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CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ THE UNITED NATIONS WAR CRIMES COMMISSION…
concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Although I have read quite a lot
about Shoah before, I was deeply touched by the content of these Czechoslovak charges
and, furthermore, impressed by the professional way these charges were written.
After this coincidental personal experience with the Commission records, I realized
that, in recent years, international lawyers have paid attention primarily to the activities
of the international criminal tribunals. And rightfully so – there is no doubt that
the international criminal justice has undergone a rapid development through the
establishment of the UN ad hoc tribunals and, in particular, by the creation of the
International Criminal Court. Even those interested in the history of international
criminal justice wrote mostly on the Nuremberg Tribunal and subsequent criminal
proceedings against war criminals in occupied Germany. As such, the Commission has
been – at least in my view – in the shadow of these tribunals. Yet the Commission and
its legacy to international law deserve to be studied, as this organization, although not
being a court, can be regarded as a forerunner of the international criminal tribunals.
Luckily, this situation has changed recently, mainly due to the opening of the
Commission archive in July 20143 (before that, access was possible only through
Governments and their Permanent Missions to the UN). An overview of its records
can be found at the website of the UN Archives and Records Management Section,
although the documents listed there are not directly accessible.4 Nevertheless,
a special website ” was set up by the Centre of International Studies and
Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University
of London. This website has been an invaluable source of information for this article,
in particular “The History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the
Developments of the Laws of War” (hereinafter, the “History of the Commission”) that
was prepared by the Secretariat of the Commission in 1948 and is freely available there.
In my article, I would like to, first, describe how the Commission was created,
including the involvement of Czechoslovakia in this process and, second, focus on
its legal personality, institutional structure and activities. Then I will analyze the
above-mentioned Czechoslovak charges on the Auschwitz and Birkenau case. In
conclusion, I will offer some of my thoughts on how the legacy of the Commission
could be used today.
2. Setting the Scene for the Establishment of the Commission
The journey leading towards the establishment of the Commission was neither
short, nor simple. It is not surprising that, at the beginning of this process, there
were two States whose people became the first victims of the Nazi regime outside
3 See the press release at the UN News Centre: “Out of the ‘darkness’: UN War Crimes Commission
records hailed as vital international justice tool”, 11 November 2014, available at:
apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49313#.Vy5Bur6ufEQ.
4 The website is: