80th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Judgment | Master lecture by Prof. William Schabas and an international discussion panel - Instytut Pileckiego

– “1 October 2026 marks the 80th anniversary of the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, which was a watershed moment for the development of international criminal law.” – emphasized Dr. Dominika Uczkiewicz from the Pilecki Institute.

– In the aftermath of the war, the Nuremberg principles greatly influenced the models for prosecuting and punishing Axis crimes before national courts of the Allied states, as well as the work of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. On this occasion, we would like to invite you to a lecture by Prof. William Schabas and an expert discussion, both of which will be devoted to the contemporary legacies of the Nuremberg trial. – said Dr. Uczkiewicz, a lawyer and assistant professor at the Pilecki Institute’s Center for Totalitarian Studies.

REGISTRATION FORM

Event Programme

Lecture: Prof. William Schabas
Commentary: Prof. Patrycja Grzebyk
Moderation: Dr. João Fusco Ribeiro

Expert discussion featuring:

· Dr. Dovile Segatiene;
· Dr. Marie Wilmet;
· Prof. Florian Jessberger;
· Dr. Krystian Wiciarz.

Moderation: Prof. Karolina Wierczyńska.

Date: 01.10.2026 | Time: 17:00–20:00 | Venue: Pilecki Institute, Sienna 82, Warsaw, admission free

This event marks another stage in the Pilecki Institute’s academic programme commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg trial, placing particular emphasis on regional experiences and historical narratives. Last year’s conference, Unknown Legacies of Nuremberg Trial: Regional Approaches and Perspectives in East Central Europe, examined the origins of the Nuremberg trial, competing procedural visions, and the definitions of international crimes placed under the Tribunal’s jurisdiction, with specific focus on the contribution of "small states" to the codification and application of the Nuremberg principles.

This year’s edition will focus on the legal and historical significance of the Nuremberg judgment – examining both the categories of crimes and groups of victims included and omitted, as well as the role played by the judges of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). In assessing the trial's impact on the post-war legal order and principles of international law, the experts will compare its legacy with the Tokyo proceedings before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and examine the absence of legal accountability for Soviet crimes, alongside contemporary efforts in Central and Eastern Europe to address this historical deficit and seek justice for victims of communist regimes.

Contemporary humanitarian crises and armed conflicts confront the international community with challenges analogous to those faced in 1946. The conference will provide a forum for critical debate on the efficacy of prosecuting the crime of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by modern judicial institutions – foremost among them the International Criminal Court in The Hague – in an era marked by hybrid warfare, cyber operations, and systemic disinformation. Participants will examine contemporary obstacles to holding perpetrators of the most serious international crimes accountable, evaluated against the benchmark of the Nuremberg legacy and post-1945 transitional justice mechanisms.

Research into the Origins of Nuremberg Jurisprudence

The Pilecki Institute’s involvement in organizing the "Enigmas of Nuremberg" event stems directly from long-standing research programs conducted at the Institute concerning the origins and legal-historical consequences of Nuremberg jurisprudence. This thematic focus forms the axis of projects carried out by the Department for Research on Nazism and the German Occupation during World War II at the Center for Research on Totalitarianisms (OBNT).

- Our work on the Nuremberg trials is centered primarily on the grant project '(Un)judged Crimes,' which I am conducting jointly with Dr. Dominika Uczkiewicz. - explains dr hab. Tomasz Chinciński, professor at the Pilecki Institute, head of the Department, and director of two research projects funded by the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities (2024–2029). – The Nuremberg proceedings – specifically the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings – serve as our point of departure, whereas the core object of research is the subsequent phase: the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators of German crimes committed in occupied Poland by the West German judiciary. Within the framework of the project, we are preparing a five-volume critical edition of source documents, the first volume of which will comprise materials from the Nuremberg trials and selected proceedings before Allied tribunals in Germany.

Dr. Dominika Uczkiewicz notes that the project "(Un)judged Crimes" aims to provide a synthetic analysis, grounded in archival trial records, of how the West German justice system addressed crimes committed during the occupation.

- The research team examines the mechanisms through which the West German judiciary dismissed the legal principles established by the IMT, the structural factors underpinning systemic impunity, and a critical reconstruction of the depositions of Polish witnesses preserved in procedural case files. The source publications prepared under the grant are intended to address an existing gap in Polish and Western European historiography, where the subject of Polish victims has remained marginal to mainstream discourse. - explains Dr. Uczkiewicz.

A parallel vector of research investigates the contribution of Polish jurists to the post-war international legal architecture. Funding from the "Doskonała Nauka II" (Excellent Science II) programme supported the English translation and open-access publication of Dr. Dominika Uczkiewicz's monograph examining the involvement of Polish Government-in-Exile representatives in the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the preparation of the Nuremberg trial: Dominika Uczkiewicz, Accountability for War Crimes in the Policy of the Polish Government-in-Exile. A Legal and Historical Analysis, Brill 2026 (https://brill.com/display/title/74380).

