Language:
English
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
36,1 (2008) 181-210
Keywords:
World Jewish Congress
;
Institute of Jewish Affairs
;
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946
Abstract:
Discusses the campaign led by the World Jewish Congress in 1942-46 aiming to assure that the postwar international tribunal against Nazi war criminals would represent Nazi anti-Jewish policies, including genocide, adequately and not as subordinate to Nazi aggression. One of the goals was to make the Allies expand international law so that prewar persecution of Jews and crimes against Axis nationals and stateless persons could also be prosecuted. Shows that the WJC and the Institute of Jewish Affairs, established under its aegis in 1941, failed to influence the future trial sufficiently, due to a series of tactical mistakes made by the Institute's director, Jacob Robinson. Among them was his decision to connect the persecution of Jews with Germany's preparations for aggressive war (thus downplaying Nazi racism); his insistence that there was a prewar Nazi plan to murder all the Jews; and, at an earlier stage, his adherence to Franz Neumann's "spearhead theory" of Nazi antisemitic policies. The Institute also over-concentrated its efforts with the U.S. and neglected collaboration with the British, and especially with the French. The WJC was obviously dissatisfied when the International Military Tribunal ruled that the prewar racial and religious persecutions did not constitute crimes against humanity, which elucidated the necessity to develop an international convention on genocide.
Note:
English and Hebrew.
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