#Nuremberg trials

[thebellekeys]

Recommendations for media about translation, interpreting, and foreign languages

Movies and TV

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) The Interpreter (2005) The Last Stage (1948)

Books

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri The Interpreter by Suki Kim Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok Translation Nation by Héctor Tobar Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip Translation State by Ann Leckie

Other Important Topics and Subjects

La Malinche The Rosetta Stone The Tower of Babel The Adamic Language Esperanto Philology Goethean World Literature

Documentaries and History

The Interpreters: A Historical Perspective The Nuremberg Trials Biblical Translation St. Jerome - patron saint of translators Shu-ilishu's Seal (first depiction of an interpreter)

[reality-detective]

Greg Reese Report 👇

The Illegal Kidnapping and Persecution of Reiner Fuëllmich. The internal coup to sabotage the Second Nuremberg trials. 🤔

[eretzyisrael]

[hero-israel]

During Nuremberg Trial testimony, the prosecutor pressed Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf: “You were going out to shoot down defenseless people. Now, didn’t the question of the morality of that enter your mind?” Ohlendorf referred to the Allied bombings of Germany as a context:

I am not in a position to isolate this occurrence from the occurrences of 1943, 1944, and 1945 where with my own hands I took children and women out of the burning asphalt myself, and with my own hands I took big blocks of stone from the stomachs of pregnant women; and with my own eyes I saw 60,000 people die within 24 hours.

A judge immediately pointed out that his own killing spree preceded those bombings. But this would become known as the “Dresden defense,” to which Ohlendorf resorted still another time, in this exchange:

Ohlendorf: I have seen very many children killed in this war through air attacks, for the security of other nations, and orders were carried out to bomb, no matter whether many children were killed or not. Q: Now, I think we are getting somewhere, Mr. Ohlendorf. You saw German children killed by Allied bombers and that is what you are referring to? Ohlendorf: Yes, I have seen it. Q: Do you attempt to draw a moral comparison between the bomber who drops bombs hoping that it will not kill children and yourself who shot children deliberately? Is that a fair moral comparison ? Ohlendorf: I cannot imagine that those planes which systematically covered a city that was a fortified city, square meter for square meter, with incendiaries and explosive bombs and again with phosphorus bombs, and this done from block to block, and then as I have seen it in Dresden likewise the squares where the civilian population had fled to—that these men could possibly hope not to kill any civilian population, and no children.

Ohlendorf thought this defense so powerful that he invoked it yet another time:

The fact that individual men killed civilians face to face is looked upon as terrible and is pictured as specially gruesome because the order was clearly given to kill these people; but I cannot morally evaluate a deed any better, a deed which makes it possible, by pushing a button, to kill a much larger number of civilians, men, women, and children.

(The chief prosecutor, an American, called this particular iteration “exactly what a fanatical pseudo-intellectual SS-man might well believe.”)

At Nuremberg, this sort of tu quoque defense (“I shouldn’t be punished because they did it too”) wasn’t admissible. Still, in the verdict of the Einsatzgruppen Trial, the judges chose to refute it. “It was submitted,” the judges wrote, “that the defendants must be exonerated from the charge of killing civilian populations since every Allied nation brought about the death of noncombatants through the instrumentality of bombing.” The judges would have none of it:

A city is bombed for tactical purposes… it inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to these same railroad tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women and children and shooting them.

The tribunal sentenced Ohlendorf to death. He was hanged in June 1951.

“In the last analysis”

Nuremberg enforced a fundamental distinction. All civilian lives are equal, but not so all ways of taking them. The deliberate and purposeful killing of civilians is a crime; not so the taking of civilian lives that is undesired, unintended, but unavoidable. The errors made by a bomber squadron cannot be deducted from the murders committed by a death squad. It’s a difference compounded many times over when those civilian men, women, and children are subjected to torture, rape, and mutilation before their murder. To borrow Khalidi’s phrase, “in the last analysis,” this distinction is what separates modern civilization from its predecessors.

More disturbing is the thought that it separates the contemporary West from its peers. Otto Ohlendorf and the regime he served did all they could to conceal their deeds from Western eyes. Nazi Germany still operated in a West founded on Enlightenment values. So massive a violation of a shared patrimony needed to be hidden from view.

In contrast, Hamas initially sought to publicize its deeds, assuming they would win applause, admiration, or at least tacit acceptance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Here they succeeded beyond their expectations. The many millions who don’t share the West’s patrimony, and who know next to nothing about the Holocaust or Nuremberg, do see things as Khalidi says they see them. (So, too, does a sliver of alienated opinion in the West, where such views are cultivated and celebrated.)

Finally, and still more disturbing, is the fact that Ohlendorf’s defense has been revived to frame the massacre of Jews. 

