FORMER NUREMBERG TRIAL COUNSEL TO SPEAK AT SOUTHEAST APRIL 12

Whitney Harris, who served as trial counsel at the trial of the major German war criminals at Nuremberg, will speak Wednesday at Southeast Missouri State University.

The presentation is part of the university's commemoration of Holocaust Awareness Week.

Harris' keynote Common Hour presentation is scheduled to begin at noon in Glenn Auditorium.

A panel discussion featuring Holocaust survivors Marylou Ruhe, Anna Gruber and Rudolf Oppenheim, and Col. Henry Gerecke, whose father was an American Lutheran pastor at the Nuremberg Trials, is scheduled for 3-5 p.m. Wednesday in Glenn Auditorium.

Born in Poland, Ruhe survived the Auschwitz death camp. She is a docent at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center.

Gruber, who helped two sisters and a cousin escape from Nazi-controlled Poland, also is a docent at the museum.

Oppenheim and his family fled Nazi Germany in 1939. A retired chemist, Oppenheim also is a docent at the Holocaust Museum.

Gerecke lives in Cape Girardeau, where he retired after serving as the city's police chief.

Harris was awarded the Legion of Merit, the highest decoration received by any trial counsel, for his services with the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

In 1954, Harris published a book on the tribunal, "Tyranny on Trial, the Evidence at Nuremberg." A second edition was published in 1995 and a third edition in 1999.

The third edition covers war crimes trials after Nuremberg, especially trials of alleged German war criminals in national courts.

It also deals with the statute for a permanent International Crime Court adopted at Rome in 1998 subject to ratification by the signatory nations.

"Nuremberg and Rome stand against the resignation of humankind to its self-debasement and self-destruction," he said.

After his work at Nuremberg, Harris served as chief of legal advice on the staff of Gen. Lucius Clay in Berlin through the perilous period of the Berlin blockade.