It’s Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain, and I’m following my personal tradition of reading something about those terrible events on this day every year. This year I’m reading portions of the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials, in which 21 Nazi war criminals were prosecuted for crimes against humanity. The dispassionate way in which some of these men report killing tens of thousands of people at a time turns my stomach.
Today during spare moments I have been reading the opening statement from the prosecution (21 November 1945), a passionate and compelling summary of the indictment which took up quite a few hours on the second day of the trial:
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.
Justice Jackson was right, of course, and their sinister influences do indeed still lurk in the world. I’ve been distraught today by the realisation that on a day when the UK is supposed to remember the brutal consequences of fascism, the Prime Minister is off in America begging favours from a white nationalist government.
The complete official trial proceedings (42 volumes) are available via the Library of Congress here. The opening statement above is in Volume 2.
Dr Eric Silverman 