Much of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of the law; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. This book has three parts. The first part presents the history of the Holocaust as a legal event. It also describes how genocide has ... More

Much of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of the law; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. This book has three parts. The first part presents the history of the Holocaust as a legal event. It also describes how genocide has become known as the “crime of crimes.” The second part discusses post-Holocaust legal topics, namely, the criminal prosecution of Nazi war criminals, including the Eichmann trial in Israel and prosecutions in Germany and the United States; Holocaust restitution civil litigation in the United States and the use of this litigation as a model for recognition of financial crimes committed during other mass atrocities; laws in Europe criminalizing Holocaust denial and efforts to criminalize denial of other genocides; and the impact of Nazi crimes on post-Holocaust jurisprudence. The third part examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice, specifically, the resurrection of the Nuremberg process as a model for international criminal prosecutions and how genocide is prosecuted today. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, which this book labels “Post-Holocaust Law.”