WWII+Research+and+Symposium+VAAY

=**Nuremberg Trials were necessary to try Nazis for their atrocities**=

**Facts:**

 * 1) After World War II, former Nazi leaders were accused of war crimes (acts against the customs of warfare including: killing of prisoners, robbing valuables from private property, and destruction of private property) and crimes against humanity (extermination or deportation of civilians).
 * 2) The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, France, and nineteen other nations agreed to try major Axis war criminals.
 * 3) In the first session of the Nuremberg trials, 24 former Nazi leaders were charged with war crimes.
 * 4) One of the defendants argued that only a state, not an individual, could commit a war crime proper. However, this defense was rejected.
 * 5) Of the 24 tried, 12 were sentence to be hanged, one committed suicide, and the rest were sentence to prison ranging from ten years to life.
 * 6) From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis killed approximately six million European Jews.
 * 7) Between 1942 and 1944, at least 3 million Jews died in extermination camps such as Treblinka and Belzec.
 * 8) More than 500,000 Gypsies died because of the Nazis.
 * 9) In Nazi concentration camps, Jews were tortured by hard labor, starvation, and had little to no clothing.
 * 10) When new transports would arrive, the Nazis would automatically exterminate all the babies and little children because they were not fit enough to work.

**Primary Sources:**
"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." -Robert H. Jackson

Robert H. Jackson was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. This quote, from the Opening Address at the Nuremberg Trials, states that we can't ignore the foes who have committed extreme crimes; crimes that were so dangerous and overwhelming. We must punish those who committed these crimes, and not let them escape freely. According to the quote, if this event were to happen again, we would not be able to survive. This would be because of the devastating losses from the first time it occurred. There were millions of people killed during the Holocaust and only a few hundred Jews were left standing.

This picture shows that the Nazis abused the civilians during World War II. They deported Jews, Gypsies, and other groups of people to concentration camps, labor camps, and even extermination camps. In the concentration camps, they would treat them like slaves: little food, little clothing, extreme labor, and overcrowded barracks. As you can tell by the picture, these people are very skinny. The reason for this is because they are given only a piece of bread and some soup every day. The victims in the concentration camps also lose all their valuables and other belongings. Everyday, the victims would have to witness Jews and others dying from exhaustion, sickness, or the crematorium. This would be considered as crime against humanity because these are civilians that didn't do anything wrong. The Nazis just wanted to attack these groups of people to "cleanse Germany of Jews."

"The "final solution" of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time there were already in the general govemment three other extermination camps; BELZEK, TREBLINKA and WOLZEK. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The Camp Commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized Prussic Acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses."-Rudolf Franz Höss

Rudolf Franz Höss was a member of the SS and was constantly associated with the administration of concentration camps since 1934. The above quote is from the Nuremberg Trials testimony. It shows that people can be very dedicated to do anything. Höss obeyed the order to establish extermination facilities at the concentration camp. He could have refused and aided the Jews, but he decided not to. Höss also spent his time thinking of a more efficient method of exterminating the Jews. He used Cyclon B and it killed Jews faster in gas chambers. Then, he was one of the men who would have to remove the corpses from the chamber. This was an example of the extreme anti-Semitism..