Holocaust Remembrance Day Weekly Factoid Week 4 | Page 2

The eponymous concentration camp trials (i.e., Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Flossenbuerg, Muehldorf, and Dora-Nordhausen) focused on the war crimes of camp officials,
with a couple of hundred tried and sentenced. However, in view of the vast numbers involved in
implementing the Final Solution, the numbers indicted, not to mention convicted, were small. As
the Cold War began to consume the attention of policy makers, many guilty parties faded back
into society and others emigrated to North America and South America, among other places of
refuge. The most famous fugitive, Major Adolf Eichmann, a participant at the Wannsee
Conference and tasked with organizing the rail deportation plan, was located in Argentina,
kidnapped by Israeli agents, and tried, sentenced and executed in Israel in 1962. The pursuit of
Nazi criminals has never really ended. Over the ensuing decades, several former camp guards
have been identified and brought to trial, though prosecution has proven difficult in light of the
passage of time and fading memories.
The term “genocide” is relatively new in international affairs. According to the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, “Before 1944, no word existed to describe the coordinated destruction of
civilian populations on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion. Polish Jewish legal scholar
Raphael Lemkin introduced the word ‘genocide’ to give the crime a name.” Thus, “on December
9, 1948, the United Nations unanimously adopted the UN Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which came into effect in 1951.” Henceforth, the most
enduring legacy of the Holocaust is the International Community’s intolerance for genocide.
Despite the international “awakening” as a result of the Holocaust, bringing war criminals to
justice is an exacting process. The military occupation of criminal regimes is extremely rare, so
access to evidence, witnesses, and often the criminals themselves remains problematic. Still,
international and national tribunals have established their authority over such crimes, so alleged
war criminals are brought under international scrutiny and held accountable.
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Doenitz (Raeder's successor), Albert Speer (armaments minister), Baldur von Schirach (head of the Hitler Youth),
and Konstantin von Neurath (governor of Bohemia and Moravia).