Justice at Nuremberg? Jewish Responses to Nazi War-Crime Trials in Allied-Occupied Germany

Abstract

A bstr Act This article examines the multifaceted ways in which Jews reacted to the trial against Nazi Germany’s “major war criminals,” which the governments of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France held at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in the years 1945–46. Though the history of war-crime trials in postwar Germany and the representation of the Holocaust in Allied proceedings currently find widespread interest among historians, the roles that Jews played in and around the Nuremberg tribunal have largely been neglected. This article explores the problem of Jewish representation at Nuremberg and analyzes the attempts by Jewish individuals and organizations to intervene on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust. Moreover, it explores contemporaneous Jewish debates over German guilt, the agency and involvement of survivors in the fight for legal redress, and the possibilities for post-Holocaust justice in the framework of an international military trial.