1
Have We Learned? Crimes Against Humanity and Lessons of the Nuremberg Trials.
This summative project is about the concepts of humanity and personhood and a trial that took place sixty-six years ago in Nuremberg, Germany. The Nuremberg Trials held between 1945 and 1946, convened to judge the crimes of the Nazi regime, conveyed to the world the message that crimes against humanity would never again be tolerated by civilization.
Classes that I took in the MLS program were a major influence and the impetus for this project. The idea of Nuremberg for my summative project came to me during a Trials class in which we read about and discussed the trial. The human rights and crimes against humanity aspect was further influenced by my work as a prosecutor of human rights abusers in Immigration Court,
A class, onFrom Ancient Libraries to the Internet,in which I wrote a paper about the Dead Sea scrolls contributed to an aspect of my paper which discussed the Judeo Christian influence on human rights in Western civilization.A class about the Nature of Children and individuals in general, combined with discussions and suggestions from professors provided the basis for a major part of my project regarding the concept of personhood.
The project discussed whether we, the civilized world, learned from Nuremberg.
Nuremberg established a precedent that individuals could be held accountable for their actions, could be punished for their actions, and could not hide behind the state. The question of whether the impact of the Nuremberg decisions and the precedent established have been successful in preventing the commission of crimes against humanity is part of this project which includes -- a discussion of what occurred at the Nuremberg trial, a survey of earlier historical crimes which may be categorized as crimes against humanity, a brief background of human rights declarations, an examination of the derivation and concept of humanity and personhood, a discussion as to whether the world has learned anything from the Nuremberg trial, and concludes with my contention that humanity’s behavior has improved but not enough, and that additional resources are still needed for humanity to behave better.
The attempt to define a crime against humanity is complicated and precarious. A strict definition becomes restricting and at times inadequate, and may require a definition of the parts of the definition. The Nuremberg trial indictment defined crimes against humanity, but in addition to murder, enslavement, and other specific acts, the indictment included the phrase other inhumane acts. This catch-all phrase illustrates how difficult is the task of choosing an all encompassing definition of this concept. Very generally stated, a crime against humanity is that which is regarded by the opinion of decent humanity as a crime.
The basis for the concept of crimes against humanity is that the crimes are crimes against the very idea of humanity and of personhood. Humanity involves the idea of personhood or being a distinct, individual person. People are different. People are individuals. People are independent and sovereign. Collectively each individual is humanity. As a distinct, individual member of humanity, the person has certain rights. As in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . .” Prior to the Declaration of Independence, John Locke taught that humanity’s inalienable rights come from the Creator and that the state of Nature teaches that all equal and independent mankind must not harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions and that a transgressor of the law may be punished but that man has no absolute or whimsical power to punish according to his own will, but only to punish reasonably and proportionate to the crime. Philosophers such as Kant have tried to provide a basis in reason alone for recognizing these rights, a universal basis grounded in the essence of decent humanity.
Each member of society has to think about personhood and the concept of the individual and an individual’s rights. I contend that, as exposed in the Nuremberg trial, the Nazis dehumanized people and stole their lives, and their personhood.
We hear these general comments about the Nazis and the atrocities committed, but what was actually done?Examples are provided by Justice Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial, in his opening statement.
Through his opening remarks, Jackson wanted to impress upon the panel of judges and the world that the crimes committed by the Nazis were repugnant to all civilized people. Jackson assumed that the most effective way to demonstrate the Nazis’ degree of criminality was to cite from the Nazis’ own records, including detailed descriptions of crimes. For accuracy and to provide the relevant impact that Jackson strove to achieve, I will cite some of his opening remarks.
To illustrate the Nazi design as stated by the Nazis themselves, Jackson quoted from the diary of defendant Hans Frank. Frank summarized Nazi racist ideology as follows: “The Jews are a race which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end.” As further evidence of the genocidal policy, Jackson quoted from a report to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS or Schutzstaffel, the Nazi security organization.
It was intended from the very beginning to obtain the cooperation of the reliable population for the fight against vermin that is mainly the Jews and Communists. . . . Care had to be taken that reliable people should be put to the cleansing job and that they were appointed auxiliary members of the Security Police. . . . During the first pogrom. . . the Lithuanian partisans did away with more than 1,500 Jews, set fire to several synagogues or destroyed them by other means and burned down a Jewish dwelling district consisting of about 60 houses. During the following nights about 2,300 Jews were made harmless in a similar way. . . . However, the cleansing activities of the Security Police had to aim at a complete annihilation of the Jews. . . .The sum total of the Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to 71,105.
Jackson also referred to a report made to defendant Alfred Rosenberg, the minister of the German occupied eastern territory. “ In the presence of SS men, a Jewish dentist has to break all gold teeth and fillings out of the mouths of German and Russian Jews before they are executed. . . . Men, women and children are locked into barns and burned alive.”
Jackson moved on and quoted a report from SS Brigadier General Juergen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto:
The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could only be suppressed by energetic actions of our troops day and night. The ReichsFuehrer SS ordered . . . the clearing out of the ghetto with utter ruthlessness and merciless tenacity. I therefore decided to destroy and burn down the entire ghetto. . . . Jews usually left their hideouts, but frequently remained in the burning buildings and jumped out of the windows only when the heat became unbearable. They then tried to crawl with broken bones across the street into buildings which were not afire. . . . Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through blasting. The longer the resistance continued, the tougher became the members of the Waffen SS, Police and Wehrmacht who always discharged their duties in an exemplary manner. . . . This action eliminated . . . a proved total of 56,065. To that we have to add the number of those killed through blasting, fire, etc., which cannot be counted.
