Salvaged from the attic of a home in Virginia, original transcripts of the Nuremberg trials have landed in the reading room of the Jewish studies program at San Francisco State.
Bound into more than 20 volumes, the documents are written in German and faded with age. But university professors hailed the recent acquisition as a valuable tool for study of the Holocaust and World War II era.
The documents were donated to SFSU by Carmel Thompson, an Arlington, Va., woman who discovered them under some attic insulation while cleaning out her childhood home before selling it. A university representative said Thompson was uncertain how the transcripts wound up in her family’s possession.
“We’re thrilled with the gift,” said Marc Dollinger, acting director of the Jewish studies program. “It’s a primary source, historical document, and it is original.
“As a historian, you always want to make sure you’re reading the actual words from the experience.”
The transcripts provide a complete record of the nearly yearlong war crimes trials of leading members of the Nazi Party, which began in October 1945. The proceedings led to the indictments of 19 war criminals and revolutionized the notion of international justice.
The case defined “standards for morality even in war,” according to Dollinger, a Jewish historian whose specialty is ethics and Jewish social responsibility. The trial, he said, undermined the defense that atrocities were committed by officers who “were just following orders.
“Nuremberg is always seen as the model. That you put war criminals on trial and that you make it an opportunity for the world to see and learn.”
The transcripts took a somewhat circuitous route to get to SFSU, and Thompson, according to a university representative, did not want to be contacted by the media.
But George Sarlo, a San Francisco philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, said Thompson contacted him at the suggestion of a mutual acquaintance. She wanted to find a suitable place to house the transcripts.
Sarlo, who chairs the Holocaust Memorial Educational Fund at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, agreed to help, and paid to ship the transcripts to San Francisco.
He said SFSU “seemed like the appropriate place to put it. They were very enthusiastic about it and promised to put it to good use.”
The Holocaust Center of Northern California also has an original set of the transcripts, according to executive director Leslie Kane. Acquired from a collector in Nuremberg, Kane said the center has held them since about 1979. Stanford University has the transcripts as well.
Though Zachary Baker, curator of Judaica and Hebraica at Stanford, estimated that “hundreds, if not more” sets of the transcripts were printed in several languages following the trial, he described the acquisition as “an important research tool.”
At SFSU, Dollinger said the transcripts likely will be studied by graduate students “working on the Nuremberg trial or any aspect of post-World War II” Germany.
The documents also may draw German-language students from the campus as well as scholars from outside the university.
Volker Langbehn, an assistant professor of German at SFSU, envisions using the transcripts as part of a Weimar culture and literature course he’s teaching next fall.
“They will be invaluable for students to get an authentic understanding of the Nuremberg trials,” said Langbehn. “When students use actual materials, they get a better understanding and feel of who these individuals are and what they represented.”
A native of Germany, Langbehn said the documents have a “chilling aura,” especially when read in their original words. “It makes you realize in essence how chilling their thinking was. The language used was so mechanical, so much in line of ‘we had to follow the orders.'”
Langbehn said he and Dollinger have talked about offering an interdisciplinary course that studies the Holocaust in literature. “We will read the transcripts, that’s a definite,” Langbehn said.
Neither Langbehn nor Dollinger knew how many copies of the transcripts are in circulation. Dollinger was especially curious about how this set wound up in Thompson’s attic.
“I would love to know the story of these and how they ended up where they did,” he said.
There was speculation that Thompson’s father could have been one of the trial prosecutors, but university representative Matt Itelson said Thompson told him that no one in her family was involved in the case.
In a statement from Thompson released by the university, she said, “I hope they prove to be beneficial for scholars in their research, and that the results help the public understand the importance of this trial in establishing international legal precedent.”