Do war crimes trials help create a shared historical understanding? Historian Donald Bloxham, this year's J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, speaks with Jerry Fowler about the effect of the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis on attitudes of the German public and of post-World War I trials of top Ottoman officials on attitudes of the Turkish public, touching more recent events like former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. "I do think there has been a way in which war crimes trial rhetoric has substituted for activism at the time of ongoing crimes against humanity. I also think that as part of the caution that I would urge on the rhetorical level, is that, you know, these trials will always be seen by the peoples who are represented by defendants in the dock as being partial exercises, as being partisan, as being unfair, as being victor's justice in a sense. There has to be great care taken in the presentation of the trials."

Do war crimes trials help create a shared historical understanding? Historian Donald Bloxham, this year's J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, speaks with Jerry Fowler about the effect of the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis on attitudes of the German public and of post-World War I trials of top Ottoman officials on attitudes of the Turkish public, touching more recent events like former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. "I do think there has been a way in which war crimes trial rhetoric has substituted for activism at the time of ongoing crimes against humanity. I also think that as part of the caution that I would urge on the rhetorical level, is that, you know, these trials will always be seen by the peoples who are represented by defendants in the dock as being partial exercises, as being partisan, as being unfair, as being victor's justice in a sense. There has to be great care taken in the presentation of the trials."