The verdict was drafted by British alternate judge Norman Birkett. Look at the emancipation of woman in my lifetime. [234][235] Further developments in international criminal law in the aftermath of the trials included the Genocide Convention (1948) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). A 103-year-old South Florida man who fought Nazi atrocities as a Nuremberg prosecutor is now the recipient of the Governor's Medal of Freedom. For the past seven years, Stanford Libraries has been working with the Registry of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to obtain a complete digital corpus of the Nuremberg Trial in support of the Virtual Tribunal of the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice. Nearly 75 years ago, the Nuremberg Trial came to a close when on Oct. 1, 1946, a group of convicted Nazi leaders was sentenced by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II and the Holocaust. But Ferencz knew they were guilty and could prove it. Benjamin Ferencz: And I'm still in there fighting. This is Ferencz making his opening statement in the Nuremberg courtroom 73 years ago. Twelve defendants received a death sentence, seven were sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths, and three were acquitted. I hear it here for the first time." [79] Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Gestapo, the SA, the SS and the SD, and the General Staff and High Command of the Wehrmacht. Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. [8][9] On November 1, 1943, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States issued the Moscow Declaration to "give full warning" to the Nazi leadership of the Allies' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earthin order that justice may be done". Cohen is also the WSD-HANDA Professor in Human Rights and International Justice. By submitting the above I agree to the privacy policy and terms of use of JTA.org. [34][35] Located in the American occupation zone, Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site of Nazi rallies. 2021 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. FALSE: "Nuremberg Trial 2" took place due to the atrocities committed against humanity. Benjamin Ferencz: Defendants' face were blank, all the time. [144] Most defendants argued their own insignificance within the Nazi system, but Gring took the opposite approach, presenting himself as Hitler's loyalist and expecting that while he would be executed, the German people would eventually appreciate his loyalty. [87] In France, some verdicts were met with outrage from the media and especially from organizations for deportees and resistance fighters, as they were perceived as too lenient. [179], The exact sentences to be given each defendant were debated at length by the judges. June 27, 2021 / 6:54 PM Fact-checked by: Myth Detector. [6][7] Trainin's ideas were reprinted in the West and widely adopted. By early 1946, Western prosecutors were uneasy about the Katyn charge, although they never publicly rejected it for fear of casting the entire proceedings into question. The SA, the Reich Cabinet, and the General Staff and High Command were not ruled to be criminal organizations. Our aim is to create a resource that enables users to draw on that experience and knowledge in ways that can assist governments, institutions and experts in improving how we achieve accountability for mass atrocity crimes, said Cohen. [47] Although the chief British judge, Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (Lord Justice of Appeal), was the nominal president of the tribunal, in practice Biddle exercised more authority. This March, Ben Ferencz turned 101 and he's still in there fighting. [86] Overall, the prosecution called 37 witnesses compared to the defense's 83, not including 19 defendants who testified on their own behalf. You're not getting very far. FALSE: "Nuremberg Trial 2" took place due to the - Poynter One of America's most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since 1991. Flags from left to right: International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Charter of the International Military Tribunal, List of defendants at the International Military Tribunal, SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, mass expulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe, confrontation with the concentration camps, Journal of International Criminal Justice, "Notre combat pour la paix: la France et le procs de Nuremberg (1945-1946)", "Le procs de Nuremberg: retour sur soixante-dix ans de recherche", "German Participation in the Nuremberg Trials and Its Implications for Today", "Imperfect Justice at Nuremberg and Tokyo", Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Trials), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Special Panels of the Dili District Court, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nuremberg_trials&oldid=1152692054, International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Courts and tribunals disestablished in 1946, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 1 May 2023, at 18:42. For the Tokyo Trial, see. 2023 jewish telegraphic agency all rights reserved. I'm a realist. Benjamin Ferencz: A father who, his son told me the story. I was 27 years old. 40 years on from the Majdanek trial verdict. The film, compiled from footage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, shocked both the defendants and the judges, who adjourned the trial. On This Day: 12 Nazis sentenced to death in the Nuremberg Trials [197] The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with the judgements themselves totaling 3,828 pages. [21] At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existing international customary law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression. more_horiz. Toward the end of the war, because of his legal training, he was transferred to a brand new unit in General Patton's Third Army, created to investigate war crimes. He became the first in his family to go to college, then got a scholarship to Harvard Law School. Exhibit 111: "In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews." She said: "The Nuremberg Code relates to research, where the emphasis of informed consent requirements is on preventing the research participants from being used as a means to an end. The bill was introduced by Reps. