On this day in ...... 1935 (75 years ago today), at Nuremberg, Germany, Hermann Göring, President of Germany's Reichstag, proclaimed the Nuremberg Laws; specifically, the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together they operated to strip German Jews of citizenship and to ban intermarriage and sexual relations between persons with Jewish heritage and other Germans. (image credit) After World War II, many German officials, physicians, and business people stood trial at Nuremberg for crimes committed in furtherance of those laws. The original statutes were not placed in evidence, however. As detailed last month in this obituary, the original was found in a German vault, by Martin Dannenberg, an American intelligence officer, who forwarded them to command for use at the trials. But his efforts were thwarted when the original was kept by U.S. Army General George S. Patton, of whom Dannenberg said: "'that scoundrel.'" Just 3 weeks ago, the original was donated to the National Archives of the United States.
(Prior September 15 posts are here, here, and here.)
