‘AMERICA WAS ENRAGED’
Stars and Stripes’ Reporter Gives His Views On Jackson, Nuremberg Trials
By STEVEN M. SWEENEY
It’s difficult to see the truth clearly.
Norbert Ehrenfreund knows the struggle personally.
The son of Czech-Jewish immigrants, was one of many American reporters assigned cover the trial of Nazis who masterminded murders of millions — including his relatives.
‘‘At one point, I told my editor he should give the assignment to someone else,’’ he How could I be objective when my grandfather was murdered by the Nazis? I had buddies killed by the Nazis.
‘‘It was hard for me.’’
A trained journalist from Peekskill, Ehrenfreund joined the U.S. Army after graduating from the University of Missouri journalism school.
The year was 1943.
He was attached to the 3rd Army’s 71st Infantry Division as a forward artillery observer, rolling through France, Germany and Austria. Each campaign and battle raised the tally on the number of friends killed and horrors found.
‘‘As war ended, news of concentration camps spread through Europe and back to America,’’ Ehrenfreund told several dozen listeners at the Robert H. Jackson Center on Monday. ‘‘Then we learned about gas chambers and bodies burned.’’
It was that time of the war’s end, in the middle of 1945, when President Harry Truman appointed Robert Jackson as the war crime trial’s chief American prosecutor. Ehrenfreund was discharged from the Army and quickly got a job as a cub reporter at the Stars and Stripes. He was among the first to write about the reaction to the trial and the London Conference where Jackson convinced British, French and Russian jurists to try Hitler’s henchmen — fairly.
‘‘America was enraged,’’ Ehrenfreund said. ‘‘What is this nonsense about a trial. Everyone thought these characters didn’t deserve a trial.’’
Jackson understood the worldwide hatred universally expressed against the men who made Hitler a god-like tyrant. He also understood summary executions of Nazi plotters and generals fail to expand justice and cheat peace the due process of law Jackson so loved.
‘‘‘To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put one to our own lips,’ ’’ Ehrenfreund said quoting Jackson. The admonition was Jackson’s way of reminding the international judges of the greater purpose the trial had — vindication of civilization by trying the lawless with law and extending human rights to the inhumane.
Ehrenfreund confidently believes these values are a reflection of Jackson’s upbringing and his community.
‘‘Where else could this man, who didn’t go to college, who didn’t finish law school learn to write if not in Jamestown and Frewsburg high schools,’’ he said. ‘‘Where else could he have learned to argue so persuasively — I think it was on the debate team. He learned law the old-fashioned way — by reading the law in a lawyer’s office — in Jamestown.’’
Though Jackson failed to prevent future wars, Ehrenfreund said the Jamestown native’s sense of justice helped make aggressive war illegal as well as morally wrong. Because of that, he told the audience the American prosecutor’s legacy lives among today’s current events, not just history’s annals.
‘‘Saddam Hussein can thank Nuremberg — can thank Jackson — that he’s alive today to defend himself in a court of law,’’ Ehrenfreund said. ‘‘Otherwise, he would have been shot, like Mussolini and dragged through the streets.’’