DOCSLIB.ORG

USHMM Finding

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
USHMM Finding http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Interview with Benjamin B. Ferencz August 26, 1994 and October 21, 1994 RG-50.030*0269 The following transcript is the result of a recorded interview. The recording is the primary source document, not this transcript. It has not been checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy. This document should not be quoted or used without first checking it against the interview. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Information about access and usage rights can be found in the catalog record. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection PREFACE The following oral history testimony is the result of a videotaped interview with Benjamin B. Ferencz conducted by Joan Ringelheim on August 26, 1994 on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The interview took place in New Rochelle, NY, and is part of the United States Holocaust Research Institute's collection of oral testimonies. The reader should bear in mind that this is a verbatim transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. This transcript has been neither checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy, and therefore, it is possible that there are errors. As a result, nothing should be quoted or used from this transcript without first checking it against the taped interview. The following transcript is the result of a recorded interview. The recording is the primary source document, not this transcript. It has not been checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy. This document should not be quoted or used without first checking it against the interview. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Information about access and usage rights can be found in the catalog record. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection BENJAMIN B. FERENCZ August 26, 1994 Q: Hello, Ben. A: Hello, Joan. Q: Can you tell me where you were born and when you were born? A: Well, I can tell you where I was born. I was born in a little village which doesn't appear on any map in Transylvania. And I was born some times in March, but whether it was the 11th or the 13th or the 15th has been subject to serious debate, and that's simply because there were no records kept. Ah I would certainly have been an incubator baby but they never heard of an incubator. I would certainly have had a doctor there but they didn't have a doctor. I would have been sent to a hospital but there was no hospital. So it's a little difficult for me to be more precise. Q: And what was your name at birth? A: My name was Berell, and as a result of that I had to adopt a middle name at some time in my career, and I had known that I, knew I was known as Benny when we came to America. Q: Uh tell me what your. .name you were born with. A: The name I was given as an infant was Berell, which was the Jewish name. But when we came to America they decided that was not a suitable name, and so I was called Benny. And ah, that time Benny Leonard was a big prizefighter name, and when I got on to school they decided to change that: Benny was abbreviated, so they called me Benjamin. And then when I needed a middle initial and I had none, I took "B." and then they had to say what did that The following transcript is the result of a recorded interview. The recording is the primary source document, not this transcript. It has not been checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy. This document should not be quoted or used without first checking it against the interview. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Information about access and usage rights can be found in the catalog record. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0269 2 stand for, so I went back to Berell. So by the time I got out of law school I was Benjamin Berell, or Berell, Ferencz. Q: And where were you educated prior to law school? A: Well when we came as immigrants to the United States I was raised in New York. I went through the typical type of New York immigrant lower East Side beginning, and then my father got a job as a janitor -- they didn't call them "supers" in those days -- in an apartment house in Hell's Kitchen, over on 56th Street and Tenth Avenue. And there's where my earliest recollections begin. From there I went to the New York school system, the public schools. My parents were divorced when I was six, so I went out to live with an aunt who lived in Brooklyn and that's where I actually started school, because I was too small and I couldn't speak English, so they wouldn't take me at the school until I was seven. So I was off to a slow start, I was a slow starter. But my education was primarily in New York. I caught up with my education by going to Townsend Harris High School, which was a school for-- with accelerated curriculum. From there I went into City College in New York and from there to Harvard Law School. Q: What did you major in at City College? A: At City College I majored in sociology. And interestingly enough, I was always interested in crime prevention. Maybe that related to my early recollection in a highly dense crime area, Hell's Kitchen. If you look at a map of crimes in the U.S., that was black because there were more crimes committed there than in any place else and that may have stimulated my interest in crime prevention, because there but for the Grace of might have gone I. The following transcript is the result of a recorded interview. The recording is the primary source document, not this transcript. It has not been checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy. This document should not be quoted or used without first checking it against the interview. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Information about access and usage rights can be found in the catalog record. