Recording a horrific history
The documents are chillingly frank. Faded with time, too fragile to touch, the photographs, papers, and reports tell of atrocities committed with a calculated, unspeakable precision. The record represents a horror at once too painful to remember and impossible to forget. And historians, scholars, and educators worldwide agree the materials must be preserved. The Harvard Law School Library (HLSL) is doing just that with its massive collection of materials relating to the trials of high-ranking Nazi military officials and political leaders during the international and the 12 U.S. military tribunals held in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1949. In total, HLSL has about a million pages of materials related to the trials. Through its Nuremberg Trials Project, the HLSL has cataloged and digitized more than 32,000 pages of prosecution and defense trial documents and evidence related specifically to the tribunals. The open-access collection includes trial transcripts, briefs, document books, photographs, and other papers. Next...