Helen Fry
Inside Nuremberg Prison: Recollections of an American Jewish Refugee Soldier

Helen Fry - Inside Nuremberg Prison: Recollections of an American Jewish Refugee Soldier

- Today’s lecture is based on, well, literally hours and hours of research with an American German Jewish refugee war veteran that I interviewed over a number of years and wrote his story, his testimony, called “Inside Nuremberg Prison, Hitler’s Henchman Behind Bars.” I’ve subtitled this “Pure Evil On Trial,” and today I’m going to talk about the incredible story of Howard Triest. Next slide please. Howard, who was actually born in Munich in the 1920s, actually went on to serve in Nuremberg Prison. And the quotes that I give this evening today are actually from my original interviews with Howard. He passed away just a couple of years ago. He’s no longer with us, but his testimony was quite extraordinary because when I interviewed him, he was the only surviving witness to what went on inside Nuremberg Prison. And he said to me, “The only right way to punish these 21 defendants was to put them into the death camps and subject them to the same treatment they gave millions of others. But we couldn’t do that as civilised people. Maybe for this reason, I was chosen for the job.” Next slide, please. So, Howard, as I said, was born in Munich. His life took an extraordinary turn as it did for Germany’s Jews with the ascent of Adolf Hitler to power in January, 1933. And there were visible changes. Of course, Munich was arguably the birthplace of Hitler’s movement of Nazism. It was the year of Howard’s birth, 1923, the year that Hitler had tried to mount a putsch, sort of coup in Munich, a failed coup. And Howard was always very conscious of the connections of the birth of Nazism in the place of his birth. His father, like so many of his generation, had fought honourably for Germany in the First World War, had been decorated for bravery.

And so Howard always grew up knowing that his father was very proud, a proud German, proud to be Jewish, but also incredibly loyal to Germany, assimilated, and was proud to wear his war medal. But everything changed, as we know, for Jews in Germany, gradually deteriorated until we get to the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which had basically took away completely all civil rights, all civil liberties, and gradually male Jews disappearing. We have the concentration camps, we have deportation, well, deportation technically later, but mass arrests and thousands of Jewish males disappearing. So it was a very, very dangerous time for Howard and his family. He recalled along Kristallnacht coming up to the anniversary this week, 9th, 10th of November, 1938. He remembers leaving their apartment in Munich and hiding in the park and then hiding with friends and moving from house to house. It was an incredibly dangerous time. They did survive Kristallnacht and eventually they decided they were able to leave Germany and went to live in Holland and in Belgium for a short time. But of course that would all change. His parents were eventually deported to Camp Milles in the south of France. Howard himself made the journey. He managed to get a visa to America and it was hoped that his parents and his sister would follow. But his parents ultimately did not survive.

But once in America because his parents thought it was very important for whoever they could save to go first, and he went to stay with relatives in America. And in America, he enlisted during the war into the American forces. And after three months, many of the German Jewish refugees that had enlisted in the American forces were given American citizenship. Some of them changed their names to more American-sounding names and served loyally. It’s estimated that 14,000 German and Austrian Jewish refugees fought in the American forces during the Second World War, Howard, pictured here, being one of them. And four years after he left Nazi Germany, he landed on the beaches of Omaha and was very, very lucky to survive 96% casualty death rate on Omaha beach. Incredibly difficult, but he does survive. And while he’s wandering on the beach of Normandy, his commanding officer says to him, “But you speak languages, right? I’ve read somewhere that you’re fluent in German.” And he said, “Yes.” “Well, then what are you doing here? You need to be in the Intelligence section.” So he’s detached on Intelligence work, but moving with frontline forces all the way through, through the liberation of France, through the liberation of Belgium and Holland, and into the invasion of Germany. And for him, it was that moment, a euphoric moment actually, ‘cause he had his freedom. He had his freedom. He had no idea at that point of the fate of his parents, but he was optimistic he would find them, and also proud that he was serving in the American forces. And then probably one of the most extraordinary things to happen. Next slide please. He was posted to Nuremberg and there were a large number of refugees in the British and American armed forces who undertook interpretation work, interpreters, translators.

