About The Event
The play based on the historic event of the trial of judges of the Nazi era, conducted by the US Military court, can be said to belong to the genre of historic fiction. The play uses the dialogue list of the screenplay written by Abby Mann as the take-off point only.
The WWII is over, Hitler is dead, and Germany has surrendered. So has their ally Japan after the brutal bombing of Hiroshima (6th August 1945) and Nagasaki (9th August 1945). Chancellor for a day, Goebbels has committed suicide along with his entire family. The international tribunal has sat in judgement of the Nazi leaders and has sentenced eleven of them. It was followed by the trial of the doctors and then the trial of the judges. It is this trial of the judges that forms the content of this play. Three leading judges, Ernst Jenning, Hoffstetter, and Emil Hahn, are being tried. The foremost of them is of course Ernst Jenning, who is also a figure in the academic world of the study of law around the world. The trial is taking place in the historic courtroom in the city of Nuremberg. From this very courtroom, all signature Nazi laws were formulated and declared.
Jenning is being represented by advocate Rolf, who is sort of self-appointed. He comes to the prison to meet Ernst. Ernst is not exactly interested in defense. The trial begins. The allied forces are represented by Lawson. An important witness who was once part of the German judiciary testifies how after the rise of Hitler the judicial system was reduced to a mockery. Next comes the topic of forced sterilization practiced by the Nazis against those they considered politically dangerous. Rudolf Peterson, a victim of forced sterilization, is produced to court. Ernst Jenning says that he is unwell and wants to be excused from the court. He is visibly upset.
Lawson, the advocate, was part of the US army. With the court’s permission, he shows a short film that depicted the horrors of various concentration camps. Rolf, defending Ernst Jenning, calls him a patriot as he had not escaped from his duty. A very famous case of those days, the Feldenstein case, is sort of reopened. In the case based on the notorious anti-race defilement law, an aged Jew, Mr. Feldenstein, was sentenced to death for having an illicit relationship with one Christian young girl, Irene Hoffman. She is again summoned to court and is subjected to obnoxious questioning by Rolf. It becomes clear that charges against Feldenstein were baseless.
Judge Haywood meets Ernst Jenning in the prison, somewhat outside the precinct of law. They have a very poignant conversation where Ernst accuses Haywood of the excesses of carpet bombing in Dresden and the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan. Haywood is a member of the committee that sanctioned the dropping of the atom bomb. Ernst Jenning says that one day the world will question why the US will not be subjected to trial on the same grounds based on which the US and allied forces are putting fallen Nazis to trial.
Ernst Jenning says that he was the judge in the case and knowingly he has passed a wrong sentence as he was asked to do so by the State. Ernst Jenning explains what Hitler had meant to the German people and what was the real form of Nazi euphoria. It is this euphoria that had made people callous and insensitive. Rolf says if Hitler is to be blamed, the whole world should be blamed with him. Because the Vatican has hailed Hitler, so has Winston Churchill, PM of UK, Stalin had entered into a pact with him, India’s freedom fighter Subhas Bose had sought his help, and US businessmen had sold him arms. The court sentences all three undertrials to life imprisonment.
News comes that Ernst Jenning is dead. He had stopped taking medicines needed for his heart ailment. He has left a letter for Judge Haywood. The play ends with the sequence of Haywood reading out the letter with the surrealistic presence of Ernst Jenning. Jenning has accused Haywood of a trial which was not neutral, where the verdict was predetermined in view of the post-war days. In the letter, Ernst has quoted a few deeply poignant lines from Tagore’s ‘Crisis in Civilization’.
