A slightly mistake in making a judgment will be reason to deaths and execution of millions. So is the case with four German judges and prosecutors, accused of crime, sterilization and atrocities against humanity during Nazi regime depicted in Judgment at Nuremberg directed by Stanley Kramer. Court room geopolitical drama, Judgment at Nuremberg, though, is fictionalize but loosely based on trials of 1948-49. The movie is quite shocking; it captures your mind from its inception and absorbs you completely in it with its peerless rheumatic dialogues which show the atrocities committed by Nazis. “My counsel says we were not aware of the extermination of the millions. He would give you the excuse: we were only aware of the extermination of the hundreds”, says Ernest Janning. The account which I am writing this article is because of one singular perspective put forwarded by Hans Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg about Adolf Hitler and the world. Germany alone was not responsible or guilty because of Hitler; the whole world was equally responsible in making of Hitler. Germany, that helped Finland against Russians and communist during 1917-18, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939: the pact which enabled Hitler to make war. The signing of pact quickly followed German’s blitzkrieg invasion of Poland. So weren’t the Soviets guilty for the crimes of Hitler? And what about the other countries, who were aware of the intentions of Third Reich and the words of Hitler which were broadcasted all over the world? Wasn’t the world aware of Hitler’s purpose written in his autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’? Was not the Vatican responsible, who signed the Concordat in 1933, which gave rise to Hitler in 1930s Holocaust? The Holy See became the first partner to Hitler’s regime. The film ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ suggests that Winston Churchill also praised Hitler, right after The Munich Pact. Churchill praises, “I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position”. Wasn’t that an odd time to praise a dictator? Are we not to find Winston Churchill guilty? Where is the responsibility of those American industrialists, who helped Hitler to rebuild his armaments and profited by that rebuilding? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty? Contrary that doesn’t connote that Hitler was not guilty; his atrocities committed on humanity were beyond the words to explain. He was villain of our era but he wouldn’t have been, if the whole universe hadn’t conspired in helping him to achieve it. The story about Hitler’s concentration camps still horrifies the humanity. One of them was Buchenwald concentration camp founded in 1937, it inmates numbered about 280,000. In the movie Judgment at Nuremberg the prosecutor explains about Buchenwald Camp, “there was a motto at Buchenwald: ‘Break the body, break the spirit, and break the heart.’ The ovens at Buchenwald, evidence of last-minute efforts of dispose the bodies. Those bodies burned till it became skeleton. After that brushes were found of every description, shoes of adults and children, spectacles of every size, Gold from teeth which was melted down and sent once a month to the medical department of the Waffen SS. A lampshade made from human skin. Skin being used form paintings, many of them having an obscene nature. The heads of two polish labourers, shrunken to one fifth their normal size. A human pelvis used as an ashtray. Children were tattooed to mark them for eventual extermination. Sometimes mercy was shown to children; they were injected with morphia, so they’d be unconscious when hanged. One of the doctor described how they’d then place ropes around their necks, in his words “Like pictures, they were then hanged by hooks on the walls.” The bodies of those who had come in boxcars, without food, without air, hadn’t survived the journey to Dachau. Hundreds of inmates were used as human guinea pigs for atrocious medical experiments. A witness at Dachau gave the following description: “inmates were made to leave their clothing on a rack; they were told they were going to take a baths, then the doors were locked, Tins of Zyklon B were released through the specially constructed apertures. You could hear the groaning and whimpering inside. After two or three minutes all was quiet.” Death transport that had arrived included 90,000 from Slovakia, 65,000 from Greece, 11,000 from France, 90,000 from Holland, 400,000 from Hungary, 250,000 from Poland and Upper Silesia, and 100,000 from Germany. When British troop liberated Belsen concentration camp, for sanitary reason a British bulldozer had to bury the bodies as quickly as possible. Those bodies were members of every occupied country of Europe, two thirds of Jews of Europe were exterminated.” In Numerous concentration camps it was impossible to survive: food was inadequate and Nazis inhumanity unbearable. Many abandoned God because evil committed in camps were impossible to reconcile with belief in God. One of the survivors of Auschwitz, Primo Levi, a Jewish Italian author expressed afterwards, “The experience of Auschwitz for me was such as to sweep away whatever legacies of my religious education that I had retained. There is Auschwitz, therefore, God cannot exist. I haven’t found a solution too that dilemma.” In the villainy of Hitler, almost everyone forgets the horrendous crime of America during World War II committed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just because of Hitler’s notoriousness, America became sideline story and everyone was indulged in the affairs of Nazi. Every country is villain and guilty in the times of war. Vast majority of empires, religion, cultures, states, ideologies were founded on blood, and maintained their power through oppression and war. All human cultures, religion, nations wouldn’t have survived without war and bloodshed. In our country our upbringing is on the basis of prejudice history and that’s how patriotism is maintained in our country. We think that what we have read and learn is logical but to be logical is not to be right. We have brought ourselves to the brink of catastrophe with our greediness and unlimited ignorance over distorted history. If we pirouette our history pages villains are depicted as ‘hero’ just because of religion and true heroes are depicted ‘traitor’ because of their different opinion and religion. So I would request the keyboard warriors of social media that, don’t try to emblem the title of ‘hero’ to oppressors.
A supporter of a tyrant is a tyrant. A tyrant must be labelled a tyrant.
The writer can be reached at saqlainali878@gmail.com
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