Women at Nuremberg: Press

(Part 3 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

"Approximately 250 journalists crowded the press section of Courtroom 600 -- on some days such as on opening day, November 20, 1945, or the verdict announcement on August 31, 1946, every last seat was occupied," Peter Heigl writes, in his book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials, of media coverage of the 1st proceeding, known as the Trial of the Major War Criminals. Reporters hailed from a score of countries, including 80 Americans, 40 Français, 35 Soviets, 20 Poles, 12 Czechs, and 5 Germans. They were joined by broadcasters, photojournalists, and authors, all of whom came to see what was happening at Nuremberg.
This media throng included a number of women, some of whom are profiled in Nancy Caldwell Sorel's The Women Who Wrote the War. Women journalists at Nuremberg included:

Tania Long
During World War II the New York Herald Tribune's assignment of Long to its London office drew this objection from New York Times reporter F. Raymond Daniell, who'd cover the Scottsboro case, among others, before the war: "You don't want a girl. This is a man's job." Long, who'd been born in Berlin and educated in London and Paris, no doubt proved her mettle: within years the couple were married. For decades thereafter they were a dynamic journalistic duo; they're pictured above covering a press conference at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. While posted in Ottawa in 1954, the couple delivered remarks to the Empire Club of Canada. Long's account of her own experiences and observations on the world's growing interdependence began with this subtle prod to her hosts:

I am greatly honoured to be here today. Indeed I am very flattered to be here, since I understand that it is rare that meetings of this group are open to the ladies.

Daniel seconded the sentiment in his own remarks.

Martha Gellhorn

The journalism career of Martha Gellhorn (right) began with a gig covering haute couture in Paris in the Thirties, but the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the middle of that decade, and, it is said, the urging of her then-husband, Ernest Hemingway, turned her into a war correspondent. Gellhorn reported on the beach at D-Day, at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and at the Nuremberg trials. She covered the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama at age 81. When she died 8 years later, an admirer recalled Gellhorn's comment on her own work:

'I wrote fiction because I love to, and journalism from curiosity which has, I think, no limits and ends only with death.'

Rebecca West

Englishwoman Cicily Isabel Fairfield (left) took "Rebecca West," the name of an Ibsen character whom she once played, to write novels and nonfiction, including 2 books inspired by the post-World War II trials, The Meaning of Treason (1947) and A Train of Powder (1955).

Victoria Ocampo

Victoria Ocampo (right) was an Argentine intellectual and ally of Gabriela Mistral, namesake of an IntLawGrrl. Ocampo's "admirable" dispatches, spiced with accounts of participants' "'tics,'" are part of Testimonios. Series primera y quinta, published in Buenos Aires in 2000.

Erika Mann

The oldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Mann, Erika Mann (right) is described as a "[w]riter, actress, and intellectual refugee from the Third Reich," and "one of the twentieth century's most intriguing nonconformists." This outspoken critic of Nazism

was one of the few women journalists covering the Nuremberg trials who attained access to the defendants. Mann's experience with cabaret irony attuned her senses to the macabre spectacle of unrepentant Nazis treating their trials as a performance. She later commented, 'no spookier adventure could be imagined.'

Janet Flanner

Paris-based Janet Flanner -- she is pictured at left with Hemingway -- wrote about World War II and its aftermath for the New Yorker. The Indiana-born expat had been a feminist activist and part of the Algonquin Round Table before the war. Her coverage of the postwar trial included this food for thought:

When you look at the startling ruins of Nuremberg, you are looking at a result of the war. When you look at the prisoners on view in the courthouse, you are looking at 22 of the causes.

Still to come in this Women at Nuremberg series: Witnesses, Defendants. Already posted: Prosecutors, Staffers.

Women at Nuremberg: Staffers

(Part 2 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

Images of the many women who played administrative roles during the Trial of the Major War Criminals and subsequent proceedings jump out at readers of Peter Heigl's book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials (2001). Women helped direct renovation of the courtroom. They translated documents, transcribed testimony, kept papers in order, and took dictation during witness interviews. Today we'll mention just 2 of those women.

