Justice at Dachau

Justice at Dachau PDF Author: Joshua Greene
Publisher: Broadway Books
ISBN: 0307419053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The world remembers Nuremberg, where a handful of Nazi policymakers were brought to justice, but nearly forgotten are the proceedings at Dachau, where hundreds of Nazi guards, officers, and doctors stood trial for personally taking part in the torture and execution of prisoners inside the Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald concentration camps. In Justice at Dachau, Joshua M. Greene, maker of the award winning documentary film Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, recreates the Dachau trials and reveals the dramatic story of William Denson, a soft-spoken young lawyer from Alabama whisked from teaching law at West Point to leading the prosecution in the largest series of Nazi trials in history. In a makeshift courtroom set up inside Hitler’s first concentration camp, Denson was charged with building a team from lawyers who had no background in war crimes and determining charges for crimes that courts had never before confronted. Among the accused were Dr. Klaus Schilling, responsible for hundreds of deaths in his “research” for a cure for malaria; Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, a Harvard psychologist turned Gestapo informant; and one of history’s most notorious female war criminals, Ilse Koch, “Bitch of Buchenwald,” whose penchant for tattooed skins and human bone lamps made headlines worldwide. Denson, just thirty-two years old, with one criminal trial to his name, led a brilliant and successful prosecution, but nearly two years of exposure to such horrors took its toll. His wife divorced him, his weight dropped to 116 pounds, and he collapsed from exhaustion. Worst of all was the pressure from his army superiors to bring the trials to a rapid end when their agenda shifted away from punishing Nazis to winning the Germans’ support in the emerging Cold War. Denson persevered, determined to create a careful record of responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust. When, in a final shocking twist, the United States used clandestine reversals and commutation of sentences to set free those found guilty at Dachau, Denson risked his army career to try to prevent justice from being undone. From the Hardcover edition.

Justice at Dachau

Justice at Dachau PDF Author: Joshua Greene
Publisher: Broadway Books
ISBN: 0307419053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
The world remembers Nuremberg, where a handful of Nazi policymakers were brought to justice, but nearly forgotten are the proceedings at Dachau, where hundreds of Nazi guards, officers, and doctors stood trial for personally taking part in the torture and execution of prisoners inside the Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Buchenwald concentration camps. In Justice at Dachau, Joshua M. Greene, maker of the award winning documentary film Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, recreates the Dachau trials and reveals the dramatic story of William Denson, a soft-spoken young lawyer from Alabama whisked from teaching law at West Point to leading the prosecution in the largest series of Nazi trials in history. In a makeshift courtroom set up inside Hitler’s first concentration camp, Denson was charged with building a team from lawyers who had no background in war crimes and determining charges for crimes that courts had never before confronted. Among the accused were Dr. Klaus Schilling, responsible for hundreds of deaths in his “research” for a cure for malaria; Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, a Harvard psychologist turned Gestapo informant; and one of history’s most notorious female war criminals, Ilse Koch, “Bitch of Buchenwald,” whose penchant for tattooed skins and human bone lamps made headlines worldwide. Denson, just thirty-two years old, with one criminal trial to his name, led a brilliant and successful prosecution, but nearly two years of exposure to such horrors took its toll. His wife divorced him, his weight dropped to 116 pounds, and he collapsed from exhaustion. Worst of all was the pressure from his army superiors to bring the trials to a rapid end when their agenda shifted away from punishing Nazis to winning the Germans’ support in the emerging Cold War. Denson persevered, determined to create a careful record of responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust. When, in a final shocking twist, the United States used clandestine reversals and commutation of sentences to set free those found guilty at Dachau, Denson risked his army career to try to prevent justice from being undone. From the Hardcover edition.

Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials

Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials PDF Author: John J. Dunphy
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476695407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
The U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group investigated atrocities committed in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. These young Americans--many barely out of their teens--gathered evidence, interviewed witnesses, apprehended suspects and prosecuted defendants at trials held at Dachau. Their work often put them in harm's way--some suspects facing arrest preferred to shoot it out. The War Crimes Group successfully prosecuted the perpetrators of the Malmedy Massacre, in which 84 American prisoners of war were shot by their German captors; and Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny, aptly described as "the most dangerous man in Europe." Operation Paperclip, however, placed some war criminals--scientists and engineers recruited by the U.S. government--beyond their reach. From the ruins of the Third Reich arose a Nazi underground that preyed on Americans, especially members of the Group.

