Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES
312
at the annual Nazi Party Rally (named the “Party Rally of Freedom”) in Nuremberg, Germany,
both of which were designed to further exclude Jews from all manner of public life.
The first, the Reich Citizenship Law, stated that only Germans or those related by blood
could be citizens of Germany, thus excluding Jews from citizenship. Jews were excluded
because they were understood by Nazi ideologues as constituting a different strand of
humanity with different physical characteristics and different blood composition. This,
then, was a way for the Nazis to further define those they considered to be Aryans, Jews,
and Mischlinge (persons of mixed racial stock). The second, the Laws for the Protection of
German Blood and Honor, prohibited Jews from marriage with other Germans, extramarital
affairs, the employment of German female domestic servants under forty-five years
of age in Jewish households, and the raising of the German flag by Jews.
Ultimately, the aforementioned laws paved the way for even further exclusion of Jews
and the expansion of additional antisemitic activities, including the infamous Kristallnacht
of November 1938 (which saw major physical damage to Jewish businesses and synagogues,
physical attacks, imprisonment, and murder of Jews) and the Holocaust itself.
Nuremberg Principles. In 1946, the International Law Commission (ILC) was established
by the United Nations, and in that year the ILC created the Nuremberg Principles.
In December 1946, under the action of the United Nations General Assembly, the
Nuremberg Principles were officially made part of international law.
The essential implication of the Nuremberg Principles is that every person is responsible
for his or her own actions, and that, as a result, no one stands above international law.
The defense of “following superior orders,” which is what many of the Nazi defendants
attempted to use as their defense during the trials conducted by the International Military
Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg during 1945 and 1946, is nullified by these principles. The
Nuremberg Principles were first recognized in the Charter of the International Military
Tribunal that convened in the German city of Nuremberg at the end of World War II, and
it was according to these that the indicted Nazi war criminals were tried and, where the
court found appropriate, punished.
The list of seven principles, in summary form, is as follows: (1) any person who commits
a crime under international law is responsible for the act, and liable to punishment;
(2) where there is no set punishment for the act committed, it does not negate its criminality;
(3) being a head of state or a government official does not absolve a person from
the responsibility of having committed a criminal act, if the act committed is criminal
within international law; (4) “following superior orders” is not a valid or legitimate
defense, provided a moral choice was available to the person committing the criminal act;
(5) a fair trial should be made available as a matter of right to anyone accused of committing
a crime under international law; (6) the crimes for which a person may be
indicted are (a) crimes against peace; (b) war crimes; and (c) crimes against humanity;
and (7) complicity in the commission of any of the above-mentioned crimes is itself
considered a criminal act under international law.
The Nuremberg Principles have been incorporated into a number of multilateral
treaties, most notably that which established the International Criminal Court, a United
Nations Security Council initiative established in 2002 for the purpose of creating a
universal judicial regime for punishing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Nuremberg Trials. At the end of World War II (between October 18, 1945, and October
1, 1946), an international military tribunal (IMT), based in the German city of Nuremberg,