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0269 3 Q: Were you an only child? A: No, I had a sister, an older sister who was eighteen months older than I. Q: And did you both live with this aunt? A: Yes. When the parents were divorced they had to find their own way and fortunately both remarried and they both lived happily ever after and we all lived happily ever after. My mother and father were related, they were cousins, second cousins who were assigned to marriage at birth and it didn't work out but their subsequent marriages worked out very well and then we all became good friends. Q: What made you go to law school? A: I always wanted to be a lawyer. I don't know where it came from, and I don't know why, because I didn't know any lawyers but somehow I always wanted to be a lawyer and that's why I went to law school. Q: Was there any particular interest in the law? A: Yes, I was interested in crime prevention and I had no interest whatsoever in taxation. I thought "I'm never going to have any money, and I'm not going to defend anybody on a tax matter, I have no interest in corporate law." And so I was immediately involved in criminal law, and did very well. I won a scholarship on that at my first exam at Harvard, and then I The following transcript is the result of a recorded interview. The recording is the primary source document, not this transcript. It has not been checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy. This document should not be quoted or used without first checking it against the interview. The interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Information about access and usage rights can be found in the catalog record. http://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0269 4 went to work under one of these student aid programs for a professor of criminal law and criminal administration, Professor Sheldon Glueck at Harvard, who was the leading authority in the field of juvenile crime. And that had an important influence on my later career. Q: When you were in college, the War had started? A: No, the War started when I was in law school. I recall the December 7th when Pearl Harbor I'm talking about the United States involvement in the War. The War was on in Europe, but the United States involvement began when I was at Harvard. And I remember the day when everybody went down to--to enlist. Q: Were you conscious of National Socialism, what it was doing in Germany prior to going to Harvard while you in college? A: Oh yes I was, very much so, but there was then a large movement to stay out of the War during the early years, an anti-War protest movement.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Viewing, Reading, and Listening to the Trials in Eastern Europe Charting a New Historiography
    Cahiers du monde russe Russie - Empire russe - Union soviétique et États indépendants 61/3-4 | 2020 Écritures visuelles, sonores et textuelles de la justice Introduction Viewing, reading, and listening to the trials in Eastern Europe Charting a New Historiography Nadège Ragaru Translator: Victoria Baena Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/12009 DOI: 10.4000/monderusse.12009 ISSN: 1777-5388 Publisher Éditions de l’EHESS Printed version Date of publication: 1 July 2020 Number of pages: 297-316 ISBN: 978-2-7132-2832-2 ISSN: 1252-6576 Electronic reference Nadège Ragaru, “Viewing, reading, and listening to the trials in Eastern Europe”, Cahiers du monde russe [Online], 61/3-4 | 2020, Online since 01 July 2020, connection on 29 March 2021. URL: http:// journals.openedition.org/monderusse/12009 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.12009 © École des hautes études en sciences sociales INTRODUCTION VIEWING, READING, AND LISTENING TO THE TRIALS IN EASTERN EUROPE Charting a New Historiography Since the end of World War II, the legal pursuit of war crimes before national and international jurisdictions has generated a vast scholarly literature.1 A broad range of multi-disciplinary writings have examined the political and diplomatic stakes of these trials, the legal professionals involved in the proceedings, the juridical advances they delivered, the establishment of proof and sentencing policies, as well as the didactic aims of postwar criminal justice.2 Within this scholarship, the Nuremberg (1945)3 and Eichmann (1960-1961)4 trials have captivated the most 1. The author wishes to thank Vanessa Voisin and Valérie Pozner for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this introduction.
    [Show full text]
  • Filming the End of the Holocaust War, Culture and Society
    Filming the End of the Holocaust War, Culture and Society Series Editor: Stephen McVeigh, Associate Professor, Swansea University, UK Editorial Board: Paul Preston LSE, UK Joanna Bourke Birkbeck, University of London, UK Debra Kelly University of Westminster, UK Patricia Rae Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada James J. Weingartner Southern Illimois University, USA (Emeritus) Kurt Piehler Florida State University, USA Ian Scott University of Manchester, UK War, Culture and Society is a multi- and interdisciplinary series which encourages the parallel and complementary military, historical and sociocultural investigation of 20th- and 21st-century war and conflict. Published: The British Imperial Army in the Middle East, James Kitchen (2014) The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars, Gajendra Singh (2014) South Africa’s “Border War,” Gary Baines (2014) Forthcoming: Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan, Adam Broinowski (2015) 9/11 and the American Western, Stephen McVeigh (2015) Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War, Gerben Zaagsma (2015) Military Law, the State, and Citizenship in the Modern Age, Gerard Oram (2015) The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, Caroline Norma (2015) The Lost Cause of the Confederacy and American Civil War Memory, David J. Anderson (2015) Filming the End of the Holocaust Allied Documentaries, Nuremberg and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps John J. Michalczyk Bloomsbury Academic An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition fi rst published 2016 © John J.
