Nuremberg trial of 1946 goes digital
The Nuremberg Trial followed World War II, for the terrible reasons we know: those responsible for Nazi war crimes were to be held accountable. More than 75 years after the end of the war, it is more necessary than ever to shed light on the crimes of that dark period. Witnesses are fewer and fewer, and the rise of totalitarian currents around the world makes us fear the worst. It seems that education is more urgently needed than ever. All the more important that the Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg (1945-1946) has now been digitally processed. Initially, only the written material is available virtually; audio material and film excerpts are to follow.
The initiator of the online archive is David Cohen, professor of human rights and international justice at Stanford. He believes "that these documents should not just remain in some archive available only to historians and experts". Digitally processed, the files are now accessible worldwide, and they can be searched specifically in this way.
More material to follow
The Nuremberg Trial took place before the specially convened International Military Tribunal of the four victorious powers; twelve of the twentyfour defendants were sentenced to death, and only three defendants were acquitted.
The first trial was followed by twelve other Nuremberg trials, which were tried before American military tribunals. In the near future, the American scientists around Cohen also want to digitize the files of these trials and thus make them accessible to a large audience.
Why it matters
The Nuremberg Trials were far from the end of the process of coming to terms with the crimes and consequences of National Socialism. It is one thing that people in Germany wanted to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible. It is quite another that many things are now in danger of being forgotten or possibly reinterpreted. Time does not heal all wounds. That is why the results of this 2020 ZDF survey, for example, should startle us, because they show a sad picture of suppression. For this reason, our contribution to the digitized Nuremberg Trials is not in the section Searching for Traces, but quite deliberately here under Contemporary Events. The consequences of what happened back then still affect us. This history must not be repeated.