They worked on gathering evidence for the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg was going to be a defining moment, a defining moment for justice because initially 22 defendants, Hitler’s top ranking government, all the top hierarchy of the Nazi government were standing trial. It ends up being 21 because Robert Ley commits suicide within just a few weeks of being in the prison. But how many actually got, how many of those German Jewish refugees served in the Nuremberg Trial, actually went into the prison itself was incredibly rare, but Howard was one of them. Howard was posted to Nuremberg and then told, “You’re not working on the Trials, you are actually going to be working in the prison.” An extraordinary moment for him. Next slide please. And it’s during this time when he’s in Nuremberg Prison, and I’ll talk about his work in the prison shortly, he actually discovers that his parents, bless them, here, they’re pictured here, perished in Auschwitz. They were transferred in 1942 from Milles, Camp Milles in the south of France to Drancy, terrible camp outside Paris and from there to an unknown destination. But the parents knew, ultimately, they suspected it was Auschwitz. And their last letter makes it home to Howard in an extraordinary story. You can read about it in his biography that I’ve written so they don’t survive. So against that backdrop, when Howard’s just arrived at Nuremberg, he gets confirmation that his parents have perished in Auschwitz. Next slide please. And what he’s going to discover is quite an extraordinary role in the prison. He is the only interpreter to the psychiatrist in Nuremberg Prison. And every day for a year, he’s about to walk into those cells and sit as close as anyone could possibly be to the surviving members of Hitler’s top government officials, the top-ranking Nazis were in Nuremberg Prison waiting for their trial. And Howard was to find himself as the only interpreter.

And what made it more strange an experience for him is that according to German prejudices of what Jews looked like in their eyes, he looked like a pure Aryan, well, the German, the Nazi view of a pure Aryan, he was blonde hair and blue-eyed. And so none of those defendants in Nuremberg Prison ever suspected that he was Jewish. But what unfolds is a quite extraordinary testimony. And I was able to ask him about how he felt sitting so close to pure evil, to the men who had sent his own parents to their deaths in Auschwitz. Next slide please. And by the time I interviewed him, he was, as I said, the only surviving witness to the prison interviews because the psychiatrist that he was working for, and we’ll look at them in a moment, had already passed away. when I came to interview him. He was the last survivor to walk daily into those prison cells and sit next to Hitler’s top commanders. And there are a number of questions that we try to answer through his biography, including how did he feel? How did he react to being so close to pure evil? Was reconciliation with Germany possible in the light of such nationwide complicity? And how could, how would be so forgiving and relaxed? Certainly in his interviews with me. Next slide please. He was aware that it was a history in the making. He said, “They were sitting behind bars. I had my life and freedom. We had just won the war. I could ride on a torrent and that enabled me to do my job.” He said, “I had to let justice take its course.” And this is reunion picture with his sister, Margo. She does survive. She survives the camps in the south of France. She’s smuggled out, she was just a child, but she was smuggled out with a group of other Jewish children, sheltered in a convent.

And the sisters, they went from home to home for safety, but they were smuggled out one night across the railway line when they knew there were no trains coming along the railway line. They followed the railway line out and into Switzerland, unbelievable and to freedom. But they were the only survivors. Howard and his sister Margo were the only survivors of the war or in their family. Next slide please. So initially, 22 defendants were on trial in Nuremberg Prison. It was the first really international justice, court of justice. The world’s eyes were on this court. Would it be possible to bring these evil men to justice? What could be done to bring them to justice? And the evidence that was heard was as shocking as any of the images that came out from the liberated camps. Howard was fortunate in being able to get a pass to go into one of the sessions at the Nuremberg Trial. He was able to sit in the press gallery and observe what was going on. He was particularly interested in the evidence being given for the Buchenwald trial because he had been with American forces during the liberation of Buchenwald, and, as you can imagine, what he saw in Buchenwald remained with him for the whole of his life. He could never forget the images on the liberation, they had an idea of what they might find because of the earlier liberation of camps but Buchenwald for him really shocked him to the core. And the evidence that was given at Nuremberg just showcased just how far and how evil the men who were facing justice had gone during the Nazi regime. Next slide, please.

