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2005 Days of Remembrance Theme

May 1 - May 8, 2005

From Liberation to the Pursuit of Justice

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
— Justice Robert Jackson, Chief U.S. Counsel to the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Germany, November 21, 1945

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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is mandated by Congress to educate Americans about the history of the Holocaust and to annually commemorate its victims in the national Days of Remembrance observance. The Museum has designated “From Liberation to the Pursuit of Justice” as the theme for the 2005 Days of Remembrance in memory of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the subsequent prosecution under international law of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany. Reflection on the liberation of thousands of Jews and other prisoners from Nazi camps and the prosecution of Nazi perpetrators reminds us that we must take action to prevent atrocities and vigorously pursue justice for the victims of such acts of hatred and inhumanity.

Chief U.S. Counsel Justice Robert Jackson delivers the prosecution’s opening statement at the International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg, Germany, November 21, 1945. USHMM #03547/National Archives

Sixty years ago, as American, British, and Soviet soldiers moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they encountered and liberated concentration camp prisoners. Advancing from the west, U.S. divisions freed the major concentration camps of Dora-Mittelbau, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, and Dachau in Germany, and Mauthausen in Austria. In northern Germany, British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme. In the east, Soviet divisions liberated Auschwitz in Poland in January 1945. Just a few weeks before the German surrender in early May 1945, they liberated the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps inside Germany. In liberating the Nazi camps, the Anglo-American and Soviet soldiers exposed to the world the full visual horror of Nazi atrocities, lending urgency to the demands for justice.

Combat-hardened soldiers were unprepared for what they found in the camps: stacks of dead bodies lying around, and barracks filled with dead and dying prisoners. The stench of death was everywhere. Although the Germans had attempted to evacuate them, the camps still housed thousands of emaciated and diseased prisoners, a sight that shocked the liberating soldiers. Those prisoners who survived resembled skeletons because of forced labor and lack of food. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever present danger and the liberators had to burn down many of the camps to prevent the spread of epidemics. General Dwight D. Eisenhower made a deliberate visit to the Ohrdruf camp in order to witness personally the evidence of atrocities that "beggar description." Publicly expressing shock and revulsion, he urged others to see the camps first-hand, lest “the stories of Nazi brutality” be forgotten or dismissed as merely “propaganda.”

Like all survivors of the camps, Jews were plagued by illness and exhaustion. But, unlike those from other victim groups, Jewish survivors emerged from concentration camps and hiding places into a Europe in which they felt they no longer had a place. They had not only lost their families, but also their homes and in most cases, their entire communities, during the Holocaust. Many Jews were reluctant to return to their home countries because of continuing antisemitism and fear of Communist rule. They faced a long and difficult road to recovery.

After the war, military tribunals in Poland, the Soviet Union, occupied Germany, and elsewhere prosecuted captured Nazi officials under a variety of charges, many of which paralleled what were later defined as "crimes against humanity." While several Nazi leaders, including Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, committed suicide in the final days of the Nazi regime, representatives of the victorious Allies prosecuted other major offenders in the best-known war crimes trial, the Nuremberg Trial, held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, between November 1945 and August 1946. Under the auspices of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), prosecutors and judges from the four occupying powers (Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States), tried some of the leading officials of the Nazi regime on four counts, including a newly defined count of "crimes against humanity," in which significant evidence relating to the Nazi effort to murder the European Jews was introduced. Several prominent Nazis were sentenced to death, others received prison sentences, and a few were acquitted.

In the three years following this major trial, the IMT conducted 12 subsequent trials before U.S. Military Tribunals and presided over by U.S. judges. The proceedings were directed at second- and third-ranking officials of the Nazi regime. They included concentration camp administrators, commanders of the mobile killing units of the Security Police (Einsatzgruppen), Nazi physicians, and public health officials. Ultimately, only a minority of the perpetrators were indicted. And, in the end, many Nazis escaped judgment or were treated with leniency.

Nonetheless, the Nuremberg trials have had a major impact on international law over the last 60 years. The International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the recently created International Criminal Court are all part of the legacy of Nuremberg and of ongoing efforts of the world community to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.

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