A similar silence surrounds the eightieth anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Japan, the consequences of the atomic bombings are still reported daily; elsewhere, they are absorbed into narratives of necessity and closure. What is striking is not ignorance, but normalization, commonplace. Law remembers, but no longer judges.

This reflection is not a rejection of international law, but a consideration of its anthropological limits. What Nuremberg created – and what it failed to create – continues to shape our present.

Norms Without Architecture

Nuremberg, and its Asian counterpart in Tokyo, produced something unprecedented: the juridical naming of crimes that offend humanity as such. Yet they did so without constructing a durable global architecture capable of absorbing historical shocks. Law was articulated; sovereignty remained hierarchical. Norms were universal in language, but selective in application.

The post-war order quickly crystallized into a system of superpowers governing the world through blocs, protectorates, and spheres of influence. Colonial logic was not abolished. It was transformed. Peoples were no longer conquered outright, but administered, contained, displaced, or instrumentalized. They were treated as populations or “tribes,” not as full juridical subjects.

The Tokyo Trial made this asymmetry explicit. Emperor Hirohito was excluded from prosecution in the name of stability. Unit 731, responsible for systematic human experimentation, received de facto immunity in exchange for scientific data. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never subjected to juridical scrutiny. From the outset, international justice carried a double silence – European and Asian, moral and political.

The Question of Existence

Contemporary jurists such as Philippe Sands have insisted on a crucial point: what is not recognized as existing cannot truly enter judgment. Law judges subjects, not abstractions. When peoples are treated as variables, blocs, or managed populations, they remain visible yet juridically fragile. Without zehut/זהות (זה הוא = “this is, it is (here) – recognized juridical identity – judgment becomes procedural rather than transformative.

This helps explain why genocide can be named yet endlessly debated, acknowledged yet insufficiently judged. The crime exists; the subject remains contested.

The Displaced Voice: Avrom Sutzkever

One moment at Nuremberg exposes this fracture with particular clarity.

Avrom Sutzkever – poet, partisan, survivor of the Vilna Ghetto – was called to testify. He had risked his life to save Yiddish manuscripts, fragments of a civilization targeted for annihilation. He........

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