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Volume V · Page 4
| effect. Three distinct types of "genocide" are listed in this draft. According to this draft, every country is to have the right to arrest individuals who violate this international convention and to try them before its own courts even if the crime has been committed in another state. The first category includes not only open mass murder but also the housing of people under conditions which would make death probable for reasons of health as a result of starvation or other inhuman treatment. The second category describes sterilization of large groups and forcible separation of families as "biological genocide". Deliberate destruction of the intellectual and cultural life of a nation is "cultural genocide" |
| EXTRACT FROM THE OPENING
STATEMENT FOR DEFENDANT BRUECKNER.¹ |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| All of Brueckner's actions, which have been
charged with being crimes against humanity must, therefore, be examined with a
view to whether they violate rules of the international law generally
acknowledged. In addition, it is necessary to ascertain whether my client
knew of them, and whether he in defiance of these rules, without reason,
arbitrarily and maliciously violated the individual rights of persons or
participated in such deeds by abetting them. This problem which has only been briefly touched upon in this connection does not become clearer in its outlines, much less is it solved by the prosecution's introducing the conception "genocide" in regard to the crimes against humanity with which Brueckner is charged. A comparison between the verbal charge of the prosecution with the analysis of "genocide" published by Raphael Lemkin in 1944² — "A new expression and a new conception for the extermination of nations," shows that both agree in their ideas and in their motives, even in the quotations. The charge has, however, even been extended since Lemkin does not mention the resettlement or repatriation of groups of ethnic Germans residing outside the borders of the Reich as being "genocide." This would also make his train of thought entirely inconsistent as the very aim of his work is the rescue of ethnic groups. Quite apart from this, the statements of Lemkin show unequivocally and doubtlessly that the conception "genocide" is no generally acknowledged conception in international law. As early as October 1933 it was rejected in its initial form presented by |
¹ Complete opening statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 20 November 1947, pp. 1308-1326.
² "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe," by Raphael Lemkin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington 1944.
