Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
". . . A few days before leaving for London Jackson visited F.B.I. officials in New York on June 11, 1945. Here he had, probably not at his own wish, his first meeting with several powerful Jewish organizations who had already made quite clear to him they wanted a hand in running the trial. In an office provided by the F.B.I. in the Federal Building, three leading lawyers, Judge Nathan Perlman, Dr Jacob Robinson, and Dr Alexander Kohanski, came to exert pressure on behalf of a coalition of representative American organizations.
They began by heaping picturesque praise on Jackson's first report to the president, which had now been published, describing it as 'like rain on the desert to the Jews.' While others had looked for precedents in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, they flattered him, Jackson had taken his 'from the twenty-second century.'
These lawyers, who greatly impressed him by their intelligence and erudition, had hopefully read into his report to the president the implication that he intended to treat the Nazi persecution of the Jews as a crime in its own right. Dr Robinson handed him a copy of the treaty of Sevres in which the Allies had laid down penalties on the Turks for their atrocities against the Armenians during World War One. This might serve as a useful precedent. Robinson also suggested that the tribunal prosecute Alfred Rosenberg in his capacity as chief Nazi philosopher; they were not seeking vengeance, swore Robinson, 'nor, of course, compensation for Jewish losses'.
How great were these losses, inquired Jackson, seeking a figure to use at the coming trial. 'Six million,' responded Dr. Robinson, and indicated that the figure included Jews in all Nazi-occupied lands 'from the Channel to Stalingrad,'
Jackson noted that day:
'I was particularly interested in knowing the source and reliability of his estimate as I know no authentic data on it.'
Robinson said that he had arrived at his figure by extrapolation from the known statistics for the Jewish population in 1929 and those believed to be surviving now. In other words, his figure was somewhere between a hopeful estimate and an educated guess. 'The difference are assumed to be killed or in hiding,' he said. Given the turmoils and tragedies of a war-torn Europe ravaged by bombs and plagues, it was not a data basis on which a statistician would properly have relied. Where were the shifting frontiers? Who, indeed, was a Jew? These were questions about which cartographers, ethnographers, religious fanatics, and politicians are still at each other's throats. Six million? By sad but extraordinary coincidence, the American Jewish community had raised a similar outcry about a 'holocaust' a quarter of a century earlier, after World War One. In a 1919 speech the governor of New York, Martin Glynn, had claimed that 'six million' were being exterminated.
The delegation expressed to Jackson their fears that the Allies would choose the less onerous course, of merely prosecuting the Nazis for lesser offenses. These men wanted a decision based on the persecution of the Jews which, they averred, all the post-war trials so far conducted had sidestepped. They even asked for a separate court to try these charges, and failing that, they asked for the right to have an _amicus curiae_ in Jackson's courtroom to 'represent the six million slaughtered.'
Foreseeing inevitable problems, Jackson demurred. All the other persecuted minorities would then feel entitled to the same rights. He gave the delegation no encouragement, but promised to think about it. Having obviously failed in that mission, they then asked him at least to appoint an officer on his staff specifically to handle their angle . . ."
Well. I don't know about you, but it feels as though I have been present
at that meeting.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"There is more dynamite in this question than Krupp ever produced out of his plant."
(Justice Robert H. Jackson at a secret meeting of the Nuremberg chief prosecutors, November 12, 1945)