And one of the commanders who was absolutely adamant, he was the commander of the prison, the American Colonel Burton Andrus, was absolutely determined that the men on trial should be fit to stand trial. There was a watch placed on them every day because there was to be no suicide attempts. They wanted to ensure that every single one of those men face the justice that they deserved. And he was head of this special detachment under the International Military Tribunal that was undertaking the Nuremberg Trial. And he said to his staff, and in particular he said to Howard one day, “This is a really tight establishment, Sergeant.” Howard was in the rank of sergeant. “There is to be no fraternisation with the defendants. They are criminals, not prisoners of war.” So Howard was very conscious that when he was going into those prison cells with the psychiatrists, there was to be no fraternisation, there was to be no friendly talk. They were war criminals. They were not being viewed as prisoners of war. And I guess also not having the same protections as ordinary prisoners of war. Next slide please. But what were they trying to do? Because when we look at the Nuremberg Trials, we look at the trials themselves, but no one had really looked at what was going on in Nuremberg Prison every single day around those trials for 12 months. There’s all kinds of things going on in the prison with those 22 defendants. And there was a team of psychiatrists working in and out of the prison. And they were there for two reasons, which is fascinating. The first, really, I should have put them the other way around actually, the first was to make absolutely sure that each of those 22 defendants were fit for trial.

There was, even in the case of Rudolph Hess, will come to him shortly, to be no excuse that they could be found guilty, not guilty on basis of insanity, or they were unfit. Those psychiatrists were absolutely to ensure that every single one of those defendants would stand trial and there would be no statements by their lawyers that they weren’t fit for trial. And then the second reason is really interesting. They had a question to answer. Was it possible to dissect pure evil? One of their tasks in going into the cells each day was to try and understand this pure evil. Was it possible to understand? And actually in the end, Howard said to me, “We never had the answers. It was just not possible to dissect pure evil, to understand why they had done what they had done.” Next slide please. So we look at the psychiatric team then, there were three primary figures and they’ve each written their own books, their own memoirs. Dr. Douglas Kelley was the first one working in Nuremberg. He wrote his memoir, “Twenty-two Cells in Nuremberg.” He was US military Intelligence Officer, but also part of the US Army Medical Corps. He became or was appointed the Chief Psychiatrist at Nuremberg. Very, very interesting chap in his own right. Dr. Gustave Gilbert, who takes over primarily from him. “Nuremberg Diary” were his memoirs. He’s a psychologist and he was the one that would administer the Rorschach ink block test on each of those defendants. So it should say defendants not dependents, autocorrect on the Word document, but he was to actually perform those IQ tests and to see where they fell. Because again, nobody knew of those 22 defendants where they sat on the spectrum of IQ. Of course, in the end, the vast majority of them, over 20 of, about 20 of them, were found to have been above average or have a high IQ.

Again, you can see the importance of undertaking that test. If you want to try and analyse pure evil, analyse their psyche, analyse and try and understand how they could have been so brainwashed to have carried out these acts of evil. And then Dr. Leon Goldensohn, who took over from Gilbert, he wrote “The Nuremberg Interviews” and he was also a psychiatrist. Next slide please. So they’re the three main team that Howard is working with. Howard’s the one actually who has the continuity as the interpreter. He’s there for the whole 12 months. Kelley isn’t there for the whole of the time. And with the exception of Rudolph Hess and Hans Frank, the defendants were not really mentally ill. In fact, the psychiatrists were really keen that there should be no statement. Hess was on the borderlines of insanity, as we all know, Hans Frank, again, questionable sanity. But there was no way that those psychiatrists were going to sign any documents that would say that Hess and Frank were not fit to stand trial. All apart from Julius Streicher, we’ll come to him shortly, were found to be above average intelligence. And as Howard said, it made it even harder to understand those atrocities. This is coming from a civilised society, from highly intellectual, a lot of those commanders had fought, had good careers in the First World War. How could they, how could men of such intelligence commit crimes and murder on a mass scale? I guess those questions we might be thinking of events in Israel today. How could, how can humanity commit such pure, brutal, unbridled evil against innocent people, the Jewish communities of Europe and the Jewish communities today in Israel? You know, this lecture was planned before the atrocities, the terrorist attacks on Israel on the 7th of October this year. And how poignant, many of these questions I think are for us to consider today. How is it possible that humanity can undertake such pure evil and brutality? Next slide, please.

