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The International Military Tribunal and the Holocaust: Some Legal Reflections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

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Extract

On Sept. 30–Oct. 1, 1946 the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg announced its judgment. The trial started on Nov. 14, 1945 and was concluded on Aug. 31, 1946 after 216 working days. The writing and discussing of the Judgment was accomplished in four weeks. The proceedings and judgment represent an extraordinary tour de force.

The Judgment has been a subject of careful study and heated controversy for a quarter of a century. Considering the record speed of the trial and of the writing of the Judgment, it should come as no surprise to discover that the Judgment is far from being a monolithic piece.

In the following, an attempt is made to test the consistency of the positions of the IMT in one of its most sensitive parts: the persecution and the extermination of the Jewish people.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1972

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References

1 Hereafter referred to as IMT.

2 History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (1948) 90.

3 Kubowitzki, A.L., Unity in Dispersion (1948) 261–2.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 92.

5 Ibid., p. 106.

6 Resolutions: War Emergency Conference of the World Jewish Congress, Atlantic City, N.J., Nov. 26–30, 1944 (New York, WJC, 1944) 20, 21.

7 Studies in Public International Law in Memory of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, (1961, Hebrew) 84.

8 IMT, I, pp. 168–170: Dr. Stahmer's—counsel for Göring—motion “adopted by all Defence Counsel” of Nov. 19, 1945 and its rejection by the IMT on Nov. 21, 1945 (ibid., II, p. 95).

9 Ibid., I, pp. 218–224.

10 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

11 Ibid., I, pp. 27–92, repeated ibid, II, pp. 30–94.

12 Ibid., I, pp. 43–44.

13 Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington, D.C., 1944), 79–95.

14 IMT. II, pp. 118–127.

15 Ibid., III, pp. 519–541, 551–573.

16 Ibid., II, p. 119.

17 Ibid., III, p. 519.

18 Almost 7 pages in IMT, I, pp. 247–253.

19 Dokumente über Methoden der Judenverfolgung im Ausland (Frankfurt, 1959).

20 Ibid., p. 226.

21 Ibid., pp. 254–255.

22 Ibid., p. 254.

23 Ibid., pp. 249–250.

24 Ibid., p. 259.

25 Ibid., p. 262.

26 Ibid., p. 265.

27 Ibid., p. 268.

28 Ibid., p. 273.

29 Ibid., p. 302.

30 Ibid., p. 304.

31 Ibid., p. 300.

33 Ibid., p. 305.

34 Nuernberg Military Tribunal (NMT), I, XVII.

35 NMT. XIV, p. 553.

36 Ibid., pp. 991–992.

37 Pawcett, , Twenty Years After the Genocide Convention: Patterns of Prejudice (1968) 2325.Google Scholar

38 For a listing see: International Law Reports (London, 1968) Vol. 36, pp. 342–344; Robinson, Jacob, La Tragédie juive sous la croix gammée (Paris, 1968) 445447Google Scholar; Braham, Randolph L., The Eichmann Case, A Source Book (New York, 1969), 186.Google Scholar