Aftermath of the Holocaust: The Nuremberg Trials

Aftermath of the Holocaust: The Nuremberg Trials

Aftermath of the Holocaust: The Nuremberg Trials

The invasion of France by the Allied forces in June 6, 1944 by the Allied forces marked the quest to end Hitler’s rule. This was a mission sparked by the extermination of over six million Jews by Hitler’s regime.  Majdanek in Poland was the first concentration camp to be freed by the Russian forces. The experience by the troops is vividly recorded in History as one of a Kind. It was followed by a year of unimaginable horror as the other camps were liberated one by one. The survivors of the Holocaust were left to deal with severe psychological issues due to the kind of terror they endured during the genocide. Disease in camps, anti-Semitism and the ruin of families and communities was common in each of the concentration camps.

The end of Hitler’s era necessitated the creation of a Jewish state hence the birth of Israel as a nation in May of 1948.  With the end of the Holocaust, the next step was strategizing on punishing the criminal who had actualized the worst genocide in History hence the Nuremberg Trial. This paper seeks to investigate the kind of life the survivors of the Holocaust had to come to terms with. The paper will extensively address the causes and the effects of the Holocaust. It will further inform on the methods used to try the criminals in the Nuremberg trials. “The battle of the Bulge was Hitler’s desperate attempt to defeat the Allied forces. It was a fierce and bloody battle where Hitler attempted to drive a wedge between the British and the American armies.

As fate would have it there was no clear victor in world war two most fierce battles.  Hitler however, accumulated heavy losses that were irreconcilable.” ² This led to Nazi attempting to move the Jews to some of the central camps like Belsaen, while at it they also tried to cover what they had done. In January, camp Auschwitz was abandoned with many prisoners in it. “This period was marked by more deaths as some were struck by strays of allied bombs or caught in crossfire between the two sides and others were killed by the Nazis if they didn’t have the strength to move at their pace.” ³ The liberation efforts were chaotic and bloody and by April 1944 there was light at the end of the tunnel as Adolf Hitler and some of his trusted men went into hiding. The Nazi leaders also started fleeing Berlin as the Allied forces were surrounding the city. Hitler shot himself on April 30 and as per his own orders, his body burned.

It is worth noting that during the Holocaust the Jews were not the only victims rather cruelty of the Nazi was felt in every locality they ruled. Their rule was characterised by torture and unwarranted killings.  Unarmed civilians were shot at their pleasure while starvation was used to kill several million Russian prisoners of war. It was a regime that had no respect to diversity and basic human rights. The available statistics indicate that beside the Jews nearly 250,000 gypsies, thousands of mentally and physically handicapped people and even homosexuals were not spared their life. During this period, living to see another day was a luxury so hard to come by as the Nazi used the entire state machinery to implement its obscenity.  The culture and the rules to live by were formulated and enforced by the same callous regime. Those who went contrary to the rules received the Nazi justice, which was an end to their life. Families were disintegrated and children left to fend for themselves in the concentration camps. The situation at the concentration camps is alleged to have been worse than that found in most of Africa’s slum dwelling areas.

The Aftermath

“On December 17, 1942 it was agreed by eleven allied governments that the perpetrators of the mass killings of the Jews would be brought to book and hence justice for the survivors.” 6 Even though justice seemed simple, it required that people be punished as per the extent of their crime. This then became a contentious issue as the Nazi had committed the crimes in history, while some alluded to exodus 21:23-24 where penalty was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth  others thought justice in this case could not be simplified like that. The Nuremberg courts had to struggle with the kind of punishment to give the Nazis. Even the though the law states life for life no two lives are the same. As such the court had the task of identifying a middle ground between simple and legal justice. “The court was made up of four judges and four teams of attorneys from all the Allied nations, which were France, Britain, and the United States.”7 The complexity of the trial was indeed one that demanded so many considerations. The first major task at Nuremberg was determining who should be tried and who should not. Hitler would have been first on trial but he had taken his own life this left the court with the top Nazi leaders who had been captured by the Allies. The military tribunal consulted widely and decided to try twenty-four nazi party leaders. The tribunal took the responsibility of hiring well-respected lawyers to defend the Nazi party leaders.

The prosecution aimed at proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the Nazi had planned the killing of millions with no justified reason. Some of the perpetrators such as Hans Frank, Herman Goering, Joachim von Ribbenstrop, Albert Speer to mention but a few were accused of planning to conquer the world if they could. To prove their theory the prosecution availed witnesses and written documents that told the Holocaust. This presented the defence with a difficult task as there was far too much evidence displaying and affirming that the Holocaust was planned. The defence hence chose to attack the Tribunal claiming that it had no legal authority to try the said cases. The defence insisted that the Allies were using the court as a means to an end. Further, it claimed that the Allies had no justification to the execution of individual Nazis whereas the guilty party was the government of Nazi Germany.  The court reacted to this by insisting that the international law could impose sentences upon guilty individual and states. The Nuremberg trial led to the birth of moral history, which accentuates the fact that one should be responsible for his or her own actions whether in times of war or peace as long as one is psychologically fit.

