| Summary/Abstract |
Scholars are divided over the role of transitional justice trials. Hannah Arendt has argued that any attempt to add a didactic role to the court process risks politicization. In contrast, Judith Shklar has argued that it is a legal fable to argue that politics can be kept from the courtroom. This article reevaluates the legacy and collective memory of the Nuremberg, Frankfurt Auschwitz, and Majdanek trials in West Germany as a tool of public education. While these trials certainly affected the external legal culture, through radio, television, theater plays, films, and other forms of popular culture, the lessons Germans learned were not always the ones that prosecutors had hoped for.
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