Exhibition Themes > Law > 188. Telford Taylor
188a. Telford Taylor (1908-1998). Public Relations Photo Section, Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Germany, APO 696-A, US Army, Photo No. OMT-IX-P-7. Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, Germany: February 13, 1948. Black and white photograph, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Special Collections, Telford Taylor Papers
188b. Telford Taylor (1908-1998). Statement on Nuremberg Trials for the International News Service. Typescript, May 9, 1949. Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Special Collections, Telford Taylor Papers
Telford Taylor was an attorney, historian, writer and legal scholar. Taylor was a Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School (1963-1976) and served as Nash Professor Emeritus of Law (1976-1998). From 1945 to 1946, Taylor was a member of the Office of United States Chief of Counsel, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Nuremberg, Germany. In 1946, Taylor was appointed Chief Counsel, and Prosecutor for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals that ran from 1946 to 1949. In this photograph, Taylor is shown presenting the closing arguments of the prosecution in the Einsatzgruppen case. The defendants, as officers of the Einsatzgruppen extermination units, were charged with furthering Hitler's program of genocide through the murdering of approximately one million Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Soviet officials, and others marked in the Nazi race purification plan for the strengthening of Germanism. "When a plan was so criminal that Himmler and Hitler were ashamed of it," stated General Taylor, "it must have been indeed horrible."
In his May 9, 1949 statement to the International News Service, Brig. Gen. Taylor announced the end of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The document contains Taylor's original corrections and clearance stamps from the Security Review Section, Public Information Division, Special Staff United States Army. Taylor declared: "... I venture to predict that as time goes on we will hear more about Nuremberg rather than less, and that in a very real sense the conclusion of the trials marks the beginning, and not the end, of Nuremberg as a force in politics, law and morals." ... "Nuremberg was part of the process of enforcing law-law that long antedated the trials, and that will endure into the future; law that binds not only Germans and Japanese, but all men."
Gift of Professor Toby Golick, 1999
