Grant Gives New Life To Nuremberg Trials Papers Housed At UConn

STORRS, CT — Documents from post-World War II Nuremberg Trials housed at the University of Connecticut are getting a new digital life, 2019 style.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities supporting the efforts was announced Thursday by UConn officials.

In 2012 when the UConn Library accelerated its effort to digitize its holdings as part of the Connecticut History Online program, one of the priorities was to preserve the 50,000 pages of documents that make up the Nuremberg Trial Papers. The documents were accumulated and meticulously saved by Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, the former special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General from Connecticut who supervised the prosecution team during the International Military Tribunals, which prosecuted the leadership of Nazi Germany for war crimes.

The Nuremberg Trial Papers are held in theUConn Library’s Archives and Special Collections section located in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and used by human rights scholars from around the world to study human rights and international law issues.

The Dodd Papers now will be a core resource for an international team of researchers led by UConn game designer Ken Thompson that is developing an "immersive learning experience using virtual reality and game design to bring to life archival materials from the Nuremberg Trials.

The Courtroom 600 Project – named for the courtroom in the Justizpalast in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials took place – will "draw learners into ongoing thought and empathetic discussion about human rights both past and present," UConn officials said.

Credit: Thomas J. Dodd Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, UConn Library

The goal is to "engage learners in historical thinking processes as they explore international justice and Holocaust histories through the lens of the major war criminals trials that took place in Nuremberg" in 1945 to 1946, UConn officials said.

According to UConn officials, Recent studies have found there is a significant decline in Holocaust awareness in the United States, with one study citing that 1 out of 5 millennials haven’t heard of or are not sure if they have heard of the Holocaust.

The project is funded by a $25,000 Digital Projects for the Public award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Project collaborators include specialists from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse (Nuremberg Trials Memorial) in Germany.

For more information about the Courtroom 600 Project go to UConn Today. The read more about the Dodd Papers, click here.

Photo Credit: UConn

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