So Dr. Kelley was the first to be working, looking at analysing the psychological profile of the defendants. This empty cell here was Hermann Goering’s cell, actually, it gives you an idea of what the cells were like. And he was given an official briefing before he started, and Howard Triest was his interpreter whenever he, Kelley, went into those cells. Howard was with him every single time and stayed with him for the duration of the interviews. So it was not to interrogate them, they would have no interrogation whatsoever. It was not to seek confessions from them, but it was to try and understand when talking to them, what were their motives when they were the top government, when they were running the Third Reich, when they were working for Adolf Hitler, how could they have committed such horrendous atrocities? Next slide, please. And Dr. Douglas Kelley said, “As a scientist,” he was a trained scientist. It was his profession. “I regarded my duty in the jail to not only guard the health of men facing trial for war crimes, but also to study them as a researcher in a laboratory. I took it upon myself to examine the personality patterns of these men and, to a degree, the techniques they employed to win and hold power.” I think it’s absolutely fascinating that we have on a daily basis in Nuremberg Trials going on, the defendants are going in and out every day for the trial but behind the scenes in Nuremberg Prison, we have this whole other world where the psychiatrists are actually analysing pure evil. They’re trying to understand how these men managed to win power, hold onto power, and to effectively as an intellectuals, to do the crimes that they had committed on an unprecedented, horrifying scale. Next slide, please. And he had to treat them professionally. And Howard said to me, “You know, Dr. Kelley always behaved, they had to keep their emotions inside. They couldn’t show any emotions, they couldn’t get angry.”

And Dr. Kelley decided, against all the rules, beforehand to treat them as patients rather than war criminals. But there was no confrontation. He wanted to listen to what was on their minds. And the interesting thing is, the moment the two of them went into the cells, they were really the only people that these war criminals could talk to. They couldn’t talk to the guards. I mean, there were guards outside the door on a daily basis, particularly keeping watched that none of them would try and commit suicide or would succeed. Of course, Robert Ley did just before the trial opened in October, 1945, he is found hanging in his cell. And after that the security is really ramped up and there is a guard on every single door. The lights are on all the time so that they can see what the defendants are doing. So there was going to be no repeat of the suicide of Robert Ley. Every single one of those remaining 21 defendants were going to stand trial and hear the verdict justice would be done. But of course they were, for hours and hours, they’re either listening in the trials themselves to the proceedings, but they’re also, they’ve got no one to talk to, no one to bounce off ideas, no one to reflect on. They’re not talking to the guards, they’re not allowed to talk to the guards. So consequently, when Dr. Kelley goes in with Howard, these men are really quite talkative. They’re ready to talk. And as I’ve put there, that interaction was bound to change Howard and Kelley’s experience of Nuremberg.

And I did ask Howard, against all the rules, did they actually befriend the defendants? Next slide please. And he said, “No, they did not befriend the defendants. The defendants like Julius Streicher and Hermann Goering certainly began to think that they were their friends and that they had a listening ear. But Howard said, "We did not befriend them.” He said, “They sat behind bars, humiliated, defeated men, their country in ruins and devastated by Allied armies, their lives about to be crushed under the weight of justice.” But he said, “And yet they could still strike an amicable and polite accord with me. It had, perhaps, to do with the interpersonal relationship which had developed between myself and the accused.” So Howard always maintained that they did not fraternise, but that there was inevitably an interpersonal exchange between whichever defendant they were going in to see, and they themselves, Dr. Kelley and Howard. So Dr. Kelley would talk to them, would ask the questions, and Howard would be translating. And not one of those defendants ever suspected that Howard was Jewish. Next slide please. But it was clear that the weight of the evidence and their guilt against, and it was unquestionable and each of them were well aware of that. With the exception of Hans Frank, the Butcher of Poland, as he was dubbed, none of them saw themselves guilty of any evil. Hans Frank was arguably the only one who showed any remorse in the prison for what they’d done. None of them thought that they were guilty of any evil and they resolutely clung to their anti-Semitic ideology. Nothing had changed, no remorse for what they’d done. The evidence was being put before them on a daily basis.

Graphic evidence, film footage, artefacts were being put before them, and eyewitness testimonies in the Nuremberg Trials but nothing could shake their clinging to that ideology in which they believed they were right. And they showed no remorse, not at any point during the trial or in the prison, in those private moments with Dr. Kelley and Howard. Howard simply said to me, “They saw themselves as innocent of any wrongdoing.” Next slide please. But it is extraordinary that every single day, not just once or twice a week, but every single day they went into the cells of several of those defendants and those interviews, those daily interviews of which the psychiatrist took notes whilst Howard was translating, was taken up with the defendant’s trying to explain and justify Germany’s defeat. I mean, they were trying to make sense of how they’d been defeated. They’re not concerned about their own personal part in the downfall of Nazi Germany or the war crimes that they’d committed. They were in their heads trying to explain how could this possibly have happened. And so Howard and Dr. Kelley had to listen to hours in some cases of these men trying to explain Germany’s defeat. But in so doing what they were trying to do, Kelley and and Howard, was to understand, understand their mindset and their lengthy explanations, they just had to be very, very patient. They couldn’t react to what they were were hearing. I mean, it is an extraordinary situation and I really, you know, question and wonder how anyone else could have handled it handled?

