dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON (Chief of Counsel for the United States): Now, let us look at what we are actually asked here to disseminate, Page 47 of this document book: "Actually, the Jews, like the Canaanites in general, like the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, represent a bastard population . . ." And it goes on largely upon that theme. Then it goes on: "The Jews are arrogant in success, obsequious in failure, shrewd and crooked wherever possible, greedy, of remarkable intelligence, but nevertheless not creative." I do not want to take this Tribunal's time, but last night we received an additional order to print 260 copies more of this sort of thing, and I have had to stop the presses; and we cannot accept the duty of printing this stuff unless it is reviewed by the Tribunal. Most of this book, as far as we have been able to check it, has already been rejected by the Tribunal; and nobody pays the least attention to the Tribunal's rejection, and we are ordered to print. Now, with the greatest deference, I want to say that the United States will print any document that a member of this Tribunal or an alternate certifies, but we can no longer print these things at the request of the German counsel nor at the ill-considered directions which we have been receiving.
DR. THOMA: At the moment I want merely to explain that on 8 March 1946 I was expressly given permission by the Tribunal to quote excerpts from philosophical books in my document book. Consequently, I have based my work on the assumption that Rosenberg's ideology is an offspring of the so-called new romantic philosophy and have quoted philosophical excerpts from serious new romantic philosophical works, works which have been recognized by science. Secondly, Your Honors, I have earnestly endeavored not to submit any anti-Semitic books. What has just been read to me must be simply translation mistakes. I have quoted the work of a famous Evangelical theological teacher, Homan-Harling; and secondly, I have quoted a work of a recognized Jewish scholar, Isma Elbogen; and, thirdly, I have quoted from an excerpt from the periodical Kunstschatz written by a Jewish university professor, Moritz Goldstein. I have deliberately refrained from bringing anti-Semitic propaganda into this courtroom. I request, therefore, that the documents quoted by me be investigated to see whether they are really trash and literary rubbish. I still maintain that the works which I have quoted were written by American, English, and French scholars-recognized scholars-and that the quotations which Mr. Justice Jackson has just read about the bastard race, et cetera, come as far as I know, from non-German scholars. But I should have to look at that once more. At any rate, may I ask the Tribunal that my compilation of excerpts be investigated to see whether it is in any way nonscientific or not pertinent.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Justice Jackson, the Tribunal thinks that there must have been some mistake in sending to the Translation Division this book of documents without having it presented to Counsel for the Prosecution first. The Tribunal made an order some time ago, saying that Counsel for the Prosecution should have the right to object to any document before it is sent to the translation department. Some difficulty then arose because documents had been mostly in German. There was a difficulty about Counsel for the Prosecution making up their minds as to their objections until they have been translated. That difficulty was presented to us a few days ago; I think you were not in court at the time, but no doubt other members of the United States counsel were here. We had a full discussion on the subject, and it was then agreed that Counsel for the Prosecution should see Counsel for the Defense and, as far as possible, discuss with them and point out to them the documents which Counsel for the Prosecution thought ought not to be translated, and, in case of disagreement, it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Tribunal. So that so far as the Tribunal are concerned, they have done everything that they can to lighten the work of the Translation Division. Of course, insofar as documents have been presented to the Translation Division for trance ration, which the Tribunal had already denied, that must have been done by mistake because the General Secretary's office, no doubt, ought to have refused to hand over to the Translation Division any document which the Tribunal had already denied. But the general principles which I have attempted to explain seem to the Tribunal to be the only principles upon which we can go, in order to lighten the work of the Translation Division. That is to say, that Counsel for the Prosecution should meet Counsel for the Defense and point out to them what documents are so obviously irrelevant that they ought not to be translated.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, if Your Honor pleases, I do not think it is a mistake. It arises from a fundamental difference which this Tribunal has not, I think, made clear. What the issues here are-counsel says that he thinks he should try the new romanticism of Rosenberg. We are charging him for the murder of 4 or 5 million Jews. The question here is one of ideology. The only purpose in ever referring to the anti-Semitic sentiments is the motive. There is no purpose here in trying the question of anti-Semitism or the superiority of races, the fundamental difference in viewpoint. They believe-and, of course, if they can try this issue with this Tribunal as a sounding board, it forwards their purpose-they believe in trying that issue. The first thing we get is this book with the order to print it. We cannot tell when they are going to present something in the document room. I simply must not become a party to this spirit of anti-Semitism. The United States cannot do it. And the Tribunal's directions to counsel are simply being ignored; that is the difficulty here.
