April, 28, 2005 -- Nuremburg Legacy Discussed at Cardozo Conference After the Holocaust the world vowed “Never again.” At an historic three-day conference, “The Nuremberg Trials: A Reappraisal and Their Legacy” hosted by Cardozo School of Law, participants were reminded that “never again” has become “over again” as human-rights violations continue around the world. Those participants - including former Nuremberg prosecutors, government officials, participants at tribunals in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Sierra Leone, and academics - analyzed the impact of the Nuremberg principles on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the trials. “We hope to reaffirm the lessons of Nuremberg,” said Sheri Rosenberg, deputy director of Cardozo's program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, who along with CSL Prof. Richard Weisberg, the program’s director, organized the conference.
After the Holocaust the world vowed “Never Again.” At a historic three-day conference on the Nuremberg war crimes trials held at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, participants were reminded that “Never Again” has become “over again” as human-rights violations continue.

A broad spectrum of participants –– including former Nuremberg prosecutors, government officials, participants at tribunals in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Sierra Leone, and academics –– attended “The Nuremberg Trials: A Reappraisal and Their Legacy,” in order to analyze the impact of the Nuremberg principles on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the trials.

“We hope to reaffirm the lessons of Nuremberg,” said Sheri Rosenberg, deputy director of the program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, who along with Prof. Richard Weisberg, the program’s director, organized the conference.

The standing-room only crowd was introduced to the importance of the Nuremberg trials with a screening of the 1959 teleplay Judgment at Nuremberg, which contains an introduction by former Nuremberg prosecutor and Cardozo founding faculty member Telford Taylor. Actor Alec Baldwin, co-producer and star of the TNT mini-series Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, and Prof. Michael Marrus of the University of Toronto offered comments.

As part of a “recollections” panel, first-hand witnesses to the injustice shared their experiences. At the age of 22 and with only a 10th grade education, Richard Sonnenfeldt became the chief interpreter for the American prosecution team. Born into a Jewish family in Germany, Sonnenfeldt had the opportunity to speak with everyone during the trial and read the indictments. “I was a witness to that history,” he said.

Greville Janner, Member of the British House of Lords, was not at the Nuremberg trials, but at the age of 18 he was stationed at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As a war crimes investigator in the British Army of the Rhine, Janner was responsible for arresting war criminals. In describing his first capture, a prison guard, Janner expressed surprise that the man was so ordinary. “They weren’t what you regarded as people who were killers,” Janner said.

One former Nuremberg prosecutor questioned whether we have become numb to the trials’ lessons. “What happened to the dream?” asked former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz, who at the age of 27 tried his first case at Nuremberg.

According to Hassan Bucabar Jallow, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, while Nuremberg and Rwanda are far apart in time and geography, they are the same problem. “It continues to happen, Jallow said. “It has happened again.”

Although crimes against humanity continue, panelists reminded the audience that the work at Nuremberg was not in vain. In a keynote speech, Justice Theodore Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said that although Nuremberg had flaws, without Nuremberg the establishment of an international criminal court at The Hague would not have been possible.

While the international community did not get involved in Rwanda until it was too late, according to Jallow, international criminal justice is slowly happening. In West Africa, the power of the law is becoming greater than the power of an AK47, according to David Crane, chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. “I believe the international community got it right this time around,” Crane said.

The questions of whether the international community got it right at Nuremberg and whether they will get it right in Iraq were also debated. “It’s not too late to correct the mistakes that have been made for the Iraqi tribunal,” Geoffrey Robertson, chief judge at the special court for Sierra Leone, said.

According to Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, the problem with the Iraqi tribunal is that the death penalty is involved. “Death surely is too easy for crimes of this heinousness,” Robertson said, adding that it’s hard to teach reverence for life if Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death and made a martyr.

Preventing new victims is a priority, but as part of a panel on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, participants discussed the conflict that is still producing victims every day. Stephanie Frease, director of programs at the Coalition for International Justice, expressed concern that the United Nation’s Commission of Inquiry on Darfur has concluded that what is happening in Darfur is not genocide.

“We need to respond to crimes against humanity whether they are genocide or not,” said John Prendergast, special advisor at the International Crisis Group, who has made three trips to rebel-held Darfur in the last six months. The failure to act forcefully shows that little has changed since the crisis in Rwanda, Prendergast said, and the government needs to impose sanctions on Khartoum. “We still have time to act,” Prendergast said.