"Justice at Dachau" Examines Nazi War Crimes Trial

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- With the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expected to begin soon, the Jewish Law Students Association at the University at Buffalo Law School will host a multi-media presentation and lecture on a war-crimes tribunal from years past.

"Justice at Dachau -- The Trials of an American Prosecutor," presented by writer/producer Joshua M. Greene, will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 in 106 O'Brian Hall, located on UB's North (Amherst) Campus.

The event is free to UB students and $5 for the general public. Seating is limited; call 645-8993 to reserve a seat or go to http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/jlsa/.

Greene, author of the book "Justice at Dachau," will examine the largest, yet least-known, war-crimes trial in history. The story is told through the eyes of Col. William Denson, chief prosecutor, a U.S Army officer determined to achieve judgments against Nazi murderers, but unprepared for the procedural and psychic obstacles he would encounter during more than two years of exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Highlights of the program will include film footage of scenes inside the Dachau courtroom, archival photos, charts, and a brief audio reenactment of closing arguments. "Survivor art" -- drawings made by former inmates of the camps, rather than photographs of atrocities-- are used to depict events referenced in the presentation.

According to Greene, the Dachau trials were largely ignored by the world press, which focused on the Nuremberg Trials 65 miles north. Nuremberg tried 22 Nazi policymakers. At Dachau, 1,600 guards, officers, doctors, capos and other executors of Hitler's Final Solution stood trial for personally aiding and conducting acts of starvation, torture and extermination inside camps Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg and Buchenwald.

Greene's presentation will explain how Denson led his team through masterful prosecutions, basing his strategies on recognized conventions of international law. The accused included Claus Karl Schilling, who used prisoners as human guinea pigs in malaria experiments; August Eigruber, overseer of Mauthausen death camp, and Ilse Koch, who had prisoners killed and their tattooed skins stripped and cured for her collection.

In 1948, when America's priorities shifted from punishing Nazis to winning Germany's support against Soviet Russia, Denson's convictions were overturned in clandestine reversals of sentence. The scandals of those reversals erupted in headlines nationwide and led to a Senate subcommittee hearing that exonerated Denson and condemned the release of Nazi criminals. But the subcommittee's determinations came too late to salvage the harm done to Denson's reputation. Devastated by what he called "betrayal of justice at its worst," Denson quit the Army and never set foot in a criminal courtroom again.

Today, special investigators working in the field of international law recognize Denson as a pioneer of universal human rights. The precedents he established inform trials underway in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other parts of the world. In the last months before his death in 1998 he was acknowledged for his achievements and awarded a Presidential citation.

Greene's books and documentaries have been translated and broadcast in more than twenty countries. He is an Emmy Award nominee and five-time recipient of TV Guide's Best Programs of the Year award. His book "Witness: Voices from the Holocaust" (Free Press, 2000) was made into a feature film for PBS and chosen as one of the best Holocaust films of all time by Facets Media.

Greene served as director of programming for Cablevision. He was senior vice president for global affairs at Ruder Finn, New York's largest communications firm. He sits on the boards of the American Jewish Committee, the Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of Nassau County, and the Coalition for Quality Children's Media.

The event is sponsored by the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies and the Baldy Center for Law and Policy at UB. Support also is provided by Hillel of Buffalo, the American Jewish Committee Buffalo/Niagara Chapter, the Criminal Law Society and the International Law Students Associations of UB Law School.