By JOHN WHITTAKER
Photographs of various scenes associated with the German city of
Nuremburg and the famous International Military Tribunal it hosted after
World War 2 lined the walls of the Robert H. Jackson Center on Tuesday.
According to Ray D’Addario, former Chief Photographer of the Office
of the Chief of Council, his favorite picture wasn’t presented to the
public.
In fact, it’s one he didn’t even take.
‘‘I’ve showed you the pictures that I’ve taken,’’
he said. ‘‘I’ve
never showed you the pictures I haven’t taken. When execution time
came, they built three scaffolds for them. We had an idea when it was
coming. We thought we were going to take pictures of them after they
dropped. We were never called. None of us. We had been at the
Nuremburg Trials for nine months and they never called us to take
those pictures.’’ Instead, a German photographer
took pictures of the convicted Nazis in their coffins and returned to Frankfurt.
D’Addario said he isn’t disappointed he wasn’t called to
take the
photos. ‘‘Today I am happy I didn’t see them,’’
he said. ‘‘I’m very happy
I didn’t see them. That’s the picture I didn’t take.
His body of work does cover the rest of the Nuremburg trials,
including the 12 trials that followed the most famous trial in
1945. A former newspaper photographer, D’Addario said he
went to Texas for a year for training before he was sent to London
as part of the Army Pictorial Services. As a veteran Signal Corps
cameraman, he covered the air and land battles involving U.S.
forces in Europe. Like most of the pictures taken
during World War 2, many of D’Addario’s pictures are in black
and white. D’Addario began experimenting with color film
sent to him by Eastman Kodak during the Nuremburg trial.
‘‘My mother was the friend of an owner of a camera shop in
Holyoke, Mass.,’’ he said. ‘‘She sent me the 35mm
film. I wanted
to see what I would get. The color, sometimes it was red.
When it was red, the lights would go dim. When it was too bright it
would go some other color. When it was right, it was on the
button.’’
Pictures D’Addario took of the German countryside and the
results of Allied bombing raids on Nuremburg were also featured
on Tuesday. While the photographer was ordered to take many of
his photos, the pictures of Nuremburg and other German
sites were taken for another reason. ‘‘Those were the souvenirs
I
had of the city,’’ he said. ‘‘Can you imagine going
into Nuremburg
and 90 percent of it is flat. It’s flat. One of the last raids was
New Year’s Day and everything came down. It was a British raid.
The Brits had no more places to go to, so they picked Nuremburg.
Nuremburg is important to the German people because of the
rallies they had. They had big, big rallies there. Everything was
done in Nuremburg.’’ As a principal photographer of
the Nuremburg trials, D’Addario was able to get a first-hand observation
of Robert H. Jackson and the way he presented his case.
He also gave his opinion of Jackson’s personality.
‘‘He was always a very good soul,’’ the photographer
said.
‘‘My impression is he was a very, very, very fine man. I saw
him at Nuremburg the first week. Before the trial started I met him.
He never would laugh. He was always serious.’’ While his best
picture may be one he never took, D’Addario said he has a favorite picture
of
Robert H. Jackson. Like the rest of his Nuremburg photos, it was
on display Tuesday. ‘‘My best picture of him is one
where he signed his name under a picture I took,’’ he said.