Making History in the CourtroomFrom the Soviet Show Trials to the Khmer Rouge Trials

Making History in the CourtroomFrom the Soviet Show Trials to the Khmer Rouge Trials

International Conference,The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law,

New York, September 16 § 17, 2010

Organization : Christian Delage & Peter Goodrichwith the cooperation of Michelle Feldman, Ariane Mathieu and Esther

Nguonly

This Conference is sponsored by the Cardozo School of Law (New York)

with the participation of the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (CNRS, Paris)

Presentation

Christian Delage, Peter Goodrich

In 1945, the International Military Tribunal opened the case against 22 Nazi officers and leaders accused of conspiracy and war crimes. At that time, the victims of these crimes were not welcomed as witnesses and were generally not given an opportunity to offer testimony in either oral or written form. Their experiences were too recent and vivid to form part of the legal record, and at the same time it must be noted that historians had not yet begun to write the history of the Third Reich and of the genocide of the Jews.

Eventually, however, the evidence collected by the prosecution became an essential archive and the focus of considerable historical research. The trial was to become a pivotal moment in the process of remembering and then the writing of the history of the war. Even more significant, the legacy of the Nuremberg trials has been that of rendering a new standard of justice in the aftermath of war crimes, genocide, and other atrocities. International courts have multiplied war crime trials, as well as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, have had a large impact on international awareness of and commitment to bringing perpetrators to account in South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, the Rwanda, and Cambodia.

PresentationChristian Delage, Peter Goodrich

The most recent war crimes trials are those that have been under way in Cambodia since February, 2009. The Khmer Rouge Trials are a novelty in that these proceedings are taking place after the history of the genocidal regime has been written, the archives collected, the witnesses interviewed, the dead buried and even forgotten by the current generation. The question to be posed in this new context is what is the significance of these trials on Cambodian society? What are the effect of a rather precarious yet highly visible judicial process thirty years after the crimes have been committed?

The conference will address the interaction of memory, history, trials and tribunals. The focus of the papers, given by leading international lawyers and historians, will be that of the role trials play in the development of public opinion, the cultivation of longer term social memory and the impact upon the writing of history. There will be a special focus on the symbolic value and international visibility of these trials, manifested most obviously in the filming of the procedings as well as in the use of video and film as evidence.

Thursday, September 16, 2010Morning Sessions

9:00am/9:15amIntroduction• Christian DELAGE, Peter GOODRICH (Cardozo Law School).

9:15am/10:45amShow Trials and the Denial of Justice

• Nicolas WERTH (History, IHTP-CNRS, Paris): The Making of the Raion Show Trials in the USSR, 1937-1938.• Anne KERLAN (History, IHTP-CNRS, Paris):China and The Trial of the “Gang of the Four”, 1980.

Moderation: Eli ZARETSKY (History, New School for SocialResearch, New York)

10:45am/11:00am: Pause

Thursday, September 16, 2010Morning Sessions

11:00am/12:30pmDefendants without Defense, and Under the

Gaze of the Camera.

• Johann CHAPOUTOT (History, University of Grenoble): The “People’s Court” in Nazi Germany.• Stuart LIEBMAN (Film Studies, CUNY Graduate Center):The Filmed Trial of Majdanek’s Extermination Camp:

Kazimierz Czynski’s Swastyka i Szubienica (1945).

Moderation: Michel ROSENFELD (Cardozo Law School)

12:30pm/1.30pm: Lunch

Thursday, September 16, 2010Afternoon Sessions

1:45pm/3:45pmThe Crimes of the Khmer Rouge: Images of the Prison S-21 as Evidence.

• Michael MASCUCH (Rhetoric, University of Berkeley): Toward a History of Photography and the Cambodian

Genocide.• Brice POIRIER (Law, University of Rennes):The Vietnamese Army Entering and Filming the S-21 Prison in

1979.• Ariane MATHIEU (History, Montreal, University of Concordia):S-21 as a Museum of Images.

Moderation: Esther NGUONLY (Cardozo School of Law)

3:45pm/4:00pm: Pause

Thursday, September 16, 2010Afternoon Sessions

4:00pm/5:30pmRecapturing Memory and Justice through Film.

• Christian DELAGE (History, University of Paris 8 § Cardozo):

The Film Footage of the Nuremberg Trials and the Production of

Nuremberg, The Nazis Facing their Crimes.• Rémy BESSON (History, EHESS, Paris):Claude Lanzmann and the Writing of Shoah.

Moderation: Vincent GUIGUENO (History, École des Ponts, Paris)

Friday, September 17, 2010Morning Sessions

9:30am/11:00am• The Courtroom as a Place of Reconciliation?

• Pieter LAGROU (History, Université Libre de Bruxelles):War Crimes Trials: Getting the Past Right -- or the Future? New Foundations for the Law, 1945-1950.• Henry ROUSSO (History, IHTP-CNRS, Paris):Historical Narratives in Competition: the Case of the Papon

Trial.• Richard J. GOLSAN (History, TAMU, College Station):Touvier, Papon, and the Corruptions of Memory.

Moderation: Alice KAPLAN (French, Yale University)

11:00am/11:15am: Pause

Friday, September 17, 2010Morning Sessions

11:30am/1:00pmInternational or local Justice?

• William A. SCHABAS (Law, Galway):Building the Official Narrative: The UN Tribunals for the

FormerYugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.• Hélène DUMAS (History, EHESS, Paris):Rwanda and Local Justice: the Gacaca.

Moderation: Christian BIET (Theater, Nanterre & NYU)

1:00pm/2:15pm: Lunch

Friday, September 17, 2010Afternoon Sessions

2:30pm/4:30pmPleading Guilty: The Case of Duch in the Khmer

Rouge Trials.

• Robert PETIT (Former Prosecutor at the ExtraordinaryChambers in the Court of Cambodia, ECCC)Trying Duch.• Françoise SIRONI (Clinician Psychologist, expert at the ECCC):Evaluating Duch.• François ROUX (Lawyer, Amsterdam, Defense Lawyer of Duch at the ECCC):Defending Duch.

Moderation: Peter MAGUIRE (Law, Bard University)

4:30pm/5:00pmConclusion of the Conference

• Christian DELAGE, Peter GOODRICH (Cardozo Law School).

Special Screenings

Anthology Film Archives,September 17-19, 2010

In parallel to the symposium, a series of three special screenings are scheduled at the

1. Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985)2. Rithy Panh’s S-21 The Khmer Rouge Killing

Machine (2003)3. Christian Delage’s Nuremberg. The Nazis Facing

their Crimes (2006)

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