From Nuremberg to The Hague

Human Face From Nuremberg to The Hague

03/09/2011 - I HAVE always been fascinated by war documentaries, like those on the Nazi era filmed by a woman, Leni Riefenstahl (“Triumph of the Will”), and by soldiers and “embedded” journalists. The ugliness of raw power, the cruelty and suffering as recorded, are enough to make anyone say, “Never again.”

On many of these images many war movies have been based. If you have watched the film “Judgment at Nuremberg” or the latter-day mini-series version, you must have a rough idea what an international trial court is about and must have been shocked by the atrocities committed by human beings against human beings.

The Asia-Pacific Times, a German publication I receive regularly from the German Embassy, recently featured the Nuremberg Trials Memorial. The article (“Justice and a bench”) began with a description of a piece of furniture, the bench on which accused war criminals of the Hitler era sat while they were being tried.

Wrote Klaus Grimberg: “This simple piece of furniture carries a tremendous symbolic power, as if justice and atonement have materialized in the hastily assembled wooden planks.” Among the accused who sat on it were Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess.

The permanent exhibit, the article said, is housed in the Palace of Justice and organized around the legendary Courtroom 600 where the trials conducted by the International Tribunal took place from Nov. 20, 1945 to Oct. 1, 1946.

“The Nuremberg Trials marked the beginning of international criminal law,” Grimberg wrote. “The Nuremberg Principles, established in 1950 by the United Nations, continue to be the foundations of modern international law. There is a straight line leading from Court Room 600 to the International Tribunal in The Hague.” {continued}