{"id":985,"date":"2015-12-16T05:15:05","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T10:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/?p=985"},"modified":"2015-12-08T08:34:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T13:34:11","slug":"thomas-dodd-and-the-shrunken-head-of-buchenwald-70-years-after-nuremberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/2015\/12\/16\/thomas-dodd-and-the-shrunken-head-of-buchenwald-70-years-after-nuremberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Dodd and the Shrunken Head of Buchenwald [70 Years After Nuremberg]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of guest blogger Lawrence Douglas.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Nuremberg Palace<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the most astonishing and iconic photographs from the Nuremberg trial shows Thomas Dodd gazing at a shrunken head, which he holds before him, like Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick.\u00a0 Earlier, Dodd had all but apologized for submitting the unusual piece of evidence to the court: \u201cWe do not wish to dwell on th[e] pathological phase of the Nazi culture; but we do feel compelled to offer one additional exhibit, which we offer as Exhibit Number USA-254.\u201d\u00a0 Displayed on a table in the center of the crowded Nuremberg courtroom was, as Dodd explained, the head of a former Polish inmate at Buchenwald, “with the skull bone removed, shrunken, stuffed, and preserved.”<\/p>\n

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Thomas Dodd with shrunken head exhibit<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibit scandalized the tribunal and observers alike.\u00a0 \u201cAt the time when Buchenwald was overrun,\u201d the correspondent for The Times<\/em> (of London) wrote, \u201cmany persons refused to believe the accounts….But here in court was the proof — the preserved head of a hanged Pole, which, by removing the skull bones, had been reduced to the size of a fist…”<\/p>\n

Admittedly, Dodd\u2019s shrunken head was of minor evidentiary value, as it did little to clarify the guilt of the twenty-one major Nazi war criminals who sat in the Nuremberg dock.\u00a0 Indeed, one could argue that the sensational and morbid artifact served no legal purpose\u2014beside shocking the court.\u00a0 But I think it would be wrong to see the shrunken head of Buchenwald as simply a freak display, a circus sideshow in what otherwise was a grave legal drama.\u00a0 To the contrary, I would argue that the head served not to distract but to symbolize\u2014it represented and displayed Nuremberg\u2019s core understanding of Nazi atrocity.<\/p>\n

In the iconic photo, Dodd gazes at the shrunken head contemplatively.\u00a0 He beholds it not as a curio but as an enigma and a question.\u00a0 In his opening address before the tribunal, Fran\u00e7ois de Menthon, the chief French prosecutor, wondered, \u201cHow can we explain how Germany, fertilized through the centuries of classic antiquity and Christianity, by the ideals of liberty, equality, and social justice, by the common heritage of western humanism to which she had brought such noble and precious contributions, could have come to this astonishing return to primitive barbarism?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dodd\u2019s gaze asks the same question: How could the land of Bach, Beethoven and Goethe revert to head-shrinking<\/em>? Historians in the years following Nuremberg would hazard scores of answers to the question, locating pathological strains in Germany\u2019s violent history, arguing that Germany was somehow exceptional, its embrace of modernity incomplete, twisted and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

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Thomas Dodd’s opening statement for the Case on Concentration Camps<\/p><\/div>\n

Nuremberg, by contrast, never entirely answered the question raised by Dodd\u2019s gaze and Menthon\u2019s address. For his part, the French prosecutor described Nazism as an uncontrolled outpouring of \u201call the instincts of barbarism, repressed by centuries of civilization, but always present in men’s innermost nature, all the negations of the traditional values of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In presenting Nazi atrocity as atavistic, the Nuremberg prosecution hazarded a view of civilization fundamentally at odd with Enlightenment sensibilities and the Whig theory of history that issued from it. After Nuremberg, head-shrinking could no longer be seen as an irrevocably ancient and foreign practice; rather, it lurked just beneath the thin veneer of civilization. This was the radical suggestion materialized in the form of the shrunken head that fit neatly in Dodd\u2019s open palm.\u00a0 Or as Menthon insisted, Nazism showed the world \u201cthat the work of twenty centuries of civilization, which believed itself eternal,\u201d could, at the slightest provocation, be \u201cdestroyed by the return of ancient barbarism in a new guise.\u201d<\/p>\n

—Lawrence Douglas,\u00a0James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought at Amherst College. His newest book, The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial<\/strong>, will be published by Princeton in January 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The majority of the letters from Tom Dodd to his wife Grace have been published and can be found in Letters from Nuremberg, My father\u2019s narrative of a quest for justice<\/em>. Senator Christopher J. Dodd with Lary Bloom. New York: Crown Publishing, 2007.<\/p>\n

Images available in Thomas J. Dodd Papers<\/span><\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of guest blogger Lawrence Douglas. One of the most astonishing and iconic photographs from the Nuremberg trial shows Thomas Dodd gazing at a shrunken head, which he holds before him, like Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick.\u00a0 Earlier, Dodd … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[33,31,20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NL7Z-fT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}