A major-domo, if you will, seems to have been Captain Virginia Gill, Administrative Officer in the Office of Chief Counsel for war crimes. (Heigl also identifies her as the Executive to the Prosecution, in a photo of her greeting 4 visiting U.S. Senators.) Gill, her hand at her cheek, is depicted above during an April 1947 courtroom session. To her left are Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, a leading prosecutor and later author of a superb memoir of the trials; Gen. Lucius D. Clay; and another prosecutor, Joseph W. Kaufman, deputy Chief of Counsel. To Gill's right, a hatted woman identified only as "Mrs. Clay" and Brig. Gen. Leroy Watson.

Another remarkable staffer at Nuremberg was Edith Simon Coliver (left, in 1940). After receiving a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, she signed on with the U.S. Office of War Information, and helped as a translator at the San Francisco Conference that concluded with adoption of the U.N. Charter. Soon after she returned to her birthplace, Germany, to work at Nuremberg. As 1 article put it:

As a 23-year-old, Coliver translated the pretrial testimony of high-ranking Nazi officer Hermann Goering for American interrogators.
'He was not particularly thrilled to see a woman, a Jewish woman, as his interpreter,' she told the Bulletin in 1995.
Coliver surprised herself by later asking Goering to sign a program. 'Then, I was ashamed of myself,' she told the Bulletin. 'Why would I be getting an autograph from Nuremberg?' So she asked her boss to sign as well. He did, next to Goering's signature, and wrote 'To Edith Simon, who helped hang the same.'

(The incident no doubt took place during the trial. Goering indeed received the death penalty, but cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell.)

In her later years Coliver was an executive at the Asia Foundation, serving in the Philippines and Taiwan. The Bay Area-based "'woman of the world,'" who spoke not only German and English, but also French, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, and Mandarin, died in 2002 at age 79. Among her survivors is her daughter and our colleague, Sandra Coliver, Senior Legal Officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. (photo at right courtesy of Telford Taylor Papers, Columbia University Law School; at left, Berkeley's International House).

Coming next week in this Women at Nuremberg series: Press, Witnesses, Defendants.

Women at Nuremberg: Prosecutors

As promised, the 1st in a series about women at the Nuremberg trials:
Readers may recall that for months we at IntLawGrrls have stayed on the trail of women who served on the team that prosecuted defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The quest was launched by Diane Orentlicher, who's assumed the IntLawGrrl nom de plume of "Beatrice" in recognition of a conversation that our colleague Patricia Viseur-Sellers had with IMT prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz; he said

that, along with another woman whose name he could not recall, 'Beatrice' was part of the Nuremberg Prosecution team.

Later, another source relayed a story that 1 of the women at Nuremberg was married to a male prosecutor, a fact the couple tried to keep quiet.
Sleuthing's led us to believe that Ferencz might've had in mind Cecelia H. Goetz, a New Yorker who appeared before the bench during the "industrialists" trial of Alfred Krupp. Other names of women prosecutors at Nuremberg also have surfaced: Phillis Heller Rosenthal, Belle Mayer Zeck, and Mary Kaufman.
Questions remain:
Were those 4 all the women who prosecuted at Nuremberg? These are Americans -- did women work with the Russian, English, or French teams? And what of "Beatrice"?
According to a slim but excellent volume I picked up this summer at Nuremberg, the answer to the 1st question quite clearly is "no."
In his German-English book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials (2001), Peter Heigl writes:

[I]t is interesting to point out that staffs were comprised about equally of both genders, with the exception of the all-male judges and the prosecutors and defense lawyers; at the follow-up trials there were three female prosecutors and a few female defendants. (pp. 52-53)

The only 1 of those "3" prosecutors whom Heigl gives a name is altogether new: Dorothea G. Minskoff, pictured above next to a defense attorney at a Ministries case hearing. No other names're mentioned, nor any more information given.
A 1948 directory of IMT personnel, however, provides additional clues. Goetz is listed, as is to be expected, and Mary Kaufman, too. But the only Mayer was named Hilde, and neither Heller nor Rosenthal is there. An interesting find: the listing for Dorothea G. Minskoff reveals her at the same address as Emanuel Minskoff, a prosecutor in the I.G. Farben case. Is this the couple mentioned in the story above?
Even more intriguing, 2 women named Beatrice served at IMT in 1948, Beatrice E. Benford and Beatrice O. Bushnell. Might 1 be our "Beatrice"?

Still to come in this Women at Nuremberg series: Staffers, Press, Witnesses, and, alas, those Defendants.