Nuremberg
I recently watched a 1961 movie called Judgment At Nuremberg. The cast was a “who’s who” of great actors. Spencer Tracy played the part of the presiding judge in a trial of four Nazi judges who participated in the judicial evils of Hitler’s Germany. The following is an excerpt from his finding of the defendants guilty of crimes that has caused me to consider the issues we face as a people today.
Janning's record and his fate...
illuminate the most shattering truth
that has emerged from this trial.
If he and all of the other defendants
had been degraded perverts...
if all of the leaders of the Third Reich...
had been sadistic monsters and maniacs...
then these events
would have no more moral significance...
than an earthquake,
or any other natural catastrophe.
But this trial has shown...
that under a national crisis...
ordinary, even able and extraordinary men...
can delude themselves
into the commission of crimes...
so vast and heinous
that they beggar the imagination.
*****
How easily it can happen.
There are those in our own country, too...
who today speak
of the protection of country...
of survival.
A decision must be made
in the life of every nation...
at the very moment
when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat.
Then it seems that the only way to survive
is to use the means of the enemy...
to rest survival upon what is expedient,
to look the other way.
The answer to that is: Survival as what?
A country isn't a rock.
It's not an extension of one's self.
It's what it stands for.
It's what it stands for when standing
for something is the most difficult.
Before the people of the world...
let it now be noted...
that here in our decision,
this is what we stand for:
Justice...
truth...
and the value of a single human being.
