On a hot August day, a young woman hurries down narrow corridors. She slips on the smooth floor and is caught 'in the strength of a man's arms.' He steadies her and sends her on her way, calling 'be careful, my child' after her. This seems like a normal, kind gesture. Yet, the woman is Russian translator Tatiana Stupnikova, the corridors lead to Court 600 in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, and the man is Hermann Goring, one of the Nazi leaders and a close confidant of Hitler. Goring was among the 24 defendants at the Nuremberg trials in 1945.
The Women Behind the Trial
In her compelling book, Natalie Livingstone provides a history of the trial that defined the 20th century and all future international criminal proceedings, through the experiences of eight women integral to its success. Livingstone pieces together the stories of female journalists, authors, lawyers, translators, painters, and witnesses from England, France, Russia, Germany, and America who helped bring the Nazis to justice.
Key Figures
Along with Stupnikova, who balanced survival in Soviet Russia with her principles, Erika Mann and Harriet Zetterberg stand out. Erika, daughter of author Thomas Mann and a writer herself, believed in punishing and rehabilitating the German people. She fled Germany in 1935 after performing a political cabaret denouncing fascism and married gay English poet W.H. Auden before the Nazis stripped her of her citizenship. She documented the trial religiously, forcing readers to confront the horrors of the past decade.
Zetterberg, a lawyer for the American prosecution, assembled the case against Hans Frank, the 'butcher of Poland.' She sifted through letters and diary entries to build an ironclad prosecution.
The Heart of the Book
The beating heart of this book is Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a witness for the French prosecution. Her clear and harrowing account of life as a political prisoner in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck silenced Holocaust deniers. Her descriptions of living conditions, brutality, and gas chambers were fundamental to the prosecution's case of 'crimes against humanity,' a charge first used at Nuremberg. Vaillant-Couturier concluded her testimony with a wish: 'that some of us would escape alive, in order to tell the world what the Nazi convict prisons were like everywhere.'
Complex Characters
Livingstone presents every deeply researched detail with a light touch, fitting each piece of these women's lives into the trial's framework. She doesn't shy away from their complexity—they are flawed, vain, and selfish. Laura Knight, the British artist commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, painted the trial and enjoyed the VIP treatment. German journalist Ursula von Kardorff often had her copy censored for its sympathetic stance toward defendants. Ingeborg Kalnoky, the glamorous aristocrat who hosted witnesses, gave admiring descriptions of Nazi guests in her memoir while barely mentioning the Jews she housed.
A Necessary Reminder
This book is a necessary reminder of the Nazis' horrors and a reclamation of the integral roles women played in bringing them to justice.