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) Complete Nuremberg Trials recordings online for the first time But SLS scholars argue that Native people profoundly shaped the conversation. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. So you do it.". We've had genocide since then. [68] Most of the defendants had surrendered to the United States or United Kingdom. [101] He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason". [18], At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States negotiated the exact form that the trial would take. Vaillant Couturier later became a French politician. Well, see here, this-- they rounded 'em up. And he's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Einsatzgruppen D was the unit of Ferencz's lead defendant Otto Ohlendorf. [30] Article 7 prevented the defendants from claiming immunity for their actions under the act of state doctrine,[31] and the plea of acting under superior orders was left for the judges to decide. Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. He didn't deny the killings -- he had the gall to claim they were done in self-defense. [99] According to historian Kim Christian Priemel, the conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute, totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the first victims rather than agents, collaborators, and fellow travellers". [145], Despite the fact that the charter did not recognize a tu quoque defense, such arguments were repeatedly raised during the trial. Digitizing all the records from the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Trial Archives is ongoing. Benjamin Ferencz: And I start screaming. Benjamin Ferencz: Of course. [87][149] United States admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States had used the same methods of submarine warfare that the German admirals were accused of; Dnitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that such actions could not be crimes. [73] Also on trial were propagandists Julius Streicher and Hans Fritzsche; Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy who had flown to Britain in 1941; Hans Frank, governor-general of the General Governorate of Poland; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach; Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands; and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the leader of Himmler's Reich Main Security Office. The trials, conducted at a military tribunal with judges from Allied nations including the Soviet Union, were a seminal milestone in the creation of modern international law in general and the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Lesley Stahl: You don't think they turn into savages even for the act? Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. The New Nuremberg Trials 2021: Update from Dr. Reiner Fuellmich - Minds Radio 4's Nuremberg: the stories behind the Nazi trial that changed The Nuremberg trials were conducted simultaneously in four languages and required the skills of 36 . Nuremburg Trial Courthouse (Nuremberg) - All You Need to - Tripadvisor Lesley Stahl: What was going on inside of you? Lesley Stahl: He's a savage when he does the murder though. [177] In the latter case, the Wehrmacht leadership was not considered an organization within the meaning of the charter;[177][178] but this verdict was later misrepresented as an acquittal of the criminality of the Wehrmacht, forming one of the foundations of the clean Wehrmacht myth. Series of military trials at the end of World War II, This article is about the series of international trials. I know I'm right. [27] Especially the United States wanted to avoid countenancing any rule that would give an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens. Fullmich and his team present the faulty PCR test and the order for doctors to label any comorbidity death as a Covid death as fraud. In 1946, verdicts were handed down in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. [98] Jackson maintained that while the United States did "not seek to convict the whole German people of crime", neither did the trial "serve to absolve the whole German people except 21 men in the dock". Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death (Gring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann). subscribe to Stanford Report. Only one piece of film is known to exist of the Einsatzgruppen at work. When we first reported on him back in 2017, he was 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he had served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial ever. Benjamin Ferencz: Standard routine, nicht schuldig. A team of over 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts lead by Dr. Reiner Fullmich have begun legal proceedings over the CDC, WHO, the Davos Group for crimes against humanity. On Thursday, Florida Gov. [233] In 1950, the International Law Commission drafted the Nuremberg principles to codify international criminal law, although the Cold War prevented the adoption of these principles until the 1990s. Benjamin Ferencz: Going on right this minute, yes. [152] The defendants' witnesses sometimes managed to exculpate them, but other witnessesincluding Rudolf Hss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, and Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the German resistanceeffectively incriminated the defendants. Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, in Des Moines . Innocent lamb. [100], On 21 November, Jackson gave the opening speech for the prosecution. The father had died just as we were entering the camp. Benjamin Ferencz: When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that's more people than you've ever seen in your life, I took a sample. HumansAreFree@HumansAreFree. But the trials were already underway, and prosecution staff was stretched thin. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; and the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million men, women, and children shot in their own towns and villages in cold blood. [14][15] The exact form that retribution would take was left unresolved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. [95] None of the defendants tried to assert that the Nazis' crimes had not occurred; instead, they attempted to divert blame from their own actions. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dnitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent to Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. [172] All 22 defendants were charged with crimes against peace, and 12 were convicted. Ferencz is legendary in the world of international law, and he's still at it. The Nuremberg Trials, 75 Years Later - The Unwritten Record The British worked on putting together the aggressive war charge; the French and Soviet delegations were assigned the task of covering crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on the Western Front and the Eastern Front, respectively. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. [19], The Nuremberg Charter upended the traditional view of international law by holding individuals, rather than states, responsible for breaches of international law. Hitler's top lieutenants were prosecuted first. [116] In contrast to the other prosecution teams, the French prosecution emphasized how Nazi ideology and pan-Germanism had led to the Nazis' crimes, and delved into the Sonderweg theory of Germany's development in the nineteenth century. Nothing new ever happened before. So he finished at Harvard then enlisted as a private in the Army. There's the rabbi coming along there. I said, "Look. 27-year-old Ben Ferencz became the chief prosecutor of 22 Einsatzgruppen commanders at Nuremberg. Lesley Stahl: Did you look at the defendants' faces? [169][170] The judges did not agree that the conspiracy extended to anyone who participated in the affairs of the Nazi government, only taking being present at the high-level meetings discussing war plans in 1937 and 1939 as evidence of belonging to the conspiracy. The Doctors' Trial was one of 13 proceedings. People receiving the COVID-19 vaccines at this point are not taking part in a medical experiment, because the vaccines already have gone through clinical trials and have received emergency . War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. The speech was favorably received by the prosecution, the tribunal, the audience, historians, and even the defendants. [146][147] Defense lawyer Alfred Seidl[de] repeatedly tried to disclose the secret protocols of the GermanSoviet pact. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. By SIMCHA PASKO 01/10/2021 On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Streichers paper was a symbol for how Nazi propaganda methodically dehumanized Jews and used mass media to ready non-Jewish Germans to carry out the Holocaust. [201], At the same time as the Nuremberg Charter was finalized, the Allies also signed the Potsdam Agreement, which provided for the mass expulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe, so that certain acts for which Nazis were convicted at Nuremberg were therefore made an official policy of the Allies. Benjamin Ferencz: I don't think I'm an idealist. (@carolecadwalla) July 24, 2021 J Opacka (@jopackaj) July 24, . [49][48] The French government tried to appoint staff who were not tainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments were of those who had been in the French resistance. 40 years on from the Majdanek trial verdict - DW - 06/29/2021 2021 19:03. [227] The main legal criticisms of the trial focused on questions of retroactivity, selectivity, and jurisdiction. Fact check: Doctors' Trial was one of 13 Nuremberg Trials - USA Today Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, alongside thousands of . [215] Early releases of those convicted by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals began in 1949;[216] and in 1951, High Commissioner John J. McCloy overturned most of the sentences. So the world is changing. The Nuremberg Trials . The New Nuremberg Trials 2021. Be there when human rights changed with 'The World's - Guide [89] Because of the loose evidentiary rules, photographs, charts, maps, and films played an important role in making incredible crimes believable. 03/Jun/2021. 