THE PRESIDENT: I do not know if you have in mind the order which we made on 8 March 1946, in these terms: '`To avoid unnecessary translation, Defense Counsel will indicate to the Prosecution the exact passages in all documents which they propose to use, in order that the Prosecution may have an opportunity to object to irrelevant passages. In the event of disagreement between the Prosecution and the Defense as to the relevancy of any particular passage, the Tribunal will decide what passages are sufficiently relevant to be translated. Only the cited passages need be translated, unless the Prosecution require the translation of the entire document." Now, of course, if you are objecting to that ruling on principle, well and good, but the ruling seems to the Tribunal, up to the present at any rate, to be the best rule that can be laid down, and we reiterated it after full discussion a very few days ago.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: I am calling Your Honor's attention to the fact that Your Honor's order is not being observed and that we are being given these documents to print without any prior notice. The boys in the pressroom are not lawyers; they are not in the position to pass on these things. I do not have the personnel; my personnel, as this Tribunal well know, is reduced very seriously. I cannot undertake it in the pressroom here after an order comes from the General Secretary's of lice-a review of what can be done.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, but did you...
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: The order is not being carried out; that is the difficulty.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean that none of these documents were submitted to the Counsel for the Prosecution?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: The documents were not submitted to Counsel for Prosecution. They came to the pressroom with an order to print from the General Secretary's office. That is what I am arguing, a grievance; one I shall have to remedy. We are in the very peculiar position, Your Honor, of being asked to be press agents for these defendants. We were ordered to print 260 copies of these stencils that I have. The United States cannot be acting as press agents for the distribution of this anti-Semitic literature, which we have protested long ago was one of the vices of the Nazi regime, particularly after they have been argued on and have been denied by the Court. This, it seems to me, is a flagrant case of contempt of court, to put these documents through after the Tribunal has ruled on them and ruled out this whole document book of Rosenberg.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, so far as these documents have been denied, they ought never to have been submitted to the translation department. Might not the Tribunal hear from Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, because he was here on the previous occasion, the last occasion that we dealt with this subject?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please Your Lordship, my understanding of the matter is that the Rosenberg documents had been processed-that was what we were informed before our last discussion of the matter, and I therefore suggested to the Tribunal that the practical application of the proceeding should begin with the documents of the Defendant Frank. That is what I said to the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Then my recollection is that, after we made this rule of 8 March 1946, Counsel for the Prosecution-I think all four prosecutors, and I rather think the document came in signed by the United States, but I am not certain of it-pointed out that there w ere great difficulties in carrying out this ruling of 8 March, because of the difficulty of Counsel for the Prosecution making up their minds about what documents were irrelevant, having regard to the fact that they had to be translated for them to do it. Is that not so?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: That difficulty arose with Dr. Horn over the Ribbentrop documents.
THE PRESIDENT: But a written application was made to the Tribunal to vary this rule of 8 March 1946, and it was then after that that we had the subsequent discussion in open court when we came to the conclusion that we had better adhere to the ruling of 8 March 1946. And I see from Rosenberg that the documents, these documents, had been processed already beforehand.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Since our last discussion, of course, we have been trying to get this procedure going. Dr. Dix has met Mr. Dodd and me on the Schacht documents, and I understand that other learned Defense Counsel are making arrangements to meet various members with regard to theirs. But before this time, before the matter arose sharply on the Ribbentrop documents, there had not been any discussion with Counsel for the Prosecution. That is the position.
THE PRESIDENT: But what I am pointing out is that that was because the Prosecution were not carrying out the rule of the 8th March 1946. It may have been impossible to carry it out, but they were not carrying it out.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I do not know exactly how Your Lordship means, "The Prosecution were not carrying it out."
THE PRESIDENT: Both the Prosecution and the Defense, I suppose; because the application which came to us after the ruling of 8 March 1946 was made on behalf of the Prosecution that they had such difficulties in getting translations for the documents that they proposed another ruling.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I am sorry, My Lord, if we have not carried it out. It is the first time that anybody suggested this to me...
THE PRESIDENT: I do not mean to criticize you.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: We all have taken immense trouble. Everyone cooperated in every way. I was not aware that we were at fault; I am very sorry if we were.
