International jurists to mark double Nuremberg anniversary

Participants will include Ayelet Shaked, Alan Dershowitz, and former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.

By DANIELLE ZIRI
Updated: APRIL 12, 2016 02:37
Chief American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court on November 20, 1945 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Chief American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court on November 20, 1945
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
NEW YORK – The educational organization March of the Living, which each year after Passover brings people from all over the world to Poland and Israel to study the Holocaust, will mark the 80th anniversary of the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials with a gathering of international jurists in Krakow, Poland, on May 4.
The organization has partnered with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and the Jagiellonian University for the commemorations, intended to “address the lessons learned and action to be taken to prevent and combat mass atrocity in our time,” March of the Living said.
Germany’s Nuremberg laws, announced in 1935, institutionalized the racial theories of Nazi ideology against Jews, depriving them of political and social rights.
The Nuremberg trials, which began after World War II, prosecuted prominent members of the Nazi leadership who participated directly and indirectly in the Holocaust.
The gathering will include discussions on the lessons learned and the fight against international crimes decades after these crucial historical events. Participants include former Supreme Court president Dorit Beinisch, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella; Lord John Dyson of the UK Supreme Court; Prof. Alan Dershowitz; and former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel will act as honorary chairman for the conference.
Former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada Prof. Irwin Cotler, who will co-chair the event, called the anniversaries the “double entendre of Nuremberg: the Nuremberg of jackboots and hate, and the Nuremberg of judgments and principles.”
“May this be not only an act of remembrance for the victims of racism and anti-Semitism – and of horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened; but may this also be a remembrance to act – so that we are, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny,” Cotler said.
March of the Living chairman Shmuel Rosenman explained that each year the organization tries to add a unique educational element for the international community.
“This year with our focus on the Nuremberg race laws and Nuremberg trials, we have a special opportunity to provide a historical perspective on the contemporary mass atrocities that afflict our common humanity,” he said.