(article
is from the news section of the Jamestown Post Journal)
6/6/2004 - By JOHN WHITTAKER
Three months after they were married, Jack Robbins and his wife, Hilda, took
a trip to Germany.
In the years following World War II, there wasn't much sightseeing for the
newlyweds to do - not that Robbins had much time for sightseeing anyway.
For Robbins, there was more important business at hand.
For two years, Robbins worked with about 100 lawyers from the United States under chief prosecutor Gen. Telford Taylor in the prosecution of nearly 200 defendants in what are known as Nuremberg's subsequent proceedings.
In addition to his duties assisting Gen. Taylor, Robbins was the lead prosecutor in cases involving 39 doctors and lawyers in what is known as the Doctor's Cases as well as 18 Schutzstaffel Protection - SS - officials in charge of thousands of concentration camps in the Oswald Pohl case.
As many as six trials were ongoing at any one time with each defendant having one and sometimes two defense attorneys. In keeping with the precedent set by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his tenure as chief prosecutor in the first Nuremberg trial, defendants had their choice of attorney, a presumption of innocence, the right to cross-examine all witnesses, full access to the prosecution's documentary evidence and the power to call the U.S. army to locate defense witnesses.
On Monday, Robbins will visit the Robert H. Jackson Center to discuss his role in the subsequent proceedings. He will speak at 12:30 p.m. in the center's Carl Cappa Auditorium.
''I've always heard wonderful things about the Robert H. Jackson Center,'' Robbins said. ''Jackson was one of my heroes. Of course, he was the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg and I followed him. He established a great precedent, so I'm really looking forward to going through the Robert H. Jackson Center and learning more about it.''
Robbins was sent to Nuremberg to be Taylor's legal assistant and legal aide as a newly married, 26-year-old lawyer only three years removed from Columbia Law School.
Taylor took over the reigns as lead prosecutor from Jackson for the Subsequent Proceedings - 12 cases involving 177 individual defendants. The cases generated more than 330,000 pages of transcripts in about 1,200 days of court proceedings.
Each case centered on a specific professional group or defendant: 39 doctors or lawyers, 56 SS officials and police officers, 26 military leaders, 22 government ministers, and 42 industrialists and financiers. While there were roughly 100 American lawyers prosecuting the cases, each of the 177 German defendants had at least one defense attorney while some had two attorneys.
As chief prosecutor of the doctor's cases, Robbins was responsible for prosecuting doctors charged with performing experiments concerning the effects of and treatments for high-altitude conditions, freezing, malaria, poison gas, bone, muscle and nerve regeneration, saltwater consumption, epidemic jaundice, sterilization, poisons and incendiary bombs.
The decision set forth the doctrine of informed consent, or the Nuremberg Code. Its moral and ethical guidelines for permissible medical experiments are still in use in medical offices throughout the world.
''The true object of many of these experiments was not how to rescue or how to cure, but how to destroy and how to kill,'' Robbins said. ''Sixteen of the 23 defendants were found guilty and seven were sentenced to death by hanging. Nine of those defendants in the medical case received prison terms ranging from 10 years to life and seven of the 23 were acquitted.''
Robbins also prosecuted the case against Oswald Pohl and 17 other SS Economic and Administrative Office officials charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in a criminal organization.
The SS officials were directly responsible for all concentration camps in Germany and were responsible for the 10,000,000 people imprisoned in the camps. In addition to the inhumane experiments conducted in the concentration camps and the extermination of Jews, Russians, Poles and gypsies, the defendants were charged with looting personal property of the concentration camp prisoners.
Pohl and three other defendants were sentenced to hang while 11 received prison terms. Three were acquitted.
''This department of the SS was in charge of constructing and maintaining and administering the thousands of concentration camps in Germany and the occupied countries,'' Robbins said. ''These SS offices also managed the economic enterprises, which were owned and operated by the SS, such as mines and quarries and brick factories located near the concentration camps.''