On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 9.30 a.m. in the JU Collegium Novum assembly hall, a conference entitled The Double Entendre of Nuremberg: Nuremberg of Hate and Nuremberg of Justice was organised. It marked the 80th anniversary of the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws and the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg Trials.
The event was organized by the March of the Living International, Raoul Wallenber Centre for Human Rights, JU Centre for Holocaust Studies and JU UNESCO Chair in Holocaust Education. It was attended by many distinguished researchers, lawyers and politicians, including the president of the Israeli Supreme Court Dorit Beinisch, judge of the Canadian Supreme Court Rosalie Abella, president of the Apellate Court Lord John Dyson, and Israeli minister of justice Ayelet Shaker. The Jagiellonian University was represented by Prof. Zdzisław Mach, head of the JU UNESCO Chair in Holocaust Education and Prof. Andrzej Zoll, former president of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.
The conference began with an introduction by Richards D. Heideman, Symposium Programme Chair and moderator, in which he explained the idea behind the event and presented the attendees. Then, Prof. Wojciech Nowak, JU Rector, greeted the guests and officially opened the conference. "Not only am I a member of the post-war generation, I am also a doctor. Therefore, the cruelty of those events seems even more inimaginable to me", he said.
After that, a speech was made by Dr Shmuel Rosenman, chairman of the March of the Living International. He stated that the idea of justice is the core of Judaism. "When God decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham stopped Him by asking: ‘Should the innocent be punished along with the guilty?' It proves that even the creator of the universe, a perfect being, still adheres to certain sacred values", he explained.
In the next speech, Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Canadian minister of justice, stressed that tragedies such as the Holocaust have to be treated as a warning for the entire human race. "It was too cruel to be believed, but not too cruel to have happened", he said. He added that such events should make us reflect upon the concepts of just punishment and morally correct behaviour.
The last speaker in this pert of the symposium was Prof. Alan Dershowitz, an American researcher specialising in constitutional law, criminal law, and civil liberties. He said that it is extremely important to remind the future generations about the Holocaust, because they will have to make sure such thing does not happen again. "We need to strive for the truth. We need to thank the Polish people who save thousands of lives, but we also need to support people like Jan T. Gross who show us that there have been some shameful exceptions", he added.
The opening of the symposium ended with a film about the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in Germany. The latter part was devoted to speeches by government representatives, diplomats, and scholars.
