The Nuremberg Trials

April 15th is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the world was faced with the challenge of how to seek justice for criminal behavior on such an unimaginable scale. In 1945, the allied powers established an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, to indict and try surviving Nazis for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The first of a series of trials was the trial of 22 prominent Nazis, or major war criminals, who were charged with, among other things, the systematic murder of millions of people. Subsequent trials involved approximately 200 additional defendants, including concentration camp commandants, Nazi physicians who performed experiments on human subjects, and judges who upheld Nazi practices.

For more information, check out the following web sites:

• Famous World Trials - Nuremberg Trials

• Harvard Law School Library Nuremberg Trials Project - Digital Documents Collection

• The Avalon Project - The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

• Truman Presidential Museum & Library - The War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg

or the following items from the library’s collection:

• Judgment at Nuremberg - fictionalized film account inspired by the Judges’ Trial at Nuremberg

books providing first-hand accounts:

• The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir by Telford Taylor

• The Nuremberg Interviews, conducted by Leon Goldensohn, edited by Robert Gellately

• Inside the Nuremberg Trials: A Prosecutor’s Comprehensive Account by Drexel A. Sprecher

J. Fusaris