Judgment before Nuremberg: The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crimes Trial

416 Pages·2012·44.399 MB·English

by  Greg Dawson

.fro-- ^/^ ",.#- -m/
JUDGMEN
BEFORE
NUREMBERG
THE HOLOCAUST IN THE UKRAINE '
AND THE FIRST NAZI WAR CRIMES TRIAL
GREG DAWSON
AUTHOR OF HIDING IN THE SPOTLIGHT
^P^P^P^Pwi
$27.95 as. $32.00 CAN.
I
The story of the'forgotten
Kharkov trials, which sought
JUSTICE FOR THE THOUSANDS OF
Jews.KILLED in the Ukraine two
YEARS PRIOR TO THE INFAMOUS
Nuremberg trials.
When
we reflect on the
Holocaust, we think of Aus-
chwitz and Dachau; and when
we think ofjustice for this terrible chapter in
history,we think ofNuremberg. Not Russia
or the Ukraine, and certainly not the town of
Kharkov. But in reaUty, the first war crimes
trial against the Nazis took place in this
Ukrainian town,which is fitting,because it is
also where the Holocaust began.
RevealingalostchapterinHolocausthisto-
riography,>^^m^^^BeforeNurembergtells the
story ofGreg Dawson'sjourney to this place,
to the scene of the crime, and the discovery
of the trial that began the tortuous process
of avenging the murder ofhis grandparents,
great-grandparents, and tens ofthousands of
fellow Ukrainians consumed at the dawn of
the Shoah, a moment and crime now largely
cloaked in darkness.
Eighteen months before the end ofWorld
War II—two fiiU years before the opening
Nurem-
statement by'the prosecution at
berg—three Nazi officers and a Ukrainian
collaborator were tried and convicted ofwar
crimes and hung in Kharkov's public square.
The trial is symboUc of the larger omission
of the Ukraine from the popular history of
the Holocaust—another deep irony, as a sig-
number of innocent Ukrainian Jews
nificant
, lost their Uves in the first purges long before
Hider and hi^ lieutenants decided upon the
formalities ofThe Final Solution.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
2012
in
http://archive.org/details/judgmentbeforenuOOgreg
JCJDGMEXT
BEFORE
NUREMBERG

JUDGMENT
BEFORE
NUREMBERG
THE HOLOCAUST IN THE UKRAINE
AND THE FIRST NAZI WAR CRIMES TRIAL
GREG DAWSON
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK
JUDGMENT BEFORE NUREMBERG
PegasusBooksLLC
80Broad Street, 5th Floor
NewYork, NY 10004
Copyright©2012GregDawson
FirstPegasusBookseditionMarch 2012
InteriordesignbyMaria Fernandez
Allrightsreserved. Nopartofthisbookmaybe reproducedinwholeorinpart
withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyreviewerswhomay
quotebriefexcerptsinconnectionwithareviewina newspaper,magazine,
orelectronicpublication;normayanypartofthisbookbereproduced,stored
inaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted inanyformorbyanymeanselectronic,
mechanical,photocopying,recording,orother,withoutwrittenpermission
fromthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData isavailable.
ISBN:978-1-60598-290-8
109876 543 2 1
Printedinthe United StatesofAmerica
DistributedbyW.W. Norton&Company
For my mother