{"id":39704,"date":"2017-12-03T15:43:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T21:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=39704"},"modified":"2020-01-11T16:19:23","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T22:19:23","slug":"trestman-lecture-discusses-margolins-behind-the-scenes-work-at-nuremberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/trestman-lecture-discusses-margolins-behind-the-scenes-work-at-nuremberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Trestman Lecture Discusses Margolin&#8217;s Behind-the-Scenes Work at Nuremberg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By NICHOLAS HAMBURGER, Special to the CCJN<\/p>\n<p>Raised in New Orleans\u2019 Jewish orphanage in the early 20th century, Bessie Margolin defied her underprivileged background to become a pioneering lawyer who championed workers\u2019 rights before the Supreme Court, as well as a significant figure in the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_39705\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39705\" class=\"wp-image-39705 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-300x228.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-300x228.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-768x585.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-1024x780.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/228;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39705\" class=\"wp-image-39705 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-300x228.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-300x228.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-768x585.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman2-1024x780.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-39705\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marlene Trestman delivering a Lagniappe Lecture (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>On Wednesday, November 29, Marlene Trestman, a former special assistant to Maryland\u2019s attorney general and the author of &#8220;Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin,&#8221; delivered a Lagniappe Lecture at the National World War II Museum, discussing Margolin\u2019s brief but consequential involvement in the second phase of the Nuremberg war crimes trial.<\/p>\n<p>According to Trestman, Margolin spent six months in Nuremberg in 1946 on loan from the U.S. Department of Labor, where she served as an attorney from 1939 until her retirement in 1972. Before Margolin arrived in Nuremberg, the United States\u2019 prosecution of major Nazi war criminals in front of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) had slowed to a crawl.<\/p>\n<p>Trestman explained that in an effort to expedite the proceedings, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who was in charge of the United States\u2019 prosecution, selected Telford Taylor, one of his top prosecutors, to lead American legal action against lesser-known Nazi war criminals.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor quickly assigned Margolin the task of structuring the legal foundation for what was named the \u201cSubsequent Proceedings,\u201d a second phase of trials designed to prosecute less notorious Nazi officers, judges, industrialists, and concentration camp doctors who had been accused of perpetrating crimes like slave labor, human experimentation, and murder.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_39706\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39706\" class=\"wp-image-39706 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/225;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39706\" class=\"wp-image-39706 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman3-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-39706\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A slide from Trestman&#8217;s presentation showing Margolin in Berlin in 1946 (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Margolin had already established herself in the United States as a dynamic federal attorney known for her defense of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the law that created the basis for minimum wage and overtime pay.<\/p>\n<p>According to Trestman, Margolin \u201cremains, to this day, one of only six women\u201d to argue before the Supreme Court, and she would go on to enforce the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which sought to eliminate wage disparity between men and women.<\/p>\n<p>Trestman also pointed out that Margolin wrote the first draft of an order that created an American Military Tribunal, which went on to operate as a separate entity from the slower moving IMT comprised of American, British, French, and Soviet legal teams.<\/p>\n<p>After a revision of Margolin\u2019s draft, the American Military Tribunal was no longer beholden to the IMT\u2019s legal findings, an alteration that may have been freeing for the American prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>Through her work in Nuremberg, Trestman stated, Margolin solidified her connection to her Jewish identity. \u201cIt could have been her own family, had they remained in Russia,\u201d Trestman said in an interview with the CCJN. \u201cI think that really emboldened her sense of her religious identity, although not in Orthodox, observant ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_39707\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39707\" class=\"wp-image-39707 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-300x292.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"292\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-300x292.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-768x746.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-1024x995.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1.jpg 1383w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/292;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-39707\" class=\"wp-image-39707 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-300x292.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-300x292.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-768x746.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1-1024x995.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Trestman1.jpg 1383w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-39707\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marlene Trestman (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Though Margolin was born in the United States, both her parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. Her mother died in childbirth during Margolin\u2019s youth, and Margolin was subsequently sent to the Jewish Orphan\u2019s Home in New Orleans, which, Trestman noted in her lecture, is \u201cwhere the JCC now stands.\u201d Margolin graduated in 1925 from Isidore Newman School after it offered a number of scholarships to residents of the nearby orphanage.<\/p>\n<p>Trestman likewise graduated from Newman &#8212; she was named Distinguished Alumnus of Newman in 2004 following her own thirty-year career in law. The similarities between Margolin and Trestman do not end there; like Margolin, Trestman was orphaned in childhood, and she grew up receiving support from the Jewish Children\u2019s Regional Service, the modern incarnation of the orphanage in which Margolin was raised.<\/p>\n<p>In 1974, Trestman and Margolin met for the first time in Washington, D.C. Trestman was a freshman in college, Margolin two years removed from retirement. The 50-year age difference did not deter them, and Trestman, who attended Goucher College in nearby Baltimore, began spending weekends at Margolin\u2019s home in D.C.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember she was the first woman lawyer I ever met,\u201d Trestman said. \u201cHow could it not have influenced me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Margolin died in 1996, Trestman realized no writer had ever documented her life. Nine years later, Trestman began a decade-long project that culminated in 2016 in the publication of her L.S.U. Press biography of Margolin.<\/p>\n<p>If Trestman sees herself as a continuation of Margolin\u2019s legacy, she does not say so. Instead, she suggested someone else has inherited Margolin\u2019s tradition of tireless feminist advocacy in court. \u201cBefore there was a &#8216;Notorious R.B.G.,&#8217; as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is affectionately known, there was an audacious Bessie Margolin,\u201d Trestman said in her lecture.<\/p>\n<p>The appreciation is apparently reciprocal. At the end of her lecture, Trestman quoted a handwritten letter she received following the publication of her biography. \u201c\u2018Thank you for enabling me and legions of other lawyers to appreciate what a frontrunner [Margolin] was,\u2019\u201d Trestman read. \u201c\u2018Cheers, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Trestman%20Lecture%20Discusses%20Margolin%27s%20Behind-the-Scenes%20Work%20at%20Nuremberg\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3011,8790,8795,8873,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39704"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52862,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39704\/revisions\/52862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}