Of course there were many, many more incidents of slaughter, and it has been estimated that approximately 6 million Jews and millions of gypsies and other so-called undesirables were murdered by the Nazis. Of the twenty two Nuremberg defendants tried, nineteen were found guilty and three were acquitted. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to be hanged and the rest sentenced to prison.
In partial summation, Jackson argued that “the German mistreatment of fellow Germans is now known to pass in magnitude and savagery any limits of what is tolerable by modern civilization. . . . These Nazi persecutions, moreover, take character as international crimes because of the purpose for which they were undertaken . . .” The Nazis’ actions, he stressed, were not in any way defensive but outright persecutions to extinguish entire groups of people from society. The methods, he claimed, were not only expulsion or exile but enslavement, murder, and annihilation.
What About Crimes Other Than Genocide? Could They Be Considered As Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization?
As herein stated, crimes against humanity are crimes against the very idea, the very essence of humanity and against personhood. A significant part of personhood is the individual’s ability to own property. The ownership of property or at least the ability to own property increases an individual’s independence and autonomy and contributes to his or her personhood. As such, is an act which damages an individual’s ability to own property, or damages an individual’s independence and autonomy, a crime against personhood and against humanity and civilization?
Let’s briefly consider the Enron disaster. Enron was an American energy corporation in Texas. In approximately 2000, Enron publicized a concern regarding the natural gas supply in California. As such, Californians, through the state and their taxes, had to pay increasing amounts to maintain a supply of natural gas. About a year later disclosures indicated that the gas problem in California was contrived by Enron executives solely to extort additional sums from California tax payers and thereby harm the state and individuals. In 2001 Enron became bankrupt, with its executives being sent to prison as a result of a massive fraud scheme. In the end, Enron executives were found guilty of misappropriating investors’ and employees’ funds including retirement, pension, and savings plans. The loss to investors was estimated in excess of seventy billion dollars with an estimated two billion dollar loss to employees.
Unfortunately for those who lost money, only a small fraction of the money lost was recovered.To the credit of the American judicial system, the main perpetrators of this massive fraud were sent to prison. But what about the hundreds or thousands of individuals whose finances were decimated and their lives permanently adversely altered. Were the Enron executives’ actions against personhood? Were they against individuals and humanity? Should the Enron executives have been tried for crimes against humanity?
What about other financial events, such as the actions of large financial institutions? Many financial executives received hefty profits, their investors suffered, the companies considered bankruptcy,and drastically affected the American financial climate by receiving exorbitant amounts of so-called bail out money from American tax payers. Were the actions of these financial institutions illegal? Did their actions affect individuals? Was personhood affected? If so, should the actions be considered crimes against humanity?
There is a painting in the LouvreMuseum in Paris, France called the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa, painted by sixteenth century artist Leonardo da Vinci, may be the world’s most famous and valuable painting. There is only one Mona Lisa. What if the Mona Lisa were deliberately destroyed or vandalized beyond repair? Should the perpetrator be considered as having committed a crime against humanity? Would the damage or destruction be against an individual, against personhood? An individual, as has previously been discussed, has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this right is taken away from an individual, is the perpetrator guilty of a crime against humanity? Does pursuit of happiness include the ability to enjoy, see, and be in the presence of a one-of-a-kind, world renowned work of art?
So, what have we, the civilized world learned? Since WWII there have been no world wars but, there have been additional crimes against humanity- the killing fields of Cambodia, the Bosnian conflict, Rwanda and Guatemala to name a few. The Nuremberg precedent in the evolvement of civilization’s treatment of crimes against humanity that humans cannot do certain things to other humans and if they do, the perpetrators will be held accountable for their actions, was illustrated only two months ago, in late April 2012, with the conviction in The Hague of Charles Taylor for war crimes committed in Sierra Leone during the 1990s. Charles Taylor is the former president of Liberia and became the first head of state since the Nuremberg trials to be convicted of crimes against humanity. Taylor’s crimes included murder, rape, slavery, and the use of child soldiers.
Another illustration of the Nuremberg precedent is the presentdiscussionsregarding the killings in Syria, crimes against humanity, and the role of the Syrian President Assad.
Parenthetically, regarding Rwanda, at the USC graduation ceremony last month (May 2012) General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda from 1993 to 1994 received an honorary doctorate degree.
Maybe a lesson from Nuremberg has to do with empathy
How does one become instilled with empathy for another? With television and the internet, once human rights abuses are known, we have close to immediate, graphic descriptions of the abuses. The images are horrible, we feel bad. But what else do we feel? Do we feel empathy? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe a little. Usually the abuses are geographically far removed and in the abstract. We don’t know the people, and it’s difficult to relate to the people. We hear of thousands in Africa, of thousands in this or that country. Who are these people? What feeling should we have for them? Contrast the far removed and unknown to the close and familiar. What if the abuses were to our fellow countrymen, inhabitants of our state, our neighbors, our friends, our relatives? The feeling, the empathy would, no doubt, be dramatically different.
Maybe a part answer is, if somehow, everyone realizes that we are all part of the same human race, the same humanity. Another realization may be that abuse could happen anywhere, and if individuals do not remain vigilant, they may wake up and find that a portion of their liberties have been abridged and that they are facing some potential danger. Maybe a solution is that by helping, empathizing, with others against, for example, racial discrimination, it may prevent later racial discrimination against each of us. If discrimination can happen against one group, why not against two, or three?
Society must find ways to respect each other, to respect each other’s individuality, personhood. Everyone must keep in mind, personhood and the individual.
Although we’ve behaved better, we have still not behaved well enough. To forever stop crimes against humanity from occurring, to understand and accept the concept of personhood, and to stop the misbehavior, our behavior must continue to evolve. To that end, each one of us, personally, should ask him or herself, what are humanity’s resources that might be summoned in order to behave better, and what can each one of us do in our small way, our little corner, to contribute to a better society?