Protesting The Leniency Toward German War Criminals-Page 1

PROTESTING THE LENIENCY LETTER TO THE EDITOR TOWARD GERMAN WAR CRIMINALS January l6th, lgUg Dear Sir: The voluntary submission by the United States of its captive German enemy to the Judgment of the Law, has been, in the words of Mr. Justice Jackson, "The greatest tribute which power has ever paid to reason." The punishment of war criminals according to orderly legal procedure was supported by the people of this country as a necessary and important instrument against the forces of barbarism. The idea of the Nuremberg trial was hailed by civilized peoples everywhere for the same reason. The execution of this idea, ho’wever, is disgracing it_ and its high purposes. Judgment after judgment has been rendered at Nuremberg which has shocked the most enthusiastic protagonists of the Nuremberg idea. For example, the acquittal, in August, of four notorious Nazi doctors, men whose involvement in medical ex¬ periments on human living beings was common knowledge. For another example, the refusal to impose the death sentence on any offi¬ cial of the Nazi Ministry of Justice or Judges of the notorious Nazi peoples court, despite their characterization as "evil, ruthless and sadistic" by the Tribunal which sentenced them, and despite the cavalier fashion in which they had signed thousands of death warrants in previous years. The most recent of these "judicial injustices" the Flick decision, makes it impossible to remain silent, despite reluctance to criticize the sacrosanct judicial process. One year ago Hermann Goering, Number Two Nazi, cheated the hangman’s noose by swallowing a dose of poison. Today, one of the men who made the Hitlers, Goerings and Himmlers possible, Friedrich Flick, has also escaped the gallows, thanks to an American Military Tribunal whose judgment "tended to indicate a degree of compassion for the defendants, and a determination to discover all possible mitigating circumstances". (New York Times, December 23,19^7) From the very beginning of the Nazi reign of terror, Flick played a major