classify the game. David Cooke stated "We recognize that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version. The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient. There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the 'execution kills', but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature. We did make suggestions for further changes to the game, but the distributor has chosen not to make them, and as a result we have rejected the game on both platforms."


title: Manhunt (video game series)

text: On 26 November, Rockstar appealed the BBFC's second decision not to rate the game. On 10 December, the Video Appeals Committee overruled the BBFC by four votes to three. However, on 17 December, the BBFC challenged the VAC decision in the Royal Courts of Justice, claiming that the VAC had overruled them based on a "misinterpretation of the law" as laid out in the Video Recordings Act. This challenge superseded the VAC decision that the game could be classified, and halted any possibility of it going on sale. On 24 January 2008, the BBFC won their case in the High Court and the presiding judge ordered that the same seven member VAC panel review their findings, and whatever decision they reach the second time would stand. The VAC did so, but on 14 March, they returned with the exact same result as the first time - four votes to three in favor of classifying the game. The game was ultimately released on PS2, PSP and Wii on 31 October 2008 with an 18 cert, the same day as the rest of Europe.