Nuremberg
The word Nuremberg is
very familiar to most human rights activists. It marked a new era of
international human rights. For those who are not so familiar with
this here is the reason. After the second world war ended, the
victors, USA, UK, Russia and France set up a tribunal to try those
who were accused of cooperating with Hitler for the genocide of the
innocent people. This trial was held in Nuremberg. It marked a new
beginning in the field of human rights where the guilty would be
tried and punished no matter how strong they once were.
Now we were in this
historic city. It was destroyed in the both the World wars and was
rebuild to its glory. There is much more to the history of Nuremberg
than just the wars and destruction. Our place of visit was the
documentation centre of the Nazi Germany. It was in a magnificent red
building with some spectacular modifications that gave ultra modern
features.
The place was a visual
narrative of the history of the evolution of Hitler as a force to be
reckoned with. It was to represent the chosen trauma of the Germans
in a very high tech manner. High definition photos, audio visual
presentations with accompanied audio guides that were easy to use
were just some features. The narratives created strong impressions of
what had transpired in about 30 years from 1925 – 45. It stood as a
testimony to the national frenzy that he created to feel proud of a
nation that painted a completely new image to the world as the most
dominant super power that could not be stopped.
The grandiose plans to
build stadia to accommodate over 4,00,000 people, the parade grounds,
war game arenas, parliament buildings and so on were all beautifully
planned and were in the process of being executed. All this banked on
the labour of those in the concentration camps. The quarries of
Flossenberg etc that would supply all the building materials. This
was called nation building! A process that systematically excluded a
minority for the welfare of the majority.
The entire exhibition
produced two reactions. Firstly, horror, secondly an inspiration to
see the possibility of how a nation can be influenced by some simple
emotional prodding. I guess the BJP/RSS combine try it repeatedly in
India as it is the case of all the nationalist mobilizations around
the world.
The exhibits end with the
Nuremberg Trials. This also marked the beginning of a new phase of
development of Human Rights.
Our next stop was the
Human Rights Road located just opposite the Nuremberg Museum. The
story goes that the place was acquired by the Municipal Council of
Nuremberg, proposals were invited to decide to utilize the space. A
novel idea of a human rights way was assigned to famous Israeli
artist. He put up thirty pillars with 30 Article from the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The articles were written in german
accompanied by another language. Many languages found their place in
on the pillar and obviously many did not. So after the 20th
pillar he planted an oak tree to represent all the other languages of
the world. It was surprising to find Tibetan and Singalese among the
thirty but Hindi and Telugu or Tamil were obviously missing. I guess
that is was part of the tree.
In the free time that
followed, a visit to the Church of St Lawrence, a magnificent piece
of work that took 200 years to complete stood right in the heart of
the Market place. Located closely was another church of Our Lady,
that was built during the reformation and then was given to the
catholics two hundred years ago. It was interesting to find that the
images on both the churches were so similar in form but only
different in size.
Nuremberg thus left a
lasting impression to learn about what had happened in the history of
Human Rights not so long ago.
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