The Center for Human Rights and International Justice is pleased to share some exciting recent developments and a groundbreaking new chapter of collaboration with the Stanford University Libraries (SUL) as part of the Virtual Tribunals Initiative. SUL was recently authorized by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to manage long-term digital preservation and online hosting with significant scholarly functions for records of the war crimes trial conducted at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. These archives were entrusted to the ICJ by a decision of the Tribunal in 1946. Our Center will work in partnership with SUL to develop this collection to provide a unique multimedia research and educational resource for scholars, students, the public, and posterity. Vital and generous support from Tad Taube and the Taube Philanthropies to Stanford will provide funds for the hosting program and establish an endowment to ensure the archive is maintained and remains secure in the Stanford Digital Archive, where it will be known as the Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg.
The Taube IMT Archive program represents an extremely important expansion of the initial Virtual Tribunals effort, which has been designed to enable cutting edge cross-tribunal research in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The Taube IMT Archive collection will include digital surrogates of film, audio recordings, photographs, and the massive body of records, transcripts, evidence, minutes of meetings, and other documents—the first time the entire corpus of these vital records will be hosted together online. These materials will be ingested for long-term preservation into the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR), a secure, sustainable, scalable environment for digital content of enduring value. Working in partnership with the Libraries, Center faculty and staff will help design and implement scholarly and educational functionalities that will enable the fullest utilization of this remarkable resource through the Virtual Tribunals Digital Collection on Spotlight, SUL's digital exhibits platform.
“Without doubt, modern history is dominated by the second World War and by the horrors of the Holocaust. The International Military Tribunal conducted in Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946 reflects much of the Holocaust history ranking it among the most important of 20th century records,” said Tad Taube, Chairman of Taube Philanthropies. “Being given responsibility to make the IMT digital archive into a high functioning, public website is for Stanford an enormous honor and a great responsibility. As a survivor of the Holocaust, the opportunity to help Stanford finance this project is a great personal honor.”
