Thread by @FranHirsch

On May 18, 1946 the International Association of Penal Law held its first postwar session at the Palace of Justice in #Nuremberg. French judge Henri Donnedieu de Vabres had organized the gathering--and had personally invited his fellow Nuremberg judges and prosecutors to attend.

The Nuremberg judges and prosecutors were joined by other international law experts, like Romanian jurist Vespasian Pella, who had come to Nuremberg expressly for the occasion. The attendees discussed the postwar peace and the creation of a new organization of criminologists.

The postwar world, de Vabres maintained, needed a “global collaboration of criminologists” that could work toward the development of an international criminal code. The new system of simultaneous translation that was being utilized in Nuremberg, he added, had made this possible.

Soviet judge Iona Nikitchenko was uncertain how to position himself at this meeting. He understood that Moscow would want him to be diplomatic without committing the Soviet government to anything specific.

Image: RGAKFD No 0-359140

Asked to speak, Nikitchenko expressed confidence that “every supporter of human progress” would welcome the creation of an association dedicated to “the strengthening of world peace.” He then suggested that the organizers draft a statute to communicate the association's goals.

Nikitchenko’s comments were received enthusiastically. It was a moment of unanimity and good will—perhaps especially appreciated by the Soviets, who had become increasingly isolated at this point in the Nuremberg Trials.

This meeting in Nuremberg marked the birth of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL)--an incredibly interesting organization whose full history has yet to be told.

The IADL held its first Congress in Paris in October 1946. In 1947 the United Nations recognized the IADL as a consultative agency of its Economic and Social Council.

By the time of the third IADL Congress--held in Rome in 1949--the organization had a communist majority. It's status as a consultative agency to the Economic and Social Council was revoked. The IADL continued to wield influence--but as a Communist Party front organization.

And to circle back to Nuremberg. Guess who represented the Soviet Union at that 1949 meeting of the IADL in Rome? Roman Rudenko (Soviet chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials)! Rudenko used the forum to denounce NATO as a breach of international agreements.