Eight decades ago, the world faced the necessity of judging crimes whose scale exceeded the existing categories of law for the first time. On November 20, 1945, the trial of the highest-ranking officials of the German Third Reich began before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. As historians emphasize, this was a turning point: for the first time, the victorious coalition countries recognized that international crimes could be the responsibility of individuals.
The half-truth of the trial
The Nuremberg trials laid the foundations for the modern system of international criminal law, but, as Dr. Joanna Nikel from the Pilecki Institute points out, they also left significant gaps. “Unfortunately, only the crimes of one totalitarian regime – Nazism – were tried in Nuremberg. The other aggressor, significant from the perspective of Poland and other countries, namely Soviet Russia, acted as the prosecutor rather than the accused state. For this reason, the crimes of one of the Allies (such as Katyń) were hushed up," she explains. She adds that after 1946, the Cold War halted the prosecution of war crimes, and justice became hostage to international politics.
Commemoration and return to witnesses
On the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, the Pilecki Institute invites you to an event which, as the organizers emphasize, will transport participants back to those days 80 years ago, to Room 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
Today at 7:00 p.m. at the Institute's headquarters, there will be a preview listening of the first episode of the audio series “Room 600. Witnesses of Nuremberg,” produced in collaboration with Polish Radio's Reportage Studio, and a concert by cellist Dobrawa Czocher, author of the music used in the project.
The audio series, as described by its author Martyna Wojtkowska, draws attention to the people standing in the background, without whom the trial could not have taken place. It is a project consisting of six episodes, each of which will focus on the fate of a single person participating in the trials as an observer. The protagonists will include journalists, stenographers, translators, and lawyers. “This desire for historical justice accompanied me while writing the script for the audio series,” says Martyna Wojtkowska.
“The subject matter is revealing and confrontational, concerning the judgment of the greatest war criminals in human history. It is important to make us aware and show us what evil happened in the past so that we can prevent it in the future,” emphasizes Dobrawa Czocher.
The mission of the Pilecki Institute
The topic of accounting for totalitarian crimes, including Nazi and Communist crimes of the 20th century, is the research, educational, and documentary mission of the Pilecki Institute.
Promoting knowledge about Polish lawyers who had a significant impact on post-war trials occupies a special place in the Institute's activities. One such example is Rafał Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish origin, who coined the term “genocide.”
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