WYOMING — Today, Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Jan. 27, 1945, was the day that Soviet Troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.
This year, the 2023 theme for Holocaust remembrance and education is “home and belonging,” according to the United Nations (UN).
According to the UN, “the theme highlights the humanity of the Holocaust victims and survivors, who had their home and sense of belonging ripped from them by the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The violence of exclusion began with disinformation and hate speech that lent support to systemic injustice, discrimination and marginalization and ended with genocidal killing. The theme reminds us of our responsibility to respond with humanity to the victims of atrocity crimes, to counter hate speech, antisemitism, Holocaust distortion and denial, and prejudice – to do all we can to prevent genocide.”
The University of Wyoming American Heritage Center also has two World War II-era collections by lawyer Murray C. Bernays and journalist Grace Robinson.
Bernays was an American lawyer who served in the U.S. Army during both World Wars. In 1945 he became a colonel with the U.S. Army General Staff Corps. According to the UW American Heritage Center, it was in this role that Bernays helped to develop the legal procedures and framework for the international military tribunal that conducted the Nuremberg War Crime Trials.
Grace Robinson was a reporter for the New York Daily and was in the courtroom in Nuremberg. Robinson was present in court on June 20, 1946, to witness the prosecution of some infamous Nazi leaders, including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer and Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
“In Bernays’ collection, you will find information on the structure of the trials and files pertaining to witnesses and evidence compiled by the prosecutors in advance of the trials. The Robinson papers include a collection of newspaper clippings covering the Nuremberg Trials from various newspapers dated 1945 to 1946,” according to the UW American Heritage Center.
The Bernays papers are available here and the Robinson papers can be accessed here. A portion of the Robinson papers is also digitized and available online in Luna.