THE PRESIDENT: I do not mean that, Sir David, but I think there was a difficulty in carrying this out, and I think there was a proposal that the rule should be varied. I will look into that and see whether I am right about it. I remember seeing such an application, and then we had the subsequent discussion in open court in which we decided to adhere to this rule of 8 March; and no doubt this difficulty has arisen, as you pointed out, because of the Rosenberg documents' having been processed before. Probably the best course would be now. . . [There was a pause in the proceedings while the Judges conferred.] Mr. Justice Jackson, wouldn't the best course be for you to object in writing to all the documents which you object to, and then they will be dealt with by the Tribunal after argument.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: But, Your Honor, the Tribunal has once rejected the documents, and yet we get an order to print. The Tribunal's orders are not being observed, and-I do not want to criticize counsel-but we have had no opportunity to pass on these. These stencils that I stopped running last night are not anything that has been submitted to us. They have no possible place in the legitimate issues of this Tribunal, and we will get nowhere talking to Dr. Thoma about it. He thinks their philosophy is an issue. What I think must be done here, if we are going to get this solved, is that the Tribunal-if I may make a suggestion, which I do with great deference; I may be a biased judge of what ought to be done; I never pretended to complete impartiality-that the Tribunal name a master to represent it in passing these things. We won't finish this by discussion between Dr. Thoma and anybody I can name. My suggestion is that an official pass on these documents before they are translated. If the master finds a doubtful matter he can refer it back to you. We should not be in the position either of agreeing or of disagreeing with them in any final sense, of course. I realize it is too big a burden to put on the Tribunal to pass on these papers in advance and too big a burden on the United States to keep printing them. Paper is a scarce commodity today. Over 25,000 sheets have gone into the printing of a book that has been rejected. I think there is no possible way except that a lawyer with some idea of relevance and irrelevance represents this Tribunal in passing on these things in advance, rather than leaving it to counsel. I would not even venture to sit down with Dr. Thoma, because we start from totally different viewpoints. He wants to justify anti-Semitism. I think it is not an issue here. It is the murder of Jews, of human beings, that is an issue here, not whether the Jewish race is or is not liked by the Germans. We do not care about that. It is a matter of settling these issues.
COLONEL Y. V. POKROVSKY (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): With the Tribunal's permission, I would like to add a few words to what Mr. Jackson has said. I do not wish to criticize the counsel either, but the Tribunal has already said that there may possibly be a mistake. And I would like to draw the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that this mistake took place too often. I will permit myself to remind you about the documents in connection with the Versailles Treaty, which were rejected by the Tribunal in the most decided manner as not relevant; the Tribunal will remember also that a considerable amount of time was spent in listening to the reading of the documents presented by Dr. Stahmer and Dr. Horn. And I would like to remind the Tribunal about another fact, when another decision of the Tribunal was violated. Perhaps it was done by mistake; perhaps not. It took place when one of the documents which was presented by Dr. Seidl was published in the papers before it was accepted by the Tribunal as evidence. And it seems to me that it would be very useful if the Tribunal could, for the purpose of saving time, guarantee more effectively that the rules set out by the Tribunal should be obeyed, not only by the Prosecution, who always follow them carefully, but also by the Defense Counsel.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Dr. Thoma?
DR. THOMA: I am very much disconcerted by the reproach that I have not followed the instructions of the Tribunal. During discussions regarding which documents were admissible, I explained in detail just which philosophical works I want to quote from and why. It has been stated during the case for the Prosecution, that Rosenberg invented his philosophy for the purpose of aggressive war and for the committing of war crimes, et cetera. I considered it my duty to prove that this so-called national . . .
THE PRESIDENT: Will you tell the Tribunal where the Prosecution states that he invented his philosophy, whether in the Indictment or in the presentation?
DR. THOMA: I can prove it. It appears in the Churchill speech; and also in the speech by Justice Jackson there are similar expressions that Rosenberg's philosophy had led to that.
THE PRESIDENT: You say it appears in Churchill's speech?
DR. THOMA: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: What have we got to do with that? I asked you whether the Prosecution alleged it in the Indictment or alleged it in the course of the presentation of the Prosecution, and you answer me that Mr. Churchill. . .
