Tomorrow’s Witnesses Learn From Holocaust Survivors
It was the world’s greatest crime, perpetrated against millions of human beings more than seven decades ago by a complex and horrifying bureaucracy dedicated to murder.
In 1946, several high-ranking members of Germany’s Nazi regime were brought to justice in a Nuremberg courtroom in a first-ever demonstration of international law. The criminals were executed or given prison terms. Most of them have since passed from the scene.
And today, with each passing hour, the survivors of the Holocaust – the greatest and most articulate witnesses to the crime – also grow fewer and fewer in number. In the Omaha area alone, five survivors have died since April 2018, leaving 13. The youngest in the area is 81 and the oldest is 101.
“It’s very much a wake-up call,” said Scott Littky, director of the Omaha-based Institute for Holocaust Education. “We are losing the survivors quickly. The 13 we have in Omaha have all had varying experiences, from being in a camp to being hidden children. The question we keep asking is, ‘Who can keep these legacies alive? Who can continue to tell their stories?’”
For the past seven years, Michael Kelly, the Sen. Allen A. Sekt Endowed Chair in Law at Creighton University, has been leading students to that courtroom in Nuremberg where the perpetrators of the Holocaust were tried.
The course, From Nuremberg to The Hague, includes a visit to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands. In recent years, however, a centerpiece of the experience has been the trek these future lawyers make to one of the most harrowing scenes of the crime: Auschwitz.
These Creighton students have returned from Europe as witnesses and, in that, Kelly and Littky, along with Howard Epstein, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Omaha, have seen opportunity.
The three-day Holocaust immersion component of the Nuremberg program, which also includes stops at the Krakow Jewish Ghetto, the Oskar Schindler Factory and the Jewish Heritage Museum, means that Creighton is creating 30 new witnesses to the Holocaust each summer.
“This new partnership between Creighton University and the Jewish Federation of Omaha is emblematic of how institutions such as ours can find profound projects to work on together – ones like this which not only change the lives of the students who participate, but which impact young people in our community through sharing experiences gained at actual Holocaust crime scenes in Poland,” Kelly said.
As a 1996 alumnus of the School of Law, Epstein said continuing the program and training the students in becoming the next generation of witnesses was of paramount importance.
“They have seen the places where an international crime was committed and where that crime was prosecuted,” Epstein said. “What happened at Auschwitz and what then took place at Nuremberg created a system of international law that continues to resonate today. The visitors to those places today bear strong testimony that this has happened, that it was prosecuted, and that we work for justice and peace to ensure it never happens again.”
The survivors and the liberators of the Holocaust, as they approach 80, 90 and even 100 years of age, are the living witnesses, Littky and Epstein said, but the standing testimony of the gates at Auschwitz, the shoes and eyeglasses of victims that are gathered in heaps at the camp’s museum, and the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials continue to echo down the ages.
“We’re getting further away from those events,” Epstein said. “Memories fade unless the stories are repeated, the lessons are continued. We want to see these students become the carriers of the stories, the new teachers of those lessons.”
And the lessons, Littky said, are not just historical, but resonant in the present day.
“We put an emphasis on three things when we talk about the Holocaust and Holocaust education, all of which are still relevant today,” Littky said. “First, you promote empathy. Second, you promote understanding. And third, don’t be a bystander. We take all kinds of different approaches in this work. It ties back to the Holocaust, certainly, but it also has applications today.”
Already, some of the students in the course From Nuremberg to The Hague this summer have started training with the Institute for Holocaust Education to work on their skills as witnesses.
“We love working with Creighton because of that strong emphasis on social justice,” Littky said. “We’ve seen the students build relationships with the survivors they’ve met. As this moves forward, I think they’ll see what benefits a partnership like this can bring into their study and practice of law. We hope it’s something that goes with them as they work toward seeking justice. That personal contact is something that helps us all and makes us more sensitive to the people we encounter in our daily lives.”
Kelly says the opportunity to serve as educators and witnesses is central for the students who, as burgeoning Creighton lawyers, are uniquely positioned to see justice and peace studies at work in the course and in the witness they hope to bear.
“Our summer abroad program in The Hague, Nuremberg and Auschwitz aims to provide a unique opportunity, transformative in nature and mission-focused in design, that equips each student with a new lens on how to view societal tragedies such as the Holocaust in our world and with a strong desire to fight for justice wherever they can,” Kelly said.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the Fall 2019 Creighton Lawyer magazine.
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