    [Show full text]
  • "Hitler Still Walks in Germany" and "The Pope and Jerusalem." 1948-1949
    MS-763: Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman Collection, 1930-2004. Series E: Sermons, Speeches, and Writings, 1933-1959. Box Folder 12 8 "Hitler Still Walks in Germany" and "The Pope and Jerusalem." 1948-1949. For more information on this collection, please see the finding aid on the American Jewish Archives website. 3101 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220 513.487.3000 AmericanJewishArchives.org f OR[IGN SC[ [ STUDIES PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE, 386 FOURTH AVENUE. NE YORK 16. N. Y. OCTOBER 1 9 4 9 VOLUME 1 • NU MIER 3 t THE NEW WEST TABLE OF CONTENTS GERMAN STATE THE FRAMEWORK OP SELF-GOVERNMENT 1 The situation of Germany at the end of the war-a major nation, possessed of no government of its own, ruled do­ THE EVOLUTION OP mestically and represented internationally by an alien mili­ OCCUPATION POLICY 2 tary administration-was unique in history. True, other nations had lost their independence and been subjected to DEMOCRATIZATION AND foreign rule. But they /1ad either been annexed outright, and thus lost their status as national entitie-s, or they had DENAZJFICATION 3 been permitted to retain governments of their own, how­ ever subordinate these might be tc their conquerors. But in DENAZ,IPICATIQN IN PRACTICE • 4 Germany, though the natirm remained, the government ceO.Jed to exist. T HE POLITICAL STRUCTURE 5 The reemergence of a German government, after foUJ' THE NEW CONSTITUTION . 6 years, is therefore an event of major historical importance. For better or worse, that government will inevitably play an T HE ELECTIONS AND THE PU'TURE 8 important role in the events of our time.
    [Show full text]
  • Law(Yers) Congealing Capitalism: on the (Im)Possibility of Restraining Business in Conflict Through International Criminal Law
    Law(yers) congealing capitalism: On the (im)possibility of restraining business in conflict through international criminal law Grietje Baars UCL Submitted for the degree of PhD (Laws) 1 I, Grietje Baars, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract The theme of ‘business in conflict’ has become a ‘hot topic’ and the subject of many academic and policy publications. The trend in this literature is to conclude that ‘corporations have (or should have) obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law’ and that ‘corporations must be held to account’ through law, for example for ‘complicity in international crimes’. With this thesis, I aim to present a counterpoint to this literature. Employing dialectics as methodology and a theoretical frame based on Pashukanis’ commodity form theory of law, I investigate the progeny and role of law as sine qua non of capitalism. I establish that capitalism’s main motor, the corporation, was developed as a legal concept to congeal relations of production and minimise risk-exposure of the capitalists. Moreover, the corporation served as an instrument of imperialism and the global dissemination of capitalist law. Post WWII international criminal law (ICL) was developed ostensibly as an accountability mechanism. I show that it was used, contrary to early indications, to conceal rather than address the economic causes and imperialist nature of the war, so as to enable the continuation or rehabilitation of trade relations. ICL has been institutionalized over subsequent years and has continued to immunize economic actors from prosecution, including in the ICTR and ICTY.
    [Show full text]
  • Controversie S in Global Politics & Societies
    CONTROVERSIES IN GLOBAL POLITICS &SOCIETIES ISBN 978-0-7727-0841-0 ISSN 1715-3476 OCCASIONAL PAPER • NO. VIII • 2008 Barbara J. Falk Making Sense of Political Trials: Barbara J. Falk is Associate Professor and Director of the Department of Defence Causes and Categories Studies at the Canadian Forces College, as well as a Fellow of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Munk Centre for International Studies. She received her MA and PhD from York University, and her Masters in Studies in Law from the University of Toronto. She is the author of Barbara J. Falk The Dilemmas of Dissidence: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings and is currently completing a book (funded by both the Canada Council for the Arts and Fellow the Royal Military College of Canada) on political trials. Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies Associate Professor Canadian Forces College CONTROVERSIES IN GLOBAL POLITICS & SOCIETIES M AKING S ENSE of P OLITICAL T RIALS: C AUSES AND C ATEGORIES B ARBARA J. FALK Fellow CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN, RUSSIAN, AND EURASIAN STUDIES Associate Professor CANADIAN FORCES COLLEGE MUNK CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MCIS BRIEFINGS MCIS BRIEFINGS The Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto seeks to be an internationally recognized leader in interdisciplinary academic research on global issues and to integrate research with teaching and public education. We place special emphasis on the fostering of innovative interdisciplinary knowledge through the exchange of ideas and research among academics as well as the public, private, and voluntary sectors.