Howard, you know, when I interviewed him, was as relaxed as the days he walked into those cells. He had to keep, he said, a professional distance in spite of what these men had done to his own family. Because he said he knew that justice would be done. He could see that it would be done, that nothing could change their fate. Next slide please. So how unbelievable really for Howard to find himself sitting next to Hermann Goering, and you can read a bit more if you’re interested in my book, about some of those experiences going into the cell with Hermann Goering. Next slide please. At one point, Hitler’s chosen successor after Rudolph Hess flew to Scotland in 1941, but towards the end, so the last days of the war, Howard remembers he’s already in Nuremberg Prison, actually when Hermann Goering is actually transferred to the prison. And just not many people know about those last few days of the war and what surrounds Hermann Goering because he was, as I say, Hitler’s designated successor. Hitler sent word to him, he’s in his bunker from around the end of February, March, 1945. He sent word to Goering that, you know, the end is near, but he intended to stay in the bunker until the fight was over. But Goering was already preparing to take over power. And that’s when Goering sent this famous telegram to Jodl in the German naval. And at that point, Jodl actually betrayed him. And on the 23rd of April, 1945, Goring is actually arrested by the SS and it was Martin Bormann, Martin Bormann, who actually disappears at the end of the war. His body was supposed to have been found on the rubble of Berlin. He signed this telegram saying that the SS were to kill Hermann Goering. But Kaltenbrunner, who was actually by then the Gestapo chief, actually refused to execute the death sentence, to sign to countersign the death sentence for Hermann Goering without Hitler’s authorization. He said, “Has Adolf Hitler actually authorised this?” And he hadn’t, of course, he was holed up in the bunker.

And so that’s how Goering actually survived this attempted coup on Hitler to become the next leader. Next slide please. And it was on the 9th of May, 1945 that Goering actually gave himself up to American forces who were stationed in Bavaria. Again, I’m not sure whether you are aware of that, but he was actually brought in by the American forces. And he actually thought that because he was no longer really in synchronisation with Hitler, in terms of ideology, it’s questionable where he stands towards the end of the war, whether he’s distancing himself, but certainly because he thought he was a successor, that he could do a deal with the Allies, That he could be treated as a war criminal, not as a war criminal, but as a prisoner of war. But he finds himself transferred from the famous prison to Nuremberg Prison. Ashcan was a prison in Luxembourg where he’s transferred from there to Nuremberg Prison for the trials. He arrives in an extraordinary scene, Howard was saying, with 18 suitcases, he had these great big heavy coats. He also had a serious drug problem. And he came with all his drugs and these 18 suitcases of his clothing and personal effects. He was actually permitted to wear one of his uniforms, but not with rank or his insignia. So he was allowed to keep a change of clothing and some of his jewellery, I mean he was very flamboyant, a larger than life figure. And Howard said he still remained, although he was defeated, like those top ranking Nazis in the prison, he still was kind of larger than life. And, of course, he’s the main spokesman, isn’t he, for the Nazi war criminals at the trial. And Howard said, you know, hours of solitude behind those prison walls couldn’t diminish his spirit or sense of self-importance.

So that’s what Howard experienced, you know, talking with him, this sense that Goering still felt he was important and whether he really felt that he would face justice, that maybe somehow towards, you know, he would be let off. But in the end, of course, we know that that’s not the case. Next slide please. And Howard said of him, “Germany had been totally defeated and Goering knew he would face the gallows for his crimes, yet still he maintained his innocence.” So as the trial went on, Howard said of Goering, he finally came to realise, and particularly towards the end of the trial, of course, he realises he’s found guilty and he’s actually swaps his gold watch. One of the soldiers, we’re not sure who it was, whether it was an American soldier, Howard told me it was an American soldier, but it could equally have been a British soldier that swapped the gold watch. Goering gave him the gold watch in exchange for cyanide pill. Of course Goering escapes trial in the end, he’s actually found dead in his cell having taken cyanide pill. He said in those last days, and of course Howard and Dr. Kelley had no idea that he would actually take his life. Why would they think, you know, there was such a strong watch being kept over them. But he said to them, “I did what I did for the sake of a greater Germany. I know I shall hang. You know I shall hang. I am ready.” But actually this is just a few days before the verdict, a few days before his suicide, but already in his mind, Goering knew he was not going to face justice. He’d already done a deal where he could take that cyanide pill. Next slide please. And what about Rudolph Hess?

