Inside Courtroom 600 where Nazi's leadership was tried

By NZAU MUSAU

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. US chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg Robert H. Jackson.

THE flapping flags of these victorious nations still fly outside the Nuremberg Palace of Justice 66 years after they capitulated Germany, overthrew the Nazi's and committed their defiant leaders to a historic trial. Two statues of human figures looking to the opposites stand over and above the entrance to this expansive building. One of them - seemingly a woman - is looking up holding onto her shoulders and has a dove perched on her right hand. The other - most likely a man - is looking down holding on to his own chains.

You are entering Courtroom 600 where for the first time in the history of modern civilisations, high status men were hauled before the world to answer to charges of grave crimes committed against fellow human beings. Jackson, the former US Attorney General and associate justice of US Supreme Court before he was appointed US chief prosecutor at the trial, could not have been more right on the effect of the trial which took place inside these doors.

Yet, the philosophy behind committing the Nazi leaders to international trial right in their own yard instead of hanging them on capture has never been fully appreciated for years until recently with the formation of International Criminal Court. Whether the trial was fair or not is a debate for another day. For now, however, it is fact that the very idea of constituting an international trial, as Jackson said, remains undoubtedly one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.

Besides the ICC, the “Memorium Nuremberg Trials” exhibition which opened in 2010, exactly 65 years after Courtroom 600 opened its doors to the Nazi leaders and collaborators, is perhaps another testimony to this underestimation of the significance of the trials. Germany society, just like the rest of the world, had over the years seen the trials and the resultant justice as victors trials and justice. In a big way, as the curator at the exhibition Henrike Zentgiar told us as she led us into Courtroom 600, this was actually true.

'In August of 1945 and a few months after the allied forces liberalised Nuremberg, the US took over this building which remained largely undamaged and refurbished it for the trial. Courtroom 600 was remodelled and American furniture and objects replaced German's,” she said. Walking into the exquisitely paneled Courtroom 600 armed with the consciousness that this is where some of the history's evil men - men who plotted and executed gross evil using the state - were stood to account for their deeds conjures up very sad feelings.

The courtroom is largely as it was during the period of trial with very little adjustments effected in 1961 when it was handed back to Germans and the Bavarian judiciary took the initiative to remove all American alterations. “The defense stack has however remained as it was in 1945,” Zentgiar says while pointing to the defence side where lawyers of the suspects sat.

Behind them sat top Nazi leadership of Herman Goring, Rudolf Heb, Joachim von Ribbetrop, Wilhem Keietel, Ernst kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhem Frick, Julius Streicher, Wather Funk, Hjalmar Schacht, Karl Donitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach and Fritz Sauckel.

Others were Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seb-Inquart, Albert Speer, Kostantin von Neurath and Hans Fritzsche. Others who never made it to the courtroom but were nevertheless indicted included Robert Ley (committed suicide before trial), Gustav Krupp von Bohlen (due to ill health) and Martin Bormann (who was missing).

Behind them is the panelled wall and a door through which they entered the courtroom from an adjacent prison. Above the door is a decorative sculpture depicting two men holding daggers and posing vengeance. The only symbol of hope and redemption for the Nazi leaders here is a crucifix which, however, as the curator tells us, is a latest addition. It poignantly hangs over the front wall and above the bench were the judges sat.

If only it hang on in there in those grueling eleven months of trial, it would have served the convicts a great deal in instilling hope for the afterlife which if Jackson's opening speech is anything to go by, was obviously beckoning. Up the court now runs the exhibition which details the road travelled from Nuremberg to the Hague where a permanent international criminal court now sits. The exhibition starts with the history of international tribunal noting that Nuremberg was not the first.

“Contrary to what people think, this was not the first time the world thought of international tribunals. Twelve people had actually been tried of world war one,”Zentgiar says as she leads us through the history of the international criminal law leading to the Rome Statute.The Nuremberg trials, as Zentgiar explains, were largely seen in Germany as “Anglo-American victors justice” and as a result there is very little research that has been done on the role of the Soviets and the defence in the delivery of the justice.

The role of media in the trials is also captured in the exhibition. German media was more or less banned although many Germany journalists who had been exiled were part of the team that covered the trials. Of the 240 slots available to the media, only seven were given to Germany-based journalists but only after thorough de-nazification. The rest of the journalists came from outside Germany although like stated above, some of them were actually Germans.

One such journalist and whose press entry to Nuremberg is displayed at the exhibition is Willy Brandt who would later become a chancellor of Germany in 1969. Brandt, originally Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm had escaped Nazi's Germany and was then a correspondent for Labour Party Press in Norway and Sweden.

The video recordings of the trial can be played at the exhibition including the final sentencing in which 10 of the suspects were sentenced to hang while seven got long terms in prison.“Their bodies were taken to Munich, burnt and ash thrown into a river. As we were to later learn as a country, the idea of throwing their ash into a river was a good idea,” Zentgiar explains while recounting a story of one of the prisoners who hanged himself in prison in 1987.

The mistake made is that the prisoner was buried in a known location and over the years, his grave has turned into a pilgrimage of sorts with neo-Nazi's coming to pay their tributes every other year.

Subsequently, other trials took place in Nuremberg to try other Nazi collaborators because as Zentgiar says “almost everybody was involved at their own levels.” The trials continued until late 1950s when Americans seeking to appease Germans away from communist influence replaced the word “punishment” with “rehabilitation.”

The exhibition has displayed time-lines of key events on development of international criminal law starting with Nuremberg trial in 1945, the definition of Nuremberg principles in 1950, International tribunal for former Yugoslavia of 1993, Rwanda tribunal of 1994 and Rome statute of 1998. “It took 40 years for Nuremberg trial to be accepted in Germany. This goes to show how painful and difficult it is for people to deal with such a past,” Zentgiar concludes while pointing to a world map conflict spots and the years the conflicts erupted.

Kenya is featured in this shameful list and the year “2010” attached to it. This is the year the ICC got involved in the post-election violence issue. According to Germany ambassador to Kenya Margit Hell-wig Boette, Kenyans can learn a lot from Nuremberg, the first lesson being that there is nothing like collective responsibility.

“Crimes are committed by individuals and not by communities. We had a long discussion on this as German people and we figured out that collective guilty is only important in prevention of crimes. The concept of collective responsibility does not however exists in law,” Hellwig-Boette says. She said Germans saw individuals hurled before Nuremberg for their involvement in horrendous crimes and this was and still is an invaluable lesson that can be exported to Kenya: “When I look at the ICC involvement in Kenya, I see the same thing. These are individuals, not communities.”

Jackson the US prosecutor had restated this in his closing remarks in explaining the philosophy behind the trial as a “great effort to make peace more secure” and constituting a “juridical action of a kind” to ensure that those who commit grave crimes against humanity will pay for it personally.

Rome Statute is modern history's greatest tribute to this philosophy because, to paraphrase Jackson's famous opening speech at Nuremberg, the crimes that ICC seeks to punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.This is why every senior Kenyan leader, business executive, youthful student and all who visit Germany must make a pilgrimage to Nuremberg's Courtroom 600 and see how far the world of international justice has come.