    [Show full text]
  • The Soviet Contribution to International Justice at Nuremberg
    Nikto ne zabyt, nichto ne zabyto: The Soviet Contribution to International Justice at Nuremberg Thomas Earl Porter North Carolina A&T State University “Let these butchers know that they will not escape responsibility for their crimes or elude the avenging hand of the tormented nations.” Joseph Stalin November 6, 1942 The Soviet Union played a major role in the establishment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) by resolutely promoting the idea of an international trial of Nazi Germany’s leaders for the criminal actions perpetrated by its forces upon both civilians and prisoners of war during its invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. At the very outset of the conflict the Soviet Union established “flying” military committees which collected evidentiary materials for later use in some kind of international judicial forum. Additionally, only a handful of Western scholars have noted that the Soviets were early proponents of the use of the legal principle of conspiracy (which had been used in the infamous show trials domestically but had no place in continental European jurisprudence) and also played an instrumental role in establishing the principle that aggressive war in and of itself could be legally construed as a criminal act.1 Of course, this was not an entirely novel concept as the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) which was signed by 15 nations (including Weimar Germany) on August 27th 1928 and registered as part of the League of Nations Treaty Series a week later, explicitly called for the renunciation of war between the contracting parties as a solution to any kind of conflict.
    [Show full text]
  • Restorative Justice and the Global Imagination Audrey Josephine
    Restorative Justice and the Global Imagination Audrey Josephine Golden Charlottesville, Virginia Juris Doctor, Wake Forest University School of Law, 2009 Bachelor of Arts, Wesleyan University, 2006 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Language and Literature University of Virginia August, 2014 Table of Contents Introduction: Nuremberg, International Human Rights Law, and the Narrative Foundations of Restorative Justice………………………………………………………. 1 Recovering Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon: Literary Fictions, Bodily Restoration, and the Politics of the Totalitarian Novel…………………………….…… 43 Remaking the Historical Record: Remedies for the former Yugoslavia and Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno……………………………………...…… 94 The ‘Terrible Genius of Literature’: Post-Apartheid Reconciliation in Nadine Gordimer’s The House Gun…………………………………………………………… 153 Coda: A Future for Recuperative Global Narrative…………………………………………… 210 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………….... 218 ! ! ! Introduction: Nuremberg, International Human Rights, and the Narrative Foundations of Restorative Justice I am consoled by the fact that in proceedings of this novelty, errors and missteps may also be instructive to the future. —Justice Robert H. Jackson, closing out his report to then-President Truman on the Nuremberg Trials We gradually came to accept the depravity of the Holocaust, but then slotted it in our consciousness as ‘history’; we resisted acknowledging that genocide was occurring in the present. Survivors and witnesses had trouble making the unbelievable believable. Bystanders were thus able to retreat to the ‘twilight between knowing and not knowing.’ —Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell In late 2010, the “Court Room 600” museum opened in Nuremberg, Germany at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where the International Military Tribunal (IMT) trials were held between 1945-46.
    [Show full text]
  • Traumatic Realism : the Demands of Holocaust Representation / Michael Rothberg
    TRAUMATIC REALISM This page intentionally left blank TRAUMATIC REALISM The Demands of Holocaust Representation Michael Rothberg M IN ME SO TA University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The image that appears on the cover and in the introduction is from The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Copyright 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 by Art Spiegelman. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Chapter 1 is a slightly revised version of "After Adorno: Culture in the Wake of Catastro- phe," an article that appeared in New German Critique 72 (fall 1997): 45-81; reprinted with the permission of New German Critique. Parts of chapters 3 and 4 were originally published in "Between the Extreme and the Everyday: Ruth Kliiger's Traumatic Realism," alb: Auto /Biography Studies 14, no. 2 (fall 1999); reprinted with permission oia/b: Auto I Biography Studies. An earlier version of parts of chapter 5 appeared as "We Were Talking Jewish..." in Contemporary Literature 35, no. 4 (winter 1994): 661-87; copyright 1994, reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Copyright 2000 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http ://www. upress. umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
    [Show full text]
  • Filming the End of the Holocaust: Allied Documentaries, Nuremberg and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps
