. NMT04-T0383
Volume IV · Page 383
| the need for establishing international law
on a practical and enforcible footing has never been clearer than it is today.
But the defendants are not charged here with the crime of disagreeing with us on questions of international law, and what they did was not only a crime against humanity under international penal law; it was a heinous crime under all civilized legal systems. It is for this Tribunal, not for the prosecution, to determine what punishment the deep guilt of these defendants merits. But it is within the legitimate prerogatives of the prosecution to state the nature of the crime. The crime involved in this case is murder — deliberate, premeditated murder; murder on a gigantic scale; murder committed for the worst of all possible motives. Some of these defendants still believe that what they did was not murder because the victims were Jews. No system of domestic or international penal law could possibly survive under which the determination of guilt for murder is governed by the political or religious creed or racial origin of the victim. It is vitally important to the peace of the world that no such doctrine gain currency among nations. We earnestly suggest to the court that true judicial wisdom in this case counsels firmness rather than leniency to those adjudged guilty of this terrible crime against humanity. |
872486 — 50 — 27