End of the Nuremberg Trials

The trial was one of a kind complex and long.  It went on for a period of one year, and followed by dozens of other minor trials still on Nazi criminals. The types of cases varied from members of ghettos and gangs in the camps to those of doctors who had tried to experiment on Jews without their consent. After the liberation and the trial, the survivors of the war were still a vulnerable lot. They were liberated from the war and later exposed to varied societal reaction, which was daunting task for the survivors. Repression, indifference and denial best describe what they had to live with.” Their accounts and tales of their experiences often led to their dismissal, as they were too horrifying to be true. Like other victims of war, they were urged to let the bygone be bygones.”  This only led to their suffering in silence, as no one could understand their predicament or indeed bury the past in their minds. This led for most of the survivors to withdraw completely into their new environments. This deprived them of the normal familial generations.

The methodology used by the Nuremberg trial was one based on documentary evidence. This decision minimized the participation of survivors in the trial. This led to the lack of full comprehension on perspectives of the Jewish massacre. The decision was justified the fact that the court was aiming for the best judicial methodology. This has however been criticized and accused of contributing to the conspiracy of silence which ahs negatively affected the survivors. The victims were denied a chance to heal and instead were integrated to a world with a lacking sense of justice to them. Their sufferings left them as psychological misfits who only had themselves for encouragement and hope. The court deliberately delineated survivor needs and concerns as they apply on the justice arenas. The ultimate goal of the court to seek justice was insensitive to the survivors’ perception of justice.

The trial evoked different opinions from the countries involved. This is because the court was used as an avenue to hull insults and accusations amongst themselves. Germany disputed the court terming the trial as illegal. She further sought to justify her action and even seek some international sympathy by trying to change the public opinions.  The British argued that the trial would make some of the accused to assume the title of martyrs, which would water down its goal. The United States responded by supporting the trial saying that it would build a historic record and further consolidate legal international standard. The trial would further act as a warning to future leaders on overstepping the rule of law of government. The French actors agreed to the concept of justice rooted within humankind’s conscience. This was in line with the French legal doctrine of the 1930s, which was conceptualised on ethics and force. All the Allied forces agreed on the fact the Nuremberg trial was a logical necessity in the context of institutionalised society of nations.

“The Nuremberg trial led to the paradoxical adoption of crimes against humanity. This is because the main count presented to the court was crimes against peace. Crimes against humanity as a count were secondary to the former.” 8 This affirms the opinion that the reasoning applied during the trail was crimes against peace not crimes against humanity. The fact the Nuremberg court overlooked crimes against humanity is the reason why this came to be known as the Nuremberg legacy. Political and economic concerns were the reasons behind many Europeans unwillingness to deal with the moral aspects of the Holocaust. The result was hence millions of survivors going back to their communities to find their homes in possession of others and yet no resolve at all to demand their property back. It is in record that several governments advised the Holocaust survivors not to claim their property much less take action on it. “The ill interests of some parties to keep the Jewish properties hindered a full healing process to the survivors.” 5 They resulted to suffering in silence rather evoke an immediate post war period after their immense suffering. Internationally it served some countries right as they had economic interests in the countries that had been occupied by the Germans. This resulted to different reactions of the countries after the Holocaust. This post Holocaust reaction has proved that the issue of anti-Semitism can not be resolved by an international military tribunal as it was previously thought.

Eichmann Trial

This trial broke the near silence of the Holocaust in 1961. The Israeli government with the aim of having education impacts structured it. It revealed the level of ignorance the world had succumbed to after the Nuremberg trials.  These trials uncovered the terrible happenings of the Jewish killings from all the angles that the former had overlooked. The sensitive questions about the Holocaust was dealt in depth in Israel but lacked the world interest due to politics. The fall of communism and end of soviet rule renewed the perspectives of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. However, the rehabilitation at this time was a little too late. The media only served to inform the world of the mass killings and how the Nazis conducted them. It was then evident that except for the victims and the perpetrators the world was awfully in quite when mass killings of the Jews were being conducted. The trial was a revelation to the public who were shocked by the level of brutality that the Nazis proclaimed.

Conclusion

The Nuremberg court led to the Nuremberg legacy, which is widely documented. It arouses different perceptions and raise questions on its methodological tactics. Even though it is difficult to fully appreciate all the contextual factors that the court had to consider, it is also evident that there was no collective justice at least no to the survivors. It is evident that there were many inconsistencies in the trial, which led to the definition of new statutes on crimes against humanity. Evidently, the trial also left survivors with massive psychological damage as they were left to tell the tales amongst themselves instead of a jury. It also led to the questioning of the methodology adopted by the court in the quest for justice. “The conspiracy theory of silence acknowledges that indeed the court was wrong in minimizing the participation of survivors in the trial.” 1 I concur with Bloxham opinion that the Nuremberg trials did minimal to change the general public perception on Nazis criminality. Further, the court did no t aid in the healing of the survivors and their successful integration into the society. The inconsistencies in the trial are reason enough to term the judicial processes of the time as flawed and inadequate.

Notes

1. Buckley, William. Nuremberg: the reckoning. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.
2. Gilbert, G. Nuremberg diary. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.
3. Hass, Aaron. The aftermath: living with the Holocaust. Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
4. Hartman, Geoffrey. The longest shadow: in the aftermath of the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
5. Rossel, Seymour. The Holocaust: the world and the Jews, 1933-1945. West Orange, N.J: Behrman House, 1992.
6. Social theory after the Holocaust. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000.
7. Thinking about the Holocaust after half a century. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 1997.
8. Tusa, Ann. The Nuremberg Trial. New York: Sky horse Pub, 2010.