Eyewitnesses | Nuremberg. Casus pacis

Document: 300 Thousand Words for Soviet Radio Listeners

Mikhail Gus was a Soviet international radio journalist, publicist and art critic, who witnessed many of the events of the Second World War. He also worked at the Nuremberg Trials. Residents of the USSR listened to his reports from Nuremberg through special radio devices – so-called black "plates", which were in every apartment and at work places in those years. On 3 May 1946, he sent a telegram to the All-Union radio (the State Committee on Radio Broadcasting) with a report on five months of the work at the trials. And in 1971 he published a book of essays "Madness of the Swastika", in which he described many vivid episodes which he witnessed during the trial.

‘I Recalled the Smoke of Auschwitz’

Pravda’s special Nuremberg correspondent, the celebrated writer Boris Polevoi (who would soon shoot to fame in the Soviet Union for his book “The Story of a Real Man”) knew much more about Auschwitz than many other eyewitnesses at the Nuremberg trials. He visited the camp two days after it had been liberated by the Red Army in January 1945 and interviewed prisoners and witnesses, afterwards writing a memo about it to the Political Department at the Front. On 15 April 1946, he published his impressions of the examination of Rudolf Höss, the former commander of Auschwitz Extermination Camp, by the Nuremberg tribunal on the same day in an article for the Soviet Information Bureau. The authors of “Nuremberg: Casus Pacis” found the article in the archives of Sovinformburo. The full version of Polevoi’s article about Auschwitz is published for the first time.

Profession: Commandant of Concentration Camps

By mid-April 1946, the defendants were still trying to deny the fact of the mass extermination of people in concentration camps. According to them, it was all propaganda and exaggeration. But eventually, a man came to the podium and bluntly stated that he himself had sent 2.5 million prisoners to death and he had personally implemented the “final solution to the Jewish question”. This was Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz. Let's try to consider the commandants of the Nazi concentration camps in depth and analyse the people whose official duty was to organise torture and mass murder.

Boris Polevoi

Boris Polevoi

Court Tired of Hearing Gossip

The USSR’s main newspaper, “Pravda”, published regular reports from Nuremberg from the first day of the Tribunal: “tassovki” – dry, though detailed daily summary reports by TASS. But the main events of the trials were reported by the most prominent writers and journalists - like Pravda’s special Nuremberg correspondent, Boris Polevoi.

When the World Learned About Gas Chambers

Burning people alive, killing newborns, showers with "cyclone" – testimonies first heard in Nuremberg

General Rudenko: ‘Morals of Cannibals, Greed of Burglars’

Soviet Chief Prosecutor’s Speech Angered Defendants

Mauthausen Report: Stolen Tape as Evidence of Genocide

Prisoners recount the killings in Europe's biggest concentration camp and that everyone knew about it

Procès de Nuremberg, le box des interprètes

Procès de Nuremberg, le box des interprètes

Ladies, Pugs, and a Slippery Floor: Unrecorded Nuremberg Curiosities

The participants of the Nuremberg trials remembered many details that would not become part of serious monographs about this epoch-making event. What kind of audience gathered in the courtroom? How did journalists try to outwit the guards? And why did an honest Soviet girl find herself in the arms of the defendant Göring?

At the entrance to the Grand Hotel in Nuremberg. Second from the left is Soviet writer and journalist V. Vishnevsky, third from the left is Soviet director R. Karmen. The Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts.

At the entrance to the Grand Hotel in Nuremberg. Second from the left is Soviet writer and journalist V. Vishnevsky, third from the left is Soviet director R. Karmen. The Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts.

Murder at the Grand Hotel

Death of Soviet driver still unsolved.