Nuremberg Remembered Biography: Bernard Meltzer

Bernard Meltzer, born in Philadelphia in 1914, was an established figure in the legal and political circles before World War II. Between 1938 and 1940 he worked with the Securities and Exchange Commission. After the United States entered the war, he was special assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson and acting chief of the Foreign Funds Control Division between 1941 and 1943. Over the final years of the war, 1943-1945, he served in the U.S. Navy.

While serving in Naval Intelligence, he was brought to Nuremberg, where he assisted Frank Shea, one of the prosecution attorneys, in investigating Nazi economic crimes.

He was proud to be part of a process that pursued the Nazi war criminals because he thought it was essential that aggressive war and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis not go unpunished. Before arriving at Nuremberg, he had followed the proceedings in London, where the procedures of the trial were determined. He also learned why Nuremberg was selected as the seat of the trials, mostly due to its association with many of the Nazi mass rallies and the announcement of major Nazi policies.

One issue that Meltzer raises in his reflections on Nuremberg is that bystanders were not put on trial. Yet, as he points out, the bystanders' behavior facilitated the work of perpetrators. Meltzer reminds us all that this was one factor of the Nazi era that is not fully addressed in the proceedings of Nuremberg.

Following his Nuremberg experience, Meltzer joined the faculty of Chicago Law School in 1946. He specialized in labor law and served as an arbitrator and a member of the Illinois Civil Service Commission. He has also been a consultant to the Department of Labor.

Despite all these accomplishments in the post Nuremberg decades, Meltzer still looked back to his time as an attorney with the American prosecution team at Nuremberg as a meaningful part of his career.

Bernard Meltzer passed away in January 2007 at the age of 92.