Well, of course, lots has been written of Rudolph Hess. You can see from the photograph on the left there, those wild eyes. He was bordering on insanity even in Nuremberg Prison. He had flown solo to Scotland on the 10th of May, 1941. Current research and historical studies show that it’s highly likely that Rudolph Hess was lured to Scotland by MI6, for whatever reason, by the British Secret Service. Much more than that, we can’t say, but he gets into trouble. He bails out just near the Duke of Hamilton’s estate. He’s picked up, he’s not instantly recognised, but he’s got a very expensive uniform one and not normal for a kind of ordinary Luftwaffe pilot. Eventually he is, just a day or so later, he is identified, he’s brought down to the Tower of London and from there he’s kept in captivity in a place called Mytchett Place, which is near Aldershot. It’s about 25, 30 miles estimate from London, sort of southwest direction of London. So near Aldershot, which was a military garrison town. And towards sort of middle of the war, he’s transferred to a camp in Wales to a hospital. And then from there he’s transferred to Nuremberg for the trial. And they’re absolutely adamant that he is going to stand trial. Of all the defendants, he’s the one that they have to ensure there is no verdict of insanity. Next slide, please. Howard recalls, you know, for me, really, really important because we’ve got an eyewitness to what went on. And those memories were so colourful of what happened in Nuremberg Prison, was so memorable that 70 years later, 60, 70 years later, Howard could remember as if it was yesterday.

And he said, as he remembers, Hess being brought into the prison. And he said, “Hess caused such a commotion that we all knew he had arrived. Flanked by guards, he was still in his Luftwaffe uniform stripped of insignia,” much like Hermann Goering, “wearing his long black flying boots. And in the corridor he passed Goering, also surrounded by guards. Hess gave the Hitler salute.” Colonel Andrus, you remember the American Commandant of Nuremberg Prison reacted immediately and said to him, “Never do that again in my prison.” And he didn’t, he was the only one, Hess was the only one that gave the very dramatic Hitler salute. And Andrus said, “Not, never again in my prison.” Next slide please. But Hess was quite a vulnerable character and he was in and out of this paranoia. The paranoia that the British minders had witnessed, the MI6 minders in the camps where Hess was held in England, could see that he went from moments of euphoria to great depths of depression. He thought the British Secret Service was trying to poison him. He believed that his food was being poisoned. He kind of had weird experiences. He tries to commit suicide in Mytchett Place by trying to throw himself down the stairs. And this kind of in and out sort of insane paranoia phase. Even the psychiatrist in the United Kingdom found it difficult to diagnose him. But he had moments where he was pretty vulnerable. And Hess said one day to Howard and to Dr. Kelley, he said, “You are kind.” He thought they were very kind to him.

“You are kind, yes. But I do not know if you are my friend.” Oh, you are a friend. And Kelley ultimately concluded that Hess lived in the borderlands of insanity. I love this description that Kelley says of Hess, “If one considers the street as sanity and the sidewalk as insanity, then Hess spent the greater part of his time on the curb.” That so sums up the Allied forces experience, those who were the minders of Hess, whether it was in the UK or under American guard and American jurisdiction inside Nuremberg Prison, that adequately aptly sums up Hess. “He’s walking on the curb, he’s there between the street of sanity and the sidewalk of insanity.” Next slide please. But with all that going on with Hess making this big arrival, the salute in the corridors of the prison before he is taken into the cells, there’s even more drama in cell nine where Robert Ley, spelt Ley but pronounced lie, who was Hitler’s chief of the Labour Front. There was no way he was going to stand trial. And he’d said to Howard and Dr. Kelley, “I’m not standing trial for what I’ve done. You know, there’s no way I’m going to stand trial.” They kind of didn’t take him seriously and he’d already made three suicide attempts after he’d been captured by the Americans so they should have been on alert. But there were guards watching those cells. He’d actually shown no suicidal tendencies in the prison and kind of, you know, things got, I wouldn’t say relaxed but slightly off guard if you know what I mean. And then there were moments when Howard and Kelley went in and he was a bit unstable. There were days when he wasn’t quite how they’d found him before.