    Michalczyk, John J. "Index." Filming the End of the Holocaust: Allied Documentaries, Nuremberg and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. 205–224. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 13:54 UTC. Copyright © John J. Michalczyk 2014. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. I n d e x A b r a m o v i t z , M i c h a e l 1 3 4 atrocities see also war crimes Abzug, Robert H. 32, 42, 43 against children 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, Admissibility of Evidence, Planning 126, 127 Memorandum 19 bearing witness to 2 A.J. Topf & Söhne ovens 62, 167n.41 collective responsibility of German Alderman, Sidney S. 10 people 1, 36, 41, 123, 124, 125, 128, Alexander Nevsky 47, 48 182n.5 Allied 21st Army Group 31–46 communicating to public 25, 54 Allied Investigation Commission 126 encountered by US Signal Corps 21–30 Allies failure to understand the extent of 19, bombings by 124 54 knowledge of extent of atrocities 23 fi lming of 26, 48 war crimes of 15, 53, 124, 182n.7 forced viewing of, Leni Riefenstahl 123 Amen. 34 lack of public belief in 15, 24, 28, 35 America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Nazi 1 Indiff erence 54 number murdered 38, 42, 45, 84, 107, American Jewish Committee 28 126 American Zone 125 as original sin 113–14 amputations 127 procedures for documenting 26 Angel, Sally 160n.24
    [Show full text]
  • That Justice Be Seen the American Prosecution's Use of Film at The
    A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details i T HAT J U S T I C E B E S EEN THE AM E RIC AN P ROSECUTION ’S USE OF F ILM AT THE NU REM BE RG I NTERNATIONAL MI LIT ARY TRIBUNAL A thesis submitted to the Department of History at the University of Sussex for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Image from E.R. Kellogg (Dir.), That Justice Be Done , (USA: OSS, 1945) KEVIN PATRICK REYNOLDS September 201 1 i Statement I hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree. Signature ………………………………. Kevin Patrick Reynolds University of Sussex THAT JUSTICE BE SEEN THE AMERICAN PROSECUTION’S USE OF FILM AT THE NUREMBERG INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL SUMMARY This dissertation examines the use of motion-picture film by the American Prosecution before and during the „Trial of the Major War Criminals‟ at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Germany, 1945-1946.
    [Show full text]
  • Promoting International Criminal Law: the Nuremberg Trial Film Project
    Historical Origins of International Criminal Law: Volume 1 Morten Bergsmo, CHEAH Wui Ling and YI Ping (editors) PURL: http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/fc32b1/ E-Offprint: Axel Fischer, “Promoting International Criminal Law: The Nuremberg Trial Film Project and US Information Policy after the Second World War”, in Morten Bergsmo, CHEAH Wui Ling and YI Ping (editors), Historical Origins of International Criminal Law: Volume 1, FICHL Publication Series No. 20 (2014), Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, Brussels, ISBN 978-82-93081-11-1. First published on 12 December 2014. This publication and other TOAEP publications may be openly accessed and downloaded through the website www.fichl.org. This site uses Persistent URLs (PURL) for all publications it makes available. The URLs of these publications will not be changed. Printed copies may be ordered through online distributors such as www.amazon.co.uk. © Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2014. All rights are reserved. PURL: http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/fc32b1/ 20 ______ Promoting International Criminal Law: The Nuremberg Trial Film Project and US Information Policy after the Second World War Axel Fischer* 20.1. Introduction From 1943 onwards – by implementing the United Nations War Crimes Commission (‘UNWCC’) and issuing the Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security (‘Moscow Declaration’) – the will to deal juridically with the Nazi crimes was put into action by the Allies of the Second World War. The prospect of the punishment of the major European Axis war criminals by an International Military Tribunal (‘IMT’)1 confronted the United States (‘US’) not only with the consolidation of legal and diplomatic questions but also a realisation of the need for an acceptance of such dealings with mass crimes.
    [Show full text]
  • Memorializing Genocide I: Earlier Holocaust Documentaries
    Reason Papers Vol. 38, no. 2 Memorializing Genocide I: Earlier Holocaust Documentaries Gary James Jason California State University, Fullerton 1. Introduction As I write this review essay, Holocaust Memorial Day (May 5, 2016) has just passed. At this time when anti-Semitism is evidently on the rise again in Europe,1 it seems appropriate to review some of the cinematic record we have of this murderous episode in the history of humankind. In this first of a two-part series, I review four of the most useful Holocaust documentaries, addressing a number of pertinent issues they raise. We are lucky that a number of excellent old documentaries showing the horrors of the Nazi crimes against humanity in general (and the Holocaust in particular) have now been made readily available.2 The ones that I will examine here include two early documentaries produced by the U.S. War Department contemporaneous with the liberation of the death camps, a classic French film from 1955, and a 1973-1974 British television documentary. I intend to explain which of these documentaries work well as effective film, and exactly why they do so. I will also explain why one was a relative failure, in that it was shown only briefly, and explore an ambiguity in the term ‘Holocaust’ that informs how these films document the mass murders by the Nazi Regime. 1 I sketched this rise in Gary James Jason, “Disquieting Developments,” Liberty, April 22, 2015, accessed online at: http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1404. 2 They are available for purchase through specialty film outlets, as well as through Amazon.com.
    [Show full text]