Metadata: Collection Nuremberg Trials
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- Holding institution:
- Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- IB Nürnberger Prozesse
- Title:
- Collection Nuremberg Trials
- Title (official language):
- Bestand Nürnberger Prozesse
- Creator/accumulator:
- Sagalowitz, Benjamin
- Date(s):
- 1931/1965
- Language:
- German
- Extent:
- 8.85 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- While only rudimentary documents are available on individual Nuremberg criminal trials against leading perpetrators of the Third Reich, which Benjamin Sagalowitz supplemented with his own materials, the documentation on the Wilhelmstrassen Trial contains the indictments, sentences, minutes of hearings and, in most cases, also the document volumes of the prosecution and defence. Because of the considerable number of sets of copies required, the trial documents were produced by the courts as reproduced reprints on postwar paper and have also been handed down in this form in documentations by the Nuremberg State Archives, among others.
- Archival history:
-
The documentation of the "Nuremberg Trials", which is not available in Switzerland in a comparable way, remained in the archives of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities after the death of Sagalowitz until it was handed over to the AfZ.
The documents on the Sagalowitz trial reporting (NZZ articles, correspondence, notes) as well as the corresponding press documentation were added to the collection (see also the microfilms of the State Archives Nuremberg). Material on numerous other criminal trials of Nazi perpetrators can be found in the JUNA Archive; on the Eichmann trial, see the Avner W Less estate.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Nuremberg Trials took place from 1945 to 1949. Benjamin Sagalowitz compiled the documents on the "Nuremberg Trials" inventory during his work as an accredited trial reporter in Nuremberg. As head of the "Jüdische Nachrichten" (JUNA) and representative of the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (NZZ), he had excellent relations with the court offices where the reproduced trial documents could be obtained. The trial before the International Military Tribunal, at which 21 major war criminals sat in the dock, took place from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946. There is a comprehensive edition on this trial, which can also be consulted at the AfZ. In contrast, the documentation on the twelve follow-up trials before American courts, in which a total of 177 defendants were tried, contains unpublished material. Benjamin Sagalowitz documented the largest and final follow-up trial, which ended with the verdict of 11 April 1949, as comprehensively as possible: the Wilhelmstrassen trial, in which officials of the Foreign Office and other ministries, the SS, the Reichsbank and the economy were indicted. The State Secretaries Ernst von Weizsäcker and Adolf Steengracht von Moyland as well as other members of the Foreign Office, Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, Gauleiter and head of the NSDAP's foreign organisation, the SS generals Walter Schellenberg and Gottlob Berger, Emil Puhl of the Reichsbank and Paul Pleiger had also been involved with Switzerland on various occasions and in some cases even hoped that these relations would relieve their burden.
- Subject terms:
- Post-WWII trials
- War crimes
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020