1/6. [124] Paulus incriminated his former associates, pointing to Keitel, Jodl, and Gring as the defendants most responsible for the war. Episode 9 - To Stay the Hand of Vengeance. The New Nuremberg Trials 2021: Update from Dr. Reiner Fue. [38], In early 1946, there were a thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two-thirds were from the United States. You may have given little thought to the role Native Americans played in the creation of the U.S. Constitution. [62] Vyshinsky demanded extensive corrections to the crimes-against-peace charges, especially regarding the role of the GermanSoviet pact in starting World War II. By UPI Staff. This additional collection, to be known as the Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, will allow the public to easily browse and discover the contents of over 5,000 trial records including 250,000 pages of digitized paper documents showing in meticulous detail the efforts of the IMT, a group of representatives from four Allied countries the U.S., the U.K., the Soviet Union and France who were tasked with prosecuting former officials of the Third Reich and holding them accountable for the horrific acts inflicted during World War II and the Holocaust. Judges deliberate at the trials of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany, Jan. 1, 1945. . Lesley Stahl: Going on right this minute in Sudan. He delivered the closing argument in the court's first case. If you are a doctor or a nurse, . View of Nuremberg in 1945. [64] The division of labor, and the haste with which the indictment was prepared, resulted in duplication, imprecise language, and lack of attribution of specific charges to individual defendants. View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. On This Day, Nov. 20: Nuremberg trials begin - UPI.com For Cohen, testimonies in the archive show the lived horror of mass atrocity and violence, which is regretfully still relevant in the world today. Just put 'em in the ditch. Ben Ferencz, last surviving Nuremberg Trials prosecutor, receives And I said, "Sure." [84][85] The American prosecution drew on reports of the Office of Strategic Services and information provided by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the American Jewish Committee. [188] The Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes identified 2,500 major war criminals, of whom 177 were tried. A bust of Ferencz was just installed outside that Nuremberg courtroom where he argued almost three-quarters of a century ago. [67] Also prosecuted were leaders of the German economy, such as Gustav Krupp (of the conglomerate Krupp AG), former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, and economic planners Albert Speer and Walther Funk, along with Speer's subordinate and head of the forced labor program, Fritz Sauckel. [80][81] The aim was to have these organizations declared criminal, so that their members could be tried expeditiously for membership in a criminal organization. [119] Unlike the British and American prosecution strategy, which focused on using German documents to make their case, the French prosecutors took the perspective of the victims, submitting postwar police reports and calling eleven witnesses. | Minds. [127] Evidence was presented on the murder of children, attempts to cover up atrocities,[128] systematic plunder of occupied territories, and confiscation or destruction of cultural heritage. Benjamin Ferencz: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Stanford scholars expand digital archive of Nuremberg trial Benjamin Ferencz: Well, I'm still a young man. Gabrielle Karampelas, Stanford Libraries: (650) 497-4414, gkaram@stanford.edu. Benjamin Ferencz: Same thing, not guilty. London Anti-Vaxxer Says Healthcare Workers Face Nuremberg-Style Trials [132][169] Through a compromise among the judges, the charge of conspiracy was narrowed to a conspiracy to wage aggressive war. They're not real. Nuremberg Combo Tour WWII + Old Town. Brigadier General Telford Taylor was Chief of Counsel during the Doctors Trial. One of these-- my defendants said-- He gets up, and he says, "[GERMAN]," which is, "What? The judgement argued that aggressive war had already been illegal, even if no one had been punished for it, and therefore the German leaders could not count on immunity from prosecution. [83] The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors, as the latter was considered less reliable and more liable to accusations of bias, but at the expense of reducing public interest in the proceedings. Many of the worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons. Lesley Stahl: Now, you've been at this for 50 years, if not more. The United States and the United Kingdom refused to endorse this proposal, citing the failure of war crimes prosecutions after World War I. 27 Aug 2021. He was proud of that. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite--. Fish contaminated with "forever chemicals" found in nearly every state, CBS News Poll: How GOP primary race could be Trump v. Trump fatigue, Missing teens may be among 7 found dead in Oklahoma, authorities say, Gordon Lightfoot, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" singer, dies at age 84, Bob Lee died from three stab wounds, medical examiner says, At least 6 dead after dust storm causes massive pile-up on Illinois highway, Oklahoma governor signs gender-affirming care ban for kids, U.S. tracking high-altitude balloon first spotted off Hawaii, What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know. Streicher was executed in 1946 by hanging along with nine other Nazis, including Hans Frank, the highest-ranking Nazi officer in occupied Poland. For the scholars, what makes the Nuremberg archives particularly captivating is the variety of human narratives that emerges from the variety of documents and transcripts stories that are now easier to find thanks to Stanfords preservation efforts. Because I want peace instead of war.
