Nuremberg Trial Docs Displayed

By Menachem Posner – Chabad.org

Recently discovered original 65-year-old documents pertaining to the Nuremberg Trials are on display for the first time at the Jüdisches Bildungszentrum, the Rohr Chabad Center in Berlin.

The cache of papers had mysteriously surfaced in a flea market in the port city of Jaffa, Israel. The collection was found in a box in an apartment whose contents were sold to one of the market’s merchants. They were purchased by a collector who transferred the collection to Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem.

The collection of 500 papers was identified by experts as a lost part of the archives of Isaac A. Stone, who had served as associate chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, during which 23 high-ranking Nazi Party members were tried in the German city of Nuremberg. (The other portion had been given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.)

They include a stenographic report of a 1938 meeting concerning “the Jewish question,” chaired by leading Nazi Hermann Göring, founder of the Gestapo and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe; some of Hitler’s memoranda dating from 1933; and a letter reporting the seizure of Jewish art in honor of the Fuhrer’s birthday. Coming full-circle, it also contains typewritten notes from Göring’s military tribunal, which resulted in his hanging.

Many of the other documents are English translations of original German evidence and notes taken by the prosecution during the course of the trial.

‘A Spotlight on What Happened’

Isaac A. Stone was born in Estonia in 1907 and immigrated with his parents to Boston, Mass., as a young boy. In 1935, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. In the latter part of the 1940s, Stone served in the U.S. Foreign Service and directed the Berlin Documents Center, established for the purpose of gathering documents from the years of the Nazi regime for use by the prosecution team at the Nuremberg Trials.

At the time of the trials, Stone was part of the staff of Justice Robert H. Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court, who was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. (Jackson awarded Stone a special citation for his service). He immigrated to Israel in 1970, where he passed away four years later in Jerusalem.

Some 20 papers are currently on display. The entire collection will be offered up for auction on Jan. 29 at Kedem Auction House.

“It is so important that these documents are coming to light and are being displayed here in Berlin, where everyone can see for themselves,” said Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, community rabbi of Berlin. “The Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—would say that the way to combat the darkness of the Holocaust is with the light of knowledge.”

Teichtal said he told his grandfather, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor living in Israel, about the display.

“He told me that it is personally meaningful to him that we are putting a spotlight on what happened,” said the rabbi, who moved from Brooklyn, N.Y, to Berlin with his wife Leah in 1996 to spearhead Chabad activities in the city. “The survivors are fading away, and it is crucial that we remember our personal and collective responsibility to make the world a kinder, gentler place.”