DR. THOMA: No, it is not Churchill, but rather Mr. Justice Jackson. In his presentation he said things, the sense of which was about the same. Consequently I felt that it was my duty to present to the Tribunal that philosophy which, before Rosenberg, raised similar arguments and which is indeed the philosophy of the entire world. Regarding the presentation of the document book, the following happened: The Translation Division asked me to submit my document book without delay, as they had time at the moment to deal with it before it was handed to the Tribunal. So the Translation Division actually received this document earlier than the Tribunal. But the Tribunal in their resolution of 8 March 1946 had expressly given me permission to use quotations from these philosophical works; they refused me only the anti-Semitic works of Goldstein, Elbogen, and Homan-Harling. Consequently I immediately informed the Tribunal that documents were contained in my document book which had not been granted me. And now, Your Honors, something of great importance: I have just ascertained that the quotation which Mr. Justice Jackson has just read comes from a French research scholar, Mr. Larouche. Secondly, I have marked with red pencil those passages in my document book which were to be translated. The passage quoted by Mr. Justice Jackson was not marked in red and was not meant to be included in the document book. This is a regrettable error. Thirdly, I should like to refer to the fact-my attention has just been called to this-that the passage reads literally, "Rosenberg developed the philosophical technique of the conspiracy and thus created an educational system for an aggressive war." That was the expression in Mr. Justice Jackson's presentation. I therefore felt justified in pointing out that this entire philosophy was already in the air and was a philosophical necessity which had to make its appearance. I therefore believe that I have cleared myself of the accusation of not having obeyed the ruling of the Tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Thoma, were these documents sent to the pressroom or were they sent to the translation department?
DR. THOMA: In my opinion, they were sent to the Translation Division, since this department had told me that they had time at the moment, but expected a terrible rush soon. I had my document ready and I gave it to the Translation Division.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Justice Jackson stated apparently that they had been sent to the pressroom and were being disseminated to the public in that way, but on the outside of each document book there is this notice that they are not to be publicized until they are presented before the Tribunal in open court and then only that portion actually submitted as evidence. Therefore, any documents which are sent to the translation room are not disseminated, or ought not to be disseminated to the press and ought not to be publicized until they are presented before this Tribunal. There seem to be a number of misunderstandings about this which seem to have arisen principally from the fact that you submitted your documents to the translation department before they had been submitted to the Tribunal, and therefore some of them got translated which were subsequently denied by the Tribunal. Is that right?
DR. THOMA: No, Your Honors, that is not right. Past of all, this was actually a matter of internal procedure in the various offices of the Translation Division. I gave the Translation Division this document book because they asked me to do so, and then...
THE PRESIDENT: I did not say who had asked whom. I said that the translation department got the documents for translation. They received them before they were submitted to the Tribunal, and, in consequence, they translated certain documents which were subsequently denied by the Tribunal.
DR. THOMA: The only rejected works were, as is known, the three anti-Semitic works. That these documents from the courtroom reached the press I naturally did not know. I was merely trying to lighten the work of the Translation Division. I subsequently informed the General Secretary that I had submitted the document book and I referred him to it. The quotations from my philosophical works, however, were granted to me later. I want to point out again that I was always of the opinion that this was an entirely internal matter and that these documents could by no means reach the press. I was not informed about that. I am very well aware that quotations not read in court are not supposed to reach the press. I have adhered to that rule. Nothing has as yet been stated in court and therefore it should not reach the press.
THE PRESIDENT: As you no doubt know, the first granting of documents when they are applied for is expressly provisional, and afterwards you have to submit your documents in open court, as Dr. Horn did, and then the Tribunal rules upon their admissibility; and this other rule was introduced for the purpose of preventing undue translation. It. was decided then that after the Tribunal had given its provisional ruling as to what was provisionally relevant, you should then submit the passages you wanted to quote, to the Prosecution Counsel to give them an opportunity to object, so that the translation department should not be unduly burdened. That, as you have explained and as Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe has said, was not carried out in your case, partly possibly, because, as you say, the Translation Division was prepared to undertake certain work. Therefore, documents were submitted to them which the Tribunal subsequently ruled to be inadmissible.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May I correct something which has led to misunderstanding? I did not mean to say that counsel had sent the documents to the press in the sense of a newspaper press. They were sent to the press, the printing press. They were, of course, printed. The 260 copies we were ordered to print contained the usual release notice that they were not to be released until used. They have not reached the press, and I did not mean to say that they had been sent to the newspaper press; they were sent to our printing press.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Dr. Dix?