It’s a question that confounds and haunts modern history. How could the Holocaust have been allowed to happen?
John Farmer, the former New Jersey attorney general and Rutgers University Law School dean who has spent much of his professional life steeped in law and government, calls it “inexplicable.” But he does believe people in his profession—lawyers—played an active role in allowing mass genocide to occur.
“I don’t think it could have happened without them,” he said. “This wasn’t an isolated massacre, this was an organized policy of the state.” It was lawyers, he said, that drafted measures that stripped the Jewish people of citizenship and rights. “This is the extreme case of letting your ambitions overcome your sense of right and wrong.”
A powerful reminder of this lesson will unfold this April with the International March of the Living Robert H. Jackson Continuing Legal Education Program. The program is unlike a traditional instructional seminar. It begins with a three-kilometer march in Poland, from Auschwitz to Birkenau, along the rail beds to the concentration camps where millions of Jews and other Nazi targets perished.
The program is sponsored by the New Jersey State Bar Association; the association’s educational arm, the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education; and Rutgers University’s Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience, where Farmer is the director. Attendees can earn credits toward continuing legal education requirements.
This is the first year there will be a specific educational program for lawyers and judges, but the International March of the Living (MOTL) is an annual event that began in 1988. According to the MOTL website, some 260,000 people from around the world have made the march. Last year, Farmer was among them.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable experience,” he said. “The Holocaust becomes real in a way that it just can’t from reading books and watching movies. You’re there and you’re taking the walk that people took on the way to being executed, essentially.”
But juxtaposed with the reality and horror of what took place at the camps is another feeling that is hard to describe, Farmer said. The march is made alongside thousands of young people from many different walks of life, and their energy lends the experience some hope that “hate can be rejected.”
After the march, continuing legal education participants will attend a day of programming looking closely at the role of lawyers and judges in the Holocaust, both those who enabled the massacre and those who spoke out against it. Stuart M. Lederman, a partner at Riker Danzig and former New Jersey State Bar Foundation president , will moderate the discussion exploring the history of the conduct of lawyers and judges during the Nazi period.
The program will also feature panels looking at present-day issues, including the role of civil litigation to prevent future genocides and a closer look at how communities in Europe and the United States are currently protecting vulnerable populations.
Lawyers have an important role to play in current-day conflicts around bigotry and racial tensions, said Farmer, whose work at the Miller Center is focused on best practices for protecting diaspora and vulnerable populations around the world.
He noted the Shakespeare quote, “First kill all the lawyers,” is often used to be derisive of lawyers. But that’s not how it was intended.
“In fact, what he meant was, it’s the lawyers who can stop tyranny,” he said. “We have to remember that essential role that lawyers have. We can put the brakes on disastrous and inhumane policies. Our license is the license to make a difference in the world.”
For more information on the International March of the Living, visit
http://bit.ly/motlcle.