Covering Their Tracks

I don’t often listen to podcasts.

“Covering Their Tracks” will be an exception.

It tells the story of Leo Bretholz, who escaped from a train taking him to a Nazi death camp.

I learned about the podcast today from Raphael Prober, one of the lawyer/lobbyists I worked with on this issue.

My response to him follows:

Rafi,

It continues to be one of the greatest honors of my legislative career that you and Aaron [Greenfield] asked me to be the sponsor of the bill imposing responsibility on the French Railroad for its role in transporting to their death Jews and members of other minorities despised by the Nazis.

But not Leo Bretholz.  A real hero.

Several months after our bill passed, I visited Nuremberg, site of the Nazi war crimes trial.  At the end of a day of touring, my guide said, “You have wanted to come here for quite some time.”

“Only since I worked on this legislation this past winter,” I replied.

But I soon realized that I had wanted to come to Nuremberg ever since my Constitutional Law class taught by Telford Taylor, as you know, a chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.

I will listen to the podcast later today.  https://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/covering-their-tracks

Sandy

December 2 – In the Courtrrom

Telford Taylor was the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

He never talked about it in his Constitutional Law class.

For most of the semester, he discussed Marbury v. Madison, where the Supreme Court first exercised judicial review to declare unconstitutional a law passed by Congress.

So I told my guide that I wanted to begin my tour of Nuremberg in the courtroom where the trials were held.

The room has been open to the public for many years, but there was no exhibit about the trials until last year.

This trial is the “significant tribute power pays to reason,” declared Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the first Chief Prosecutor, in his opening statement at the trial of Herman Goering and other high ranking Nazis and military officials.

In his remarks at the outset of the trial for German judges and lawyers, Taylor asserted, “The murderer’s dagger was hidden under legal robes.”

Our afternoon begins at the Nazi rally grounds, where Hitler would speak to 150,000 SS and SA members and 50,000 spectators. All that remains is trhe World War I memorial, which predates the Nazi regime.

Only one structure built for Hitler still stands, the partially completed Reich Congress. Modeled on the Roman Colosseum, it was to hold 50,000. There was no exhibit here about the Nazis until the World Cup was played in Nuremberg in 2006.

A stadium designed for 400,000 was never built. (They knew they’d have to hand out binoculars to spectators, notes my guide.)

At the end of the day, my guide says, “I guess you’ve been thinking about coming to Nuremberg for quite some time.”

” Freud would say, ‘Yes, since that constitutional Law class,'” I responded, “but I didn’t think about seeing the courtroom here until this past winter while working on the French railroad bill.”

December 1 – Dachau and the Rule of Law

Dachau had nothing to do with Hitler’s Final Solution for the Jewish Problem.

It began as a camp for political prisoners shortly after Hitler gained power in the wake of the Reichstag fire.

It housed people in protective custody until the investigation of their case was complete. They never were.

Some for violating the Treachery Act, a decree against spreading untrue claims about the government.

Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to give the Hitler salute or serve in the military.

Those who ran afoul of the Reich office that fought homosexuality and abortion.

Eventually, Dachau had everything to do with Hitler’s Final Solution for the Jewish Problem. Jews.

Arbitrary treatment, humiliation, and torture of prisoners was the norm at Dachau.

The “Dachau Academy” trained the SS for the concentration casmps.

“The records of many of the people imprisoned here are available to the publuic,” our guide told us.

“A way to honor and remember the dead that should soon be available for those on the trains transporting them like cattle from Vichy France to the German border,” I said to myself.

“Why are you here today?” our guide asked us at the start of our tour.

“Because tomorrow I will be in Nuremberg,” I replied, “where the Nazis were held accountable by the rule of law.”

Avoiding double secret probation

              I had visions of John Belushi.

             We were trying to find a professor who had taught a certain freshman delegate, thinking that relationship would be very effective for lobbying. 

             We knew where the legislator had gone to school but not who had taught him. 

             I thought of Belushi rummaging through the trash to find last year’s exam. 

            “However you can legally find out who the delegate’s professor was, do it,” I advised the group around the table. 

            I know who taught me constitutional law.  It was Telford Taylor, Chief Counsel for 12 cases during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. 

            One of the legal principles established by that tribunal: coercion – acting pursuant to an order of the government or of a superior, does not relieve you of responsibility for your actions.

            That’s one of the arguments we’ll be making regarding the legal responsibility of the French railroad company for transporting Jews and others to the concentration camps under direction of the Germans. 

            “In my testimony, I want to quote Telford Taylor on this point,” I told one of the lawyers we’re working with. 

February 21

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning