“Lawyers Without Rights” Exhibit Portrays Persecution of Jewish Lawyers and Judges During Nazi Era

“Lawyers Without Rights: Jewish Lawyers in Germany Under the Third Reich,” an acclaimed international exhibit, is on display in the lobby of the New York City Bar Association at 42 West 44th Street through November 20th.

The idea for the exhibit, which is sponsored by the German Federal Bar and the American Bar Association, was conceived in 1998, when an Israeli lawyer asked the regional bar of Berlin for a list of Jewish lawyers whose licenses had been revoked by the Nazi regime. “The regional bar decided not only to research a list of names but also to try to find out more about the fates behind all those names,” said Axel Filges, president of the German Federal Bar, which is that country’s major bar association with approximately 166,000 members. “Some were able to leave the country after the Nazis came into power, but very many of them were incarcerated or murdered. The non-Jewish German lawyers of those days remained silent. They failed miserably, and so did the lawyers’ organizations. We do not know why.”

The exhibit has been shown in more than 40 cities in Germany, more than a dozen cities in the U.S., and in other countries around the world.

For more about the exhibit, click here.