Centro Simon Wiesenthal
Cabello 3872, PB "C" (C1425APR) - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Teléfono: (5411) 4802-1744
info@cswlatinoamerica.org
In the framework of the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Pogrom of November 1938, known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the Tesa Foundation and the Lost Neighbors exhibition, invited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to organize a round table on "The Nüremberg Trials -Importance and Legacy", in the auditorium of the General Archive of the Argentine Nation in Buenos Aires. Its Director, the historian Emilio Perina, acted as host and moderator.
German Embassy in Argentina Culture Attache, Harald Hermann, maintained that "the Nüremberg trials were a counterweight to the infamous racial laws of 1935" and added: "Nobody is above the law, not even sovereign states".
Dr. Alberto Zuppi, the lawyer who represented the Italian Embassy, together with the Wiesenthal Centre in Europe, obtained the extradition of Erich Priebke. Zuppi has just published a 1,700-page work in three volumes on these trials, translating into Spanish the most important original documentation in German and English. He argued that the United States spent two years to prepare 12 trials that covered the entire Nazi landscape, adding "when my strength faltered to write, I thought about the victims and went back to work." He then gave a detailed overview of the trials of the Einzatzgruppen mass murder squads.
Criminal Judge and Yad Vashem fellow, Dr. Franco Fiumara analyzed the trials of the Nazi Judges, claiming: "The Nazi legal system did not protect legal interests but the ideology of Aryan racial purity ... Political justice is a criminal justice."
From Paris, the Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels noted, "The Nüremberg Trials took place at the beginning of the Cold War," adding, "Our mentor, Simon Wiesenthal, often said that the only victors of the Cold War were the Nazis." Samuels added, "The Trials were limited to a few war crime leaders, while Hitler's scientists were sought by the United States, the Soviet Union and even Peronist Argentina, just as thousands of mass murderers were taken by the Western allies as labourers to rebuild their destroyed economies."
The Center´s Latin American Representative, Dr. Ariel Gelblung explained that there was a before and after in the legal history of humanity. He concluded: "When they ask what the Wiesenthal Center does today, if the Nazis of yesteryear are almost dead, I point to the continuing mantras: 'Death to the Jews and to Roger Waters, whose BDS campaign is a continuation of the Night of Broken Glass, the precursor of the Holocaust".
L-R: Ariel Gelblung, Harald Hermann, Emilio Perina, Alberto Zuppi, Franco Fiumara
For further information, please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158 or Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).