Memorium Nuremberg Trials

Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse

From 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946, leading figures of the National Socialist regime had to stand trial before the International Military Tribunal in Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. The »Memorium Nuremberg Trials« provides information about the trial at the historical site, but also extends the focus to the subsequent Nuremberg Trials held in 1946-49 and their impact on the development of international criminal law.

History

At the beginning of August 1945, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. The Military Tribunal was initially supposed to sit in Berlin, but was moved to Nuremberg in the US occupation zone at the insistence of the USA. The Nuremberg Trials are regarded as the most important part of the Allied punishment programme against leading representatives of the Nazi regime. They took place from 20 November 1945 to 14 April 1949 and comprised the Nuremberg Trial against the main war criminals as well as several so-called subsequent Nuremberg Trials.

After almost a year of hearings, the verdicts against 22 defendants in the Main War Crimes Trial were announced on 30 September and 1 October 1946: Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, seven received long-term or life sentences and three were acquitted. Ten of the twelve death sentences were carried out on 16 October. Among those sentenced to death were the former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Hermann Göring evaded the judgement by committing suicide.

By 1949, twelve further trials of German doctors, lawyers, industrialists, SS and police leaders, military officers, ministers, civil servants and diplomats had taken place before American military courts in Nuremberg. 177 verdicts were handed down on 185 charges, 142 of which were prison sentences or death sentences. Four people committed suicide and four were declared unfit to stand trial due to illness. In addition to the Nuremberg Trials, further trials against war criminals took place in all four occupation zones.

Nuremberg, 1945, The Nuremberg Palace of Justice in the winter of 1945/46, Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, Photo: Ray D'Addario (StadtAN A 65/IV No. RA-141)

Nuremberg, 1945/46, The main defendants in the Nuremberg Trial, National Archives, College Park, MD, USA

Victims

The Nazi reign of terror and the Second World War brought suffering and destruction to Europe and the world. The National Socialists committed countless war crimes and murdered six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma. Other social groups were also victims of persecution and murder, including people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents. Over 50 million people – soldiers and civilians alike – lost their lives during the Second World War as a result of acts of war and their consequences.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

The Nuremberg Trials not only occupy a prominent position in dealing with the crimes of National Socialism, but also mark a milestone in international jurisprudence. The fact that the offence of »crimes against humanity« was tried before an international court for the first time had a decisive influence on the prosecution of human rights violations under international criminal law in the decades that followed. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Today, the Palace of Justice houses the Nuremberg Higher Regional Court, the Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court, the Nuremberg District Court and the Nuremberg-Fürth Public Prosecutor's Office. In May 2000, the museums of the city of Nuremberg offered public guided tours of the historic Courtroom 600 at weekends for the first time. The number of visitors has increased from year to year. Particularly in connection with the numerous events to mark the 60th anniversary of the start of the trial, it became clear how strongly Courtroom 600 is anchored in international cultural memory as a place of justice for immeasurable injustice.

In October 2005, the Board of Trustees of the Documentation Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds presented the »Memorium Nuremberg Trials« project to the public for the first time. In December 2008, the entire East Building of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice was cleared, and in January 2009, the first demolition work began. Construction work on the Memorium began in March. This was followed by the construction of the exhibition, which was opened on 21 November 2010 as part of a ceremony with national and international political participation.

Nuremberg, undated, Courtroom 600 today, Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse, photo: Christine Dierenbach

Nuremberg, 2022, media installation Courtroom 600: Time Travel, Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse, photo: Tim Händel

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition and temporary exhibitions, public guided tours, educational programmes for schools and groups, regular events, publications, digital services

Open

Monday and Wednesday to Friday 9. a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Tuesday closed

Contact

https://museen.nuernberg.de/memorium-nuernberger-prozesse

memorium@stadt.nuernberg.de

+49 (0)911 231 - 28 614

Bärenschanzstraße 72
90429 Nürnberg

Nuremberg, 1945/46, View into the courtroom during the International Military Tribunal, National Archives Record Administration, College Park, MD, USA

Nuremberg, 1948, The IG Farben case at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, Photo: Ray D'Addario (StadtAN A 65/II No. RA-94-D)

Nuremberg, undated, View of the permanent exhibition, Museen der Stadt Nürnberg, Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse, Photo: Tim Hufnagl

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