The Grave Responsibility of Justice: US Justice Robert H. Jackson’s delivers historic opening statement at Nuremberg Trials

On November 20, 1945, the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany were put on trial for crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust and World War Two. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, which was also the site of the infamous 1935 Nuremberg Laws – the antisemitic legislation passed by Nazi Germany at a special meeting of the Reichstag. (The laws were not implemented until 1936, after the Summer Olympics in Berlin.)

The Nuremberg Trials were the first ever international war crimes trial in history and exposed to the world the extreme nature of Nazi Germany’s war crimes agains the Jews and others. The trial ultimately held some of the top tier Nazi leadership responsible for the barbaric crimes committed by Nazi Germany during WWII.

United States’ chief prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson’s historic opening statement at the Nuremberg Trials still rings eloquent almost 80 years later:

“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.”

According to the Robert H. Jackson Center: “The Nuremberg Trials established that all of humanity would be guarded by an international legal shield and that even a Head of State would be held criminally responsible and punished for aggression and Crimes Against Humanity. The right of humanitarian intervention to put a stop to Crimes Against Humanity – even by a sovereign against his own citizens – gradually emerged from the Nuremberg principles affirmed by the United Nations.”

In 2016, International March of the Living, The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and Jagiellonian University presented an international legal symposium commemorating the Nuremberg Race Laws & the Nuremberg Trials. The symposium was titled “The Double Entendre of Nuremberg: The Nuremberg of Hate & The Nuremberg of Justice”.

The historic legal symposium took place on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials.

Please see links to March of the Living films produced for the Nuremberg Symposium:

Point of No Return: The Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Trials – Staying the Hand of Vengeance

Please see links to lectures from the Nuremberg Symposium, including presentations from distinguished legal scholars: Professor Irwin Cotler and Professor Alan Dershowitz Symposium Co-Chairs, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Dorit Beinisch, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, Luis Moreno-Ocampo former Chief Prosecutor International Criminal Court and others.

The Double Entendre of Nuremberg: The Nuremberg of Hate & The Nuremberg of Justice