Innocent at Dachau

Innocent at Dachau PDF Author: Joseph Halow
Publisher: Legion for the Survival of Freedom
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"American teenager Joe Halow was still a boy when he sailed to war-ravaged Germany in late 1946. The year he spent there, taking part in some of the most sensational of the war-crime trials of the defeated Nazis, turned him into a man. Innocent at Dachau is Joe Halow's account of his year in postwar Germany, above all his work as a court reporter during the U.S. Army courts-martial at Dachau. There Halow witnessed, recorded and transcribed some of the most gripping testimony from some of the most sensational trials of the postwar years: of SS guards from Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dora/Nordhausen; of the inmates who carried out their orders as kapos (prisoner trusties); and of German villagers who attacked and murdered downed American fliers in the last phase of the Allies' terrifying air war. Armed with an ironclad faith in American righteousness when he arrived, young Halow soon saw the flaws and the abuses in the Dachau trials: reliance on ex post facto law and broad conspiracy theories; abuse of prisoners during interrogation; and the shocking tolerance, even encouragement, of perjured testimony by concentration camp survivors. The teenaged American court reporter came to sympathize with the plight of the accused, particularly those convicted, sentenced or executed unjustly. Innocent at Dachau is Joe Halow's story of his coming of age, his loss of innocence, in the Dachau courts. And it's the human drama of how he came to terms with his own anti-German feelings as he loved and worked in a Germany still heaped with rubble and ruled by the black market, in the shadow of the looming Iron Curtain and the approaching Cold War. Innocent at Dachau is also the story of how, four decades later, Joe Halow went back - back to the long-classified records of the Army's trials at Dachau, where he found astounding confirmation, from official sources, of his own misgivings about the trials; and back to Germany, for a moving visit with one of the German SS men Joe Halow watched testify about his role at the Nordhausen concentration camp."--Provided by publisher.

Hitler's First Victims

Hitler's First Victims PDF Author: Timothy W. Ryback
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804172005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The remarkable story of Josef Hartinger, the German prosecutor who risked everything to bring to justice the first killers of the Holocaust and whose efforts would play a key role in the Nuremberg tribunal. At 9 am on April 13, 1933, deputy prosecutor Josef Hartinger received a telephone call summoning him to the newly established concentration camp of Dachau. Four prisoners had been shot. The SS guards claimed that the men had been trying to escape. But what Hartinger found when he arrived convinced him that something was terribly wrong. All four victims were Jews. Before Germany was engulfed by Nazi dictatorship, it was a constitutional republic. And just before Dachau became a site of Nazi genocide, it was a legal state detention center for political prisoners. In 1933, that began to change. In Hitler’s First Victims, Timothy W. Ryback evokes a society on the brink—one in which civil liberties are sacrificed to national security, in which citizens increasingly turn a blind eye to injustice, in which the bedrock of judicial accountability chillingly dissolves into the martial caprice of the Third Reich. This is an astonishing portrait of Hitler’s first moments in power, and the true story of one man’s race to expose the Nazis as murderers on the eve of the Holocaust.

Legacies of Dachau

Legacies of Dachau PDF Author: Harold Marcuse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521552042
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau. These names still evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany around the world. This 2001 book takes one of these sites, Dachau, and traces its history from the beginning of the twentieth century, through its twelve years as Nazi Germany's premier concentration camp, to the camp's postwar uses as prison, residential neighborhood, and, finally, museum and memorial site. With superbly chosen examples and an eye for telling detail, Legacies of Dachau documents how Nazi perpetrators were quietly rehabilitated to become powerful elites, while survivors of the concentration camps were once again marginalized, criminalized and silenced. Combining meticulous archival research with an encyclopedic knowledge of the extensive literatures on Germany, the Holocaust, and historical memory, Marcuse unravels the intriguing relationship between historical events, individual memory, and political culture, to offer a unified interpretation of their interaction from the Nazi era to the twenty-first century.

