bauhauswerk

Dear Coilers, we must not forget history! We have to learn from it! This is the reason for me to remind you about the moment which is one of the greatest importance for all of us to remember...

The FIRST international trials in history started on November 20, 1945 in Nuremberg. The most important Nazi officials faced justice. Among the 21 defendants was Hitler's “right hand”, Hermann Göring.

The Allies had been preparing to punish Nazi war criminals since 1943 and agreed to do it as soon as they were defeated.

Just half a year after the end of World War II, prosecutors from four victorious countries collected 300,000 witnesses’ statements and 6,600 of other evidences.

Nuremberg, a former German imperial city, was in ruins, but the main courtroom and a nearby prison remained intact.

There was also deliberate symbolism because before the war the city was the main scene of mass Nazi parades and marches. In 1935, the infamous racial laws were passed there.

British Judge Geoffrey Lawrence addressed the packed courtroom at 10 am and said, “This trial, which is now to begin, is unique in the annals of jurisprudence.”

U.S. Attorney Robert Jackson was the first to go to court. “The real complaining party at your bar is Civilisation” he said in an introductory address that left a deep impression on the court and the public.

In the dock sat the highest Nazi officials besides Hitler, Joseph Göbbels and Heinrich Himmler, who had committed suicide.

Among them were Göring, the regime's second most powerful figure, Hitler's aid Rudolf Hess, Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, labor camp organizer Fritz Sauckel, former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel.

For the first time in history, crimes against humanity were included in charges.

All the defendants pleaded “Nicht schuldig” (not guilty).

The process was quickly marked by shocking filmed evidence of abuse and killing in Nazi labor camps and death camps.

“Sauckel trembles at the sight of the crematorium oven at Buchenwald. When a lampshade made out of human skin is shown, Julius Streicher, the head of the Nazi propaganda newspaper, Der Stürmer, says: “I do not believe that.”

“Wilhelm Frick (who drew up the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws) shakes his head with an incredulous air, when a doctor describes the treatment and the experiments inflicted on prisoners at Belsen,” adds Gustave M. Gilbert, the prison psychologist during the trial, in his “Nuremberg Diary” published in 1947.

Among the 33 prosecution witnesses, French resistance fighter Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbruück camps, testified about a women who gave birth in the camp and then nazis drowned the newborns in front of her eyes.

“Before addressing the court I walked in front of the accused, very slowly. I wanted to look at them up close, I wanted to know what people, who were capable of such monstrous crimes, looked like.” she said later.

After 218 days of trial, verdicts were handed down on October 1, 1946. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, including one in absentia – Hitler's personal secretary Martin Bormann, who was already dead.

Three were sentenced to life in prison, two to 20 years, and one each to 15 and 10 years.

Three were set free, to the surprise of many, but this preserved the court's reputation as an independent body.

The Nuremberg Trials have not escaped criticism that this is another case of justice for the winners. Prosecutors have turned a blind eye to Soviet crimes, particularly the Katyn Forest massacre in which thousands of Polish officers were killed. There was no mention of a pre-war Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact either.

Death row inmates were hanged sixteen days after the verdict. Göring killed himself a few hours earlier by swallowing a cyanide capsule because he wanted to avoid the gallows, “The death unworthy to a soldier.”

All the bodies were cremated, and the ashes were thrown into the tributaries of the Isar river so that their graves would not become places of pilgrimage for Nazi sympathizers.

REMEMBER NOT TO FORGET!

Thanks for reading,

Srdan