[hermannfaust1912]

Hermann Göring during the Nuremberg trials

[little-rat-man]

33 seconds of the REAL Rosenberg voice without any edits (change in speed) baritone/bass sounding podge of a man

[awesomecooperlove]

DEADLY V🧛🏿‍♂️A🧛🏿‍♂️C🧛🏿‍♂️C🧛🏿‍♂️I🧛🏿‍♂️N🧛🏿‍♂️E 🧛🏿‍♂️TRIALS🧛🏿‍♂️

🧟‍♀️🧛🏿‍♂️

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

[news4dzhozhar]

[littlemarylil]

I wanted to share this picture of Walter Schellenberg with another SS members in Nuremberg jail (as witnesses), because I haven't seen this here yet.

(I do not support their actions or the ideology.)

[the-cricket-chirps]

Laura Knight

Nuremberg Trials 1946 Study No. 1

1946

[follow-up-news]

Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who tried Nazis for genocidal war crimes and was among the first outside witnesses to document the atrocities of Nazi labor and concentration camps, has died. He had just turned 103 in March.

Ferencz died Friday evening in Boynton Beach, Florida, according to St. John's University law professor John Barrett, who runs a blog about the Nuremberg trials. The death also was confirmed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

"Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes," the museum tweeted.

Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz immigrated as a very young boy with his parents to New York to escape rampant antisemitism. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Ferencz joined the U.S. Army in time to take part in the Normandy invasion during World War II. Using his legal background, he became an investigator of Nazi war crimes against U.S. soldiers as part of a new War Crimes Section of the Judge Advocate's Office.

[obsxssedwithstuff]

I've seen pro palestinians and pro hamas argue that "israel is just as bad or worse than the nazis" a couple times now... and to that i can just say, please watch any documentary on the Nuremberg trials/WW2 - or if you dont have that much time - the film linked below starting minute 45:30

WARNING (corpses/disfigurement)

This documentary's commentary is NOT neutral

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8bRc9B7d8

[tmarshconnors]

The Nuremberg Principles

 In the aftermath of World War II, the world grappled with the question of how to hold individuals accountable for heinous crimes committed during the conflict. Out of the ashes of war and genocide, the Nuremberg Trials were convened in 1945-46 to prosecute leading Nazi officials for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other atrocities. From these landmark trials emerged the Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines that would forever shape the course of international criminal law.

What Are the Nuremberg Principles? The Nuremberg Principles are a set of seven legal standards that arose from the judgments at the Nuremberg Trials. They were formulated by the International Law Commission of the United Nations in 1950 and have since been a cornerstone in the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Principle I: Any person who commits an international crime is responsible and liable to punishment.

Principle II: Being a Head of State or responsible government official does not exempt a person from responsibility.

Principle III: Acting under orders is not a valid defence if a moral choice is possible.

Principle IV: Individuals have a responsibility to disobey unjust orders that lead to international crimes.

Principle V: A fair trial is guaranteed to the accused.

Principle VI: Defines the crimes punishable under international law, including crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Principle VII: Complicity in these crimes is itself a punishable offence.

Historical Context: At the time of the Nuremberg Trials, the world was witnessing something unprecedented: the prosecution of individuals, including heads of state and military leaders, for atrocities committed during a war. This was not merely a trial of Nazi war criminals; it was an assertion that individuals could be held accountable under international law, regardless of rank or office.

This shift marked the emergence of a new framework of justice, in which moral responsibility transcended national borders and "just following orders" was no longer an acceptable excuse.

Key Cases: Highlight some of the key cases from the Nuremberg Trials, such as the prosecution of Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer. These cases set critical legal precedents, particularly around the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Legacy of the Nuremberg Principles: The Nuremberg Principles laid the groundwork for future international legal bodies, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002. Their influence can be seen in the prosecution of war criminals from conflicts in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and more recently, in cases related to Syria and Myanmar.

Additionally, the principles continue to resonate in discussions about justice and accountability, from military interventions to human rights violations.

Challenges and Criticisms: While the Nuremberg Principles are widely hailed as a milestone in international law, they have not been without controversy. Critics have pointed out that the Nuremberg Trials were essentially "victor's justice," as only the defeated Axis powers were tried, leaving the conduct of the Allies unexamined.

Furthermore, the enforcement of these principles remains inconsistent, with powerful nations often shielding their leaders from international prosecution or exerting political pressure to avoid trials.

 The Nuremberg Principles represent more than just a moment in history they serve as a moral and legal foundation for how the international community responds to crimes of the highest order. Despite the challenges in enforcing these principles universally, they remind us that justice, though complex and often imperfect, is essential for peace and human dignity.

[hero-israel]

The thing about the accusations of “genocide” against Israel in Gaza is that, aside from incidents like the fire that got started last week, in general the rate of Palestinian casualties has gone down from the beginning of the war as the IDF has switched from firing missiles to boots on the ground and re-learned how to fight in an urban space (and also removed soldiers who’ve been shooting at people indiscriminately from combat). But that doesn’t matter.

Retconning every war of the last 120+ years into also having been "genocide" is bad, actually. Probably not as bad as retconning rape into being "political liberation" but these people are not thinking through the consequences of their redefinitions.

The Nuremberg Trials were quite clear on this. Sending a death squad door-to-door to burn and shoot 10,000 members of a hated minority group is genocide. Sending an Air Force over that death squad's country and bombing enough military targets that you inadvertently kill 20,000 people is not.

[hermannfaust1912]