Judgment Before Nuremberg

Judgment Before Nuremberg PDF Author: Greg Dawson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681770415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
When people think of the Holocaust, they think of Auschwitz and Dachau. Not of Russia or the Ukraine, and certainly not a town called Kharkov. But in reality, the first war crime trial against the Nazis was in this tiny Ukrainian town, which is fitting, because it is where the Holocaust actually began. Judgment Before Nuremberg is also the story of Dawson’s personal journey to this place, to the scene of the crime, and the discovery of the trial which began the tortuous process of avenging the murder of his grandparents, great-grandparents and tens of thousands of fellow Ukrainians consumed at the dawn of the Shoah, a moment and crime now largely cloaked in darkness.

The Mauthausen Trial

The Mauthausen Trial PDF Author: Tomaz Jardim
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674264738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 27, 1947, the first of forty-nine men condemned to death for war crimes at Mauthausen concentration camp mounted the gallows at Landsberg prison near Munich. The mass execution that followed resulted from an American military trial conducted at Dachau in the spring of 1946—a trial that lasted only thirty-six days and yet produced more death sentences than any other in American history. The Mauthausen trial was part of a massive series of proceedings designed to judge and punish Nazi war criminals in the most expedient manner the law would allow. There was no doubt that the crimes had been monstrous. Yet despite meting out punishment to a group of incontestably guilty men, the Mauthausen trial reveals a troubling and seldom-recognized face of American postwar justice—one characterized by rapid proceedings, lax rules of evidence, and questionable interrogations. Although the better-known Nuremberg trials are often regarded as epitomizing American judicial ideals, these trials were in fact the exception to the rule. Instead, as Tomaz Jardim convincingly demonstrates, the rough justice of the Mauthausen trial remains indicative of the most common—and yet least understood—American approach to war crimes prosecution. The Mauthausen Trial forces reflection on the implications of compromising legal standards in order to guarantee that guilty people do not walk free.

Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945–1950

Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945–1950 PDF Author: Devin O. Pendas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108915957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Post-war Germany has been seen as a model of 'transitional justice' in action, where the prosecution of Nazis, most prominently in the Nuremberg Trials, helped promote a transition to democracy. However, this view forgets that Nazis were also prosecuted in what became East Germany, and the story in West Germany is more complicated than has been assumed. Revising received understanding of how transitional justice works, Devin O. Pendas examines Nazi trials between 1945 and 1950 to challenge assumptions about the political outcomes of prosecuting mass atrocities. In East Germany, where there were more trials and stricter sentences, and where they grasped a broad German complicity in Nazi crimes, the trials also helped to consolidate the emerging Stalinist dictatorship by legitimating a new police state. Meanwhile, opponents of Nazi prosecutions in West Germany embraced the language of fairness and due process, which helped de-radicalise the West German judiciary and promote democracy.

My Survival: A Girl on Schindler's List

My Survival: A Girl on Schindler's List PDF Author: Joshua M. Greene
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338593803
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
The astonishing true story of a girl who survived the Holocaust thanks to Oskar Schindler, of Schindler's List fame. Rena Finder was only eleven when the Nazis forced her and her family -- along with all the other Jewish families -- into the ghetto in Krakow, Poland. Rena worked as a slave laborer with scarcely any food and watched as friends and family were sent away. Then Rena and her mother ended up working for Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who employed Jewish prisoners in his factory and kept them fed and healthy. But Rena's nightmares were not over. She and her mother were deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz. With great cunning, it was Schindler who set out to help them escape. Here in her own words is Rena's gripping story of survival, perseverance, tragedy, and hope. Including pictures from Rena's personal collection and from the time period, this unforgettable memoir introduces young readers to an astounding and necessary piece of history.

Unstoppable

Unstoppable PDF Author: Joshua M. Greene
Publisher: Insight Editions
ISBN: 9781647222154
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Winner – Best of Los Angeles Award's "Best Holocaust Book - 2021" “A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig’s effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appeal to a wide variety of readers.” - Library Journal Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets. Siggi’s ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.