Participants

Prof. Florian Jessberger is Professor of Law at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he holds the Chair in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Law, and Modern Legal History and serves as the Director of the Franz von Liszt Institute for International Criminal Justice at Humboldt and a Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies Reflexive Globalisation and the Law. His research centers on German, comparative and international criminal law, the modern history of criminal law, and human rights. He regularly gives advice to the German Government, the Federal Parliament, and NGOs. He is a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press). Florian Jeßberger published more than 60 articles in law journals and book chapters and authored three books, including Principles of International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 4th ed. 2020, with G. Werle) and co-edited among others  International Criminal Law – a Counter-Hegemonic Project? (Springer 2023, with L. Steinl & K. Mehta), Histories of Transnational Criminal Law (Oxford University Press 2021, with N. Boister & S. Gless). Florian studied law and political sciences and received his PhD from Universität zu Köln. Before joining Humboldt-Universität, he held a Chair in Criminal Law at Universität Hamburg (2010-2020). 

Prof. Patrycja Grzebyk is Associate Professor at the University of Warsaw; she also works for the Centre for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute. She is the author of over 160 publications, including: The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict and War Crimes (Routledge: 2025); Polish Contributions to International Criminal Law (Brill: 2026); and Human and Non-Human Targets in Armed Conflicts (CUP: 2022); Criminal responsibility for the crime of aggression (Routledge: 2013). She is Vice-President of the European Society of International Law, President of the Network on Humanitarian Action (NOHA), and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Humanitarian Action. She serves on the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Advisory Board on International Law, as an OSCE Moscow Mechanism expert (Rapporteur on Georgia), and on the ILA Committee on the Use of Force. She has been a visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Geneva, Bologna, Munich, and National Taiwan University. ORCID 0000-0003-4022-7018.

Dr. João Fusco Ribeiro is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw, Poland. He holds an MA in European and African Historical Studies (2016) and a PhD in Contemporary History (2023), both from the University of Évora, Portugal. His doctoral research examined the armed guerrilla campaign waged by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) against Portuguese colonial rule, as well as the origins of the movement’s anti-Soviet orientation. In 2024 and 2025, he held visiting research positions at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (GHIW) and the Leibniz Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) in Berlin. Dr. Ribeiro’s research focuses on African liberation movements and the transnational networks of anti-colonial solidarity that connected them with Eastern Europe.

Dr. Dovilė Sagatienė is legal historian, focusing on memory regulation across Europe and the Head at the Memory and Justice Research Center at MRU since 2025 and Advisor to the Vice-Rector on Young Researchers’ Development since 2026. She also is former Vice-Dean for Research at the Law School in MRU (2020-2023 and 2024-2026). On November 2024 she was appointed by the Parliament for the newly established Council at the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania for the term of 5 years. In June 2025 she was also appointed as a Board Member to the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe (OHTE) at the European Council (France) for two years. From October 2022 till October 2024 Dovilė  was a postdoctoral researcher at the MEMOCRACY project (Volkswagen Stiftung, 2021-2024), based at Centre for Military Studies in University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Her previous post-doc as a Fulbright Scholar at the Harriman Institute in Columbia University in 2019-2020 explored the Soviet repressions in Lithuania in the framework of the genocide concept. 

Prof. William Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also emeritus professor at Leiden University and the University of Galway, honorary chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, and invited visiting scholar at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po). Prof. Schabas is an ‘door tenant’ at the chambers of 9 Bedford Row, in London. He has appeared as counsel before several international and national courts and tribunals including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of Canada. He is the author of more than twenty books dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law and international criminal law. Professor Schabas has worked as a consultant on capital punishment for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, and drafted the most recent quinquennial reports of the Secretary-General on the status of the death penalty.

Dr. Krystian Wiciarz is acting Deputy Director of the Pilecki Institute. Political scientist, philosopher and manager. He defended his doctoral dissertation at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow at the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations, at the Faculty of International and Political Studies, where he was a researcher and lecturer. His interests include issues of social and political change and political systems and regime change as well as political theory and political thought. He carried out research projects as part of grants obtained from, among others, the Polish National Science Centre and The Foundation for Polish Science. Deputy editor in chief of the “Totalitarian and 20th Century Studies” journal. He managed projects in the field of internal security (Ministry of the Interior and Administration) and in new technologies. 

Prof.  Karolina Wierczyńska is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Research on International Criminal Law at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ILS PAS) in Warsaw. She also serves as Deputy Editor-in-chief of the “Polish Yearbook of International Law” and a member of the International Law Advisory Committee at Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She acted as Vice-President of the Committee of Legal Sciences ILS PAS for the 2020–2023 term. She recently co-wrote a monograph called Polish Contributions to International Criminal Law (Brill 2025, co-authors: P. Grzebyk and B. Krzan).

Dr Marie Wilmet is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She is undertaking the GENDERUJ project (‘Gender Justice and Universal Jurisdiction for International Crimes: Uneasy Encounters or Avenues for Norm Transfer?’) which analyses the domestic prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes and avenues for gender justice across both civil law and common law jurisdictions. Her PhD from the European University Institute investigated the contributions of victims’ procedural rights to gender justice in international criminal law through an empirical case study of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.