Obituary: Benjamin Kaplan: US lawyer at the centre of preparations for the Nuremberg trials

A civil litigator from a copyright law firm, Kaplan was an unexpected figure for a war crimes trial. Born into a working-class family in the Bronx, New York, he was the third of four children, estranged from his father, a struggling shopkeeper and garment worker, but close to his mother. In Hebrew s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Guardian (London)
Main Author Bush, Jonathan A
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 27.10.2010
Subjects
Calvocoressi, Peter
Cutter, R Ammi
Jackson, Robert
Kaplan, Benjamin
Taylor, Telford
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Summary:A civil litigator from a copyright law firm, Kaplan was an unexpected figure for a war crimes trial. Born into a working-class family in the Bronx, New York, he was the third of four children, estranged from his father, a struggling shopkeeper and garment worker, but close to his mother. In Hebrew school, Kaplan's teacher was Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, later head of the Conservative Jewish movement, and at DeWitt Clinton high school, in the Bronx, he excelled in history. Kaplan graduated from high school at 14 and went to the City College of New York - known as "the poor man's Harvard" - where he studied with the philosopher Morris Cohen. Kaplan's partner Edward Greenbaum went to Washington as executive officer to the under-secretary of war, Robert Patterson, and Kaplan followed. He was sent next door to Colonel R Ammi Cutter, a Boston lawyer supervising the legal side of Pentagon procurement, especially contracting, for Patterson, John McCloy and General Lucius Clay. Cutter and McCloy were early proponents of a war crimes trial, and through them in late May 1945 Lieutenant Colonel Kaplan was among the first recruits to the staff of the supreme court justice Robert Jackson, named by President Harry Truman to lead the American team in international proceedings. Working with Colonel Telford Taylor, a New Deal lawyer who had just returned from Bletchley Park, Kaplan was excited by Jackson's vision and drive but concerned about his inattention to the need for usable evidence. Taylor and Kaplan were assigned to lead a "rear echelon" of prosecutors combing files in Washington while Jackson and his aides went to London to negotiate the framework for a trial. Kaplan spent a month with the files of the OSS intelligence service but found little.
ISSN:0261-3077