Witness at the palace of justice in Nuremberg

At a place of historical importance, you subconsciously look for a specific atmosphere — a sense of the past that has seeped into the walls and clung on for you to touch.

However, the stillness and the small size of courtroom 600 at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, where the war crime trials against the Nazis were held after World War II, leave me disoriented. I don’t know what I expected — an imposing edifice of justice, perhaps, calculated to overawe and unnerve the 21 Nazi leaders who stood trial. But Courtroom 600, which, surprisingly, in functional even today, is no more than the size of a modest banquet hall.

It takes a while to accept that this was the setting of the biggest legal undertaking in history, involving 218 days of proceedings, 1000 personnel, 360 witnesses, 3,00,000 affidavits and documents. At the end of it all, 12 death sentences and 7 terms of life imprisonment were given to the men of the Third Reich.

My eyes skim the wood-paneled interiors and elegant chandeliers to seek points of resemblance with the black and white photographs I had seen in books. I stand a few feet away from where the Nazis must have awaited their fates — Hermann Goering defiant and belligerent, Rudolf Hess cowering and pathetic, Albert Speer contrite and introspective.

Situated in Bavaria, Nuremberg was chosen as the venue for the trials because its Palace of Justice was one of the few complexes that escaped war damage. An undestroyed prison was attached to it, ideal to incarcerate Nazis. However destiny showed a rare penchant for poetic justice. It was here that the Nazis held their spectacular annual party rallies since 1933 and passed the infamous racial laws that sealed the fate of the Jews.

The guide points to a door, crowned by a huge mythological sculpture in granite, just behind the docks of the Nazis. “This door opened into an elevator that brought the prisoners into the courtroom. A tunnel connected the court with that part of the prison where the cells of these top Nazis were located.”

Courtroom 600’s serenity is baffling. How can a place which witnessed a comprehensive exposition of the twisted logic of genocide be free of all those disturbing influences?

“The undertrials were constantly watched,” the guide continues, pointing to a photograph depicting lines of sentries positioned to stare fixedly into prison cells, “Yet Hermann Goering consumed cyanide the night before his execution.” His fellow Nazis were hanged the next day, on October 16, 1946. I now know why Courtroom 600 is tranquil — because true justice was and continues to be done here — one way or the other.

As I step out onto the quiet Bärenschanzstraße, it’s hard to believe Nuremberg was once a bustling city echoing the raucous cries of Aryan chauvinism. Perhaps the burden of its past has turned it into a colourless, listless place, with no signs of the charm one expects from a vintage city founded in the 11th century.