But then as they said, you know, they were all like that, there was all a certain amount of instability with all of those defendants. And so they never quite knew when they went in what they were going to find. I always wondered if any of them would ever attack them. But they were never physically attacked because those defendants really saw them as the only contact with the outside world and almost saw them, well not only as a listening ear, but like friends, although Howard and Kelley didn’t see them obviously as friends in the same way. But Ley decided he would never stand trial. Next slide please. And on the 25th of October, just before the trial was formally opening, he was found hanging in his cell from the toilet pipe. And after that, everything was removed from those cells. There was extra security checks and tightening. And it was just shocking, the shock wave went through the prison that one of these top defendants could even manage to commit suicide before the trial had even started. And that did have implications going forward in the prison because the security was so tight. Next slide please. But another one, of course another one of those men, one of those just pure evil was Julius Streicher. He had been the brainchild, if you like, of all that propaganda. He was appointed by Hitler as Hitler’s Director of Propaganda.

Howard reckoned, he was, of all of the defendants, the most anti-Semitic and still verbally anti-Semitic and abusive, even the cells in Nuremberg. Next slide please. And he said this of Streicher, “We found Streicher polite but irrational, often fiery-tempered, but sometimes uncouth and abrasive in his tone. Everything he believed about Jews was based on emotion, not fact.” And he said, “He raved on to us about the destructive power of Jews in society, in government, and on the international stage.” And he said, “From what I witnessed of him, and we got to know him very well, he was more anti-Semitic and fanatical than Adolf Hitler.” Next slide please. But the most extraordinary thing turns out with Streicher and Howard. As I mentioned before, Howard is blonde haired, blue-eyed. He’s by now 23 years old in Nuremberg, just 23 years old, he’s 22 when he lands on the beaches of Normandy, in Nuremberg he’s 23 years old and Streicher thinks he’s a pure Aryan and he trusts Howard. He begins to trust him and starts literally to refer to him as, “My Aryan friend at Nuremberg.” And on the odd occasion when Kelley went in and he shouldn’t go in the cells on his own, but if he was in a minute or two before Howard, Streicher would say, “Where’s my Aryan friend?”

I mean, bizarre. And Streicher said to him, you know, “Germany’s defeat is not down to Hitler, but international Jewry.” He sat in front of Howard and said, “It’s international Jewry that’s brought down Germany,” completely irrational, but still trying to justify the defeat. And you can read more in my book about the interaction, the one of relationship, Streicher wants to tell Howard’s secrets 'cause he can only trust him. He believes that there are Jews, you know, operating even inside Nuremberg Prison. How ironic. And on the 16th of October, 1946, he does die on the gallows. He is hanged for his war crimes. And Howard said to me, “Streicher died on the gallows never knowing that his Aryan friend at Nuremberg was Jewish,” and he would’ve readily sent Howard to the death camps if he’d known. You know, shows the complete irrationality of that whole Nazi ideology and the whole idea of a pure Aryan race. Next slide please. We’ve mentioned Hans Frank before. He was dubbed the Beast of Poland. It was in Poland that the largest number of the Jewish communities, died over 3 million. It’s of course where Auschwitz was. Well, many of those death camps were. And he himself was the only defendant who came close to showing any remorse. In fact, he undergoes conversion inside the prison. It wouldn’t save him ultimately. Next slide please.

So Hans Frank, you know, said things like this, how I could remember as if it was just said yesterday. He just said, you know, to them, to him and to the psychiatrist, “We must not be squeamish when we hear the figure of 17,000 shot.” Completely talking with no emotion. And he said in the prison, “We fought against the Jewish people for years and we indulged in those horrible utterances as my own diary bears witness against me.” And then he says, “A thousand years will pass. And still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.” I mean, how insightful. In the end, he’s absolutely right that nothing could erase this guilt of what they’d carried out. So he is the only one who actually shows some kind of remorse. Next slide please. And Howard said, “Hans Frank was the only one who showed genuine remorse for his crimes, but it couldn’t change his fate.” I mean, Howard witnessed that himself. You know, still talking about this so many years after I interviewed Howard, it is so extraordinary that he witnessed this, that we now have his testimony. And Hans Frank always maintained he knew nothing of the destruction of the Jewish ghettos in Poland or of Auschwitz. I mean, utterly unbelievable. Next slide please. Howard said, went on to say, “The defendant stood united in disowning the killing machine and said they were only following orders.”

