Germany: Roots & Remembrance

The first trial of leading Nazis was held in Nürnberg in 1945-46.

Nürnberg was chosen for practical reasons. It had a jail next to the large Palace of Justice courthouse. Both facilities had escaped serious damage from Allied bombs.

It was incidental, but fitting, that history’s first criminal trials of leaders of a defeated nation be here, where the Nazi party was powerful even before Hitler became chancellor, where murderous racism was the norm.

With “Kevin of Nuremberg Tours in English” as our smart and knowledgeable GUIDE (click to see his site), we learned details of the trial and sat in the courtroom. Then Kevin showed us Jewish sites around town.

On trial were 22 men, including Hitler’s number 2 (Hermann Göring) and Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss. Most were convicted and hanged (Höss in Auschwitz by the Poles); several served jail sentences; a few were acquitted. To avoid creating a Nazi shrine, the executed convicts’ ashes were dumped in a river.

The lead prosecutor, Henry Jackson, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, opened the trial on November 21, 1945, with these famous remarks:

“May it please Your Honors: The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

The South German Newspaper reported the verdicts.

Thus began the rebuilding of Germany as a strong and prosperous democracy.

Nürnberg’s vanished Jewish German community played a prominent role in the city’s pre-Nazi life.

For example, musician Billy Joel’s Nürnberg grandfather owned Germany’s second largest mail order business, Joel Macht Fabrik. After the Nazis took power, the Joel family escaped to Switzerland, then Cuba, then the USA. Billy was born in New York. Once again, Germany’s loss was America’s gain.

There is a memorial near the former site of Nürnberg’s reformed synagogue, which my grandfather attended.

It’s sad when a people and a culture vanish from a place. To cheer up, we devoured some meatless Bavarian specialties.

Then we wandered a bit.

To read prior essays, click HERE.