The International Military Tribunal "What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister
"These influences, in fact, have regenerated like a poisonous weed.
Anti-Semitism and the euphemistic catchwords that led to `the Final Solution
of the Jewish Question' have reappeared hand in hand. A world-wide cult has
arisen claiming that the Holocaust never happened. A hundred books,
booklets, and pamphlets have been printed alleging that the slaughter was
imaginary or exaggerated, and is but a Jewish invention.
"All of this might be dismissed as the frustrated thrashing about of a
radical, irrational fringe were it not for the haunting parallels to the
pre-Hitler era, and the continuing employment of Nazi propaganda
methodology.
[...] Hitler's dictum that `the magnitude
of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great
masses of the people ... more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a
little one' has once more come into vogue.
"The most effective means to combat such distortions is to make the facts
accessibile, and, with them, expose the statements for what they are. At
Nuremberg, General Telford Taylor, the prosecutor of more war criminals than
any other man, said: `We cannot here make history over again. But we can see
that it is written true.'"
(Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper and Row, 1983, xii-xiii)
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Nuremberg
influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust."
Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel, Nuremberg,
during his opening address.
The International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
"It has been argued that the Tribunal cannot be regarded as a court in
the true sense because, as its members represent the victorious Allied Nations, they must lack that impartiality which is an essential in all judicial
procedure. According to this view only a court consisting of neutrals,
or, at least, containing some neutral judges, could be considered to
be a proper tribunal. As no man can be a judge in his own case, so no
allied tribunal can be a judge in a case in which members of the enemy
government or forces are on trial. Attractive as this argument may
sound in theory, it ignores the fact that it runs counter to the
administration of law in every country. If it were true then no spy
could be given a legal trial, because his case is always heard by
judges representing the enemy country. Yet no one has ever argued that
in such cases it was necessary to call on neutral judges. The prisoner
has the right to demand that his judges shall be fair, but not that
they shall be neutral. As Lord Writ has pointed out, the same
principle is applicable to ordinary criminal law because 'a burglar
cannot complain that he is being tried by a jury of honest citizens."
(A.L. Goodheart, Professor at Oxford, in "The Legality of the
Nuremberg Trials," Juridical Review, April 1946)