As if of course that could get them off. “They felt that the only reason they were on trial was not because they were war criminals, they believed it was because they’d lost the war, not because they’d committed terrible things.” And he went on to say, “They may appear larger than life as far as history is concerned, but they certainly did not offer a picture of superiority. They were ordinary men and some looked very pitiful.” I mean, Howard said to me that when he went into the cell, you know, when you initially go in, it is that kind of disconnect, the disbelief that you are actually going in to sit next to Goering or Streicher or one of the other defendants. And he said, “Some of them just look like your grandfather, you know, They looked like ordinary men, dejected, defeated.” But, of course, they had committed genocide on an unprecedented level. They’d murdered over 6 million Jews. Unbelievable atrocities. Next slide please. But he said it was that kind of weird disconnect and the verdicts, 22 of them had stood trial. I’m not going to read out all their verdicts, but just give you a minute or two to flick through their sentencing. Rudolph Hess, of course, was only found guilty on two counts because he left Germany in 1941 and faced life imprisonment, as did Walther Funk guilty on the counts 2, 3, and 4, he got life imprisonment. Next slide please. And the other Karl Doenitz who took over was captured in the enclave in Flensburg on the Danish border. He had 10 years imprisonment. So these, the first four, imprisonment, the others there, the other three there, death by hanging and three were found not guilty amongst them Franz von Papen who’d been the diplomat who’d visited Austria in the late 1930s. Next slide please.

So Nuremberg was, you know, one of those most extraordinary moments for Howard, a Holocaust survivor who’d lost his parents in Auschwitz. He said, “Nuremberg was a great consolation. It could not bring back any life that I had lost, but it was satisfaction to have these monsters in a prison cell in front of me.” Next slide please. But the importance of course of Nuremberg is that it does go on to become the blueprint for international justice and it’s international justice which we still see today where war criminals are prosecuted in the Hague. It was an incredible legacy. I’m just going to finish by reading an extract and I don’t normally, but I would like to read an extract from the biography of Howard Triest, in which I have written, “I find myself compelled by Howard’s story. Here was a man who got as close as one possibly could to the surviving leaders of the Nazi government on a daily basis, and yet bore no bitterness or desire for revenge. I wanted to hear his anger, feel his hatred, but it was surprisingly not there. There was no outpouring of trauma or hate. For him, it was as simple then as it was in Nuremberg Prison. Justice would have to be done if Germany was to be rebuilt. Really important justice would have to be done. He said if Germany was to be rebuilt. I find it hard to believe it’s that simple. I’m driven to find answers to deep questions and to understand what makes him tick.

Over the sheer number of hours of interviews with him, much of his life story was narrated to me in a logical, very detached way, often shot through with humour. In that time, I’d not seen the emotion, which I suspected laid very deep inside, and which I had witnessed in other Holocaust survivors. One question remained unanswered for me. Had he ever been able to grieve the loss of his parents or had he buried the emotion so deep to protect his sanity? I soon discover that Howard was certainly not detached from his experience. His initial response was to say that the question was a complicated one. Then, after a pause, he replied, deeply moving. 'Every time,’ he said, ‘I step inside a shower, which is on a daily basis, I think of the showers in Auschwitz’” It still gets me now the day he told me, “‘The showers that killed my parents.’ Here is a man who couldn’t undertake the simple daily task of a shower without being painfully reminded of the fate of his parents. It was a sobering reflection. And in that moment I felt that I’d intruded into his soul and denied him some of the self-dignity that he built up over 60 years. It was not long though, before his bright, lively inquiring mind turned the questions on me. ‘How old are you?’ he asked. And at that point I was 43, so I said, ‘43.’ ‘The same age as my mother when she died in Auschwitz,’ he said completely levelly.

And the connection between us was immediate and personal.” You know, those Holocaust survivors, those witness accounts, so important and, you know, whatever chance we have and if you have the stories in your families to get them down, to record them, we are losing the eyewitnesses to history. And we need to remember never more than today in these terrible times, we need to remember, we need to remember history is so important. And I wouldn’t normally say this at the end of a lecture, but there are a whole raft of us non-Jewish historians who are having discussions in the background about the importance of history and how we can support the Jewish communities and how we can stand up for Israel. And so be strong, we are with you. Thank you.