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The Holocaust at Nuremberg
- This article appears in Yad Vashem Studies XXVI
Document Presented at Trial
Podcasts from
International
Conference 19-21/12/2006: "Justice and the Holocaust: Post World
War II Trials, Representation, Awareness and Memory"
During World War II, the Allies and representatives of the exiled
governments of occupied Europe met several times to discuss post-war
treatment of Nazi leadership. In February, 1945 Roosevelt, Churchill
and Stalin met at Yalta, and agreed to prosecute the Axis leaders
after the conclusion of World War II. In August the Allies signed
the London Agreement which enabled an International Military
Tribunal to prosecute war criminals.
The
tribunal of American, Soviet, British and French judges and
prosecutors met in Nuremberg and put on trial senior Nazis accused
of three charges: crimes against peace, war crimes (including
murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor of civilian
population, killing of hostages, plunder of property) and crimes
against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement and
deportation of civilian population.
In
October 19, 1945, the accused individuals were indicted and a year
later in October 1, 1946 the verdicts against them were given.
Eleven of the twenty-one defendants are sentenced to death.
Eleven subsequent trials were held in Nuremberg between 1946 and
1949. In these the Allies tried Nazi physicians, commanders of the
Einsatzgruppen, officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, judges
of the Special Nazi Courts and other other senior members of the
Nazi party.
The
prosecution provided many examples of the unprecedented inhumane
conduct of Nazi Germany. The Americans screened in November 1945 a
film shot by Allied photographers in liberated areas and in February
1946 the Russian prosecutors offered as evidence a 45-minute film,
which included footage from captured German films. Both films
provided graphic detail of Nazi atrocities. In addition, during the
French phase of the prosecution, the French journalist Marie Claude
Vaillant-Courturier provided eyewitness testimony of the brutality
in Auschwitz.
Nazi
Germany's antisemitic policy was discussed by the tribunal in
different occasions. Over 800 documents and more than 30 witnesses
referred to the persecution of the Jews. Among them Yiddish poet
Abraham Sutzkever testified on Jewish suffering in the Vilna ghetto.
In addition, SS officer Dieter Wisliceny and the commandant of
Auschwitz Rudolf Höss testified on the origins of the Final
Solution. The crimes against Jews, however were not separated from
other crimes and Nazi antisemitic policy was seen as motivated by
utilitarian reasons: to achieve political control of German society
and drive a wedge between the government and the population of the
allies’ countries.
By: Professor
David Bankier
Head of the
International Institute for Holocaust Research
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