The Holocaust’s Impact on International Law

The Holocaust had a great impact on the international community and how the law and its punishments are carried out. Terms such as ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ were not used or cited until the Nuremberg Trials that followed World War II. The fact that these terms did not exist in the legal arena while the crimes were being committed made trial and conviction difficult. Many major war criminals, such as high ranking officers in the Nazi regime and Nazi judges under the Third Reich, had their sentences commuted or dropped only a few years into their life sentences. The International War Tribunal (the court established to conduct the trials in Nuremberg) had is legitimacy questioned throughout the trials given that it was established by the allies, was predominantly carried out by the United States, yet tried German criminals in Germany. My work was focused on collecting resources and artifacts that encompass these issues and highlight how international law was impacted by the crimes and atrocities of the Holocaust.