Nuremberg Photos Spark History Fellow’s Interest in Women’s Role at Trials
By Angela Tudico | National Archives News
WASHINGTON, August 17, 2023 — Jessica Kahkoska spent March 2023 at the National Archives at College Park researching the role American women played at the Nuremberg Trials.
Kahkoska, one of two 2022 Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellows, is developing two projects based on her research: one for scripted television and the other as a documentary series.
A writer, producer, and researcher for theater and television, Kahkoska was conducting research for another project when she came across images of the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi war crimes following World War II. She was drawn to the women in the photos.
“That image has really stayed as a throughline of this project because in no way am I unearthing some long lost secret history,” Kahkoska said. “These women played pivotal, high-level roles in the Nuremberg Trials, and I’m interested in how I can piece back together their stories.”
Highlighting the work of these American women required research in textual, still picture, and motion picture records, such as the National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records and Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer.
The National Archives has digitized many of the records related to the Nuremberg Trials. The picture of Cecelia K. Goetz that ignited Kahkoska’s interest, for example, is part of the Photographs Relating to the Minor Nuremberg Trials series.
Despite the records being available online, Kahkoska found research with them in person critical to identifying the information related to the American women at Nuremberg in the archives.
“Even when records are digitized, the frequency and accuracy with which notable men from history are ‘tagged’ or flagged in the archive—and therefore searchable—is much higher than their female counterparts,” Kahkoska said. “The result is that their contributions and presence within the trials can feel even more prominent and visible, while the women fade more and more into obscurity.”
Photograph of Cecelia K. Goetz. National Archives, National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records.
Kahkoska further explained her research process and how she was able to trace the role of women in the courtroom.
“The process of reconstructing these women's journeys through the trial is very much a manual, granular search: scanning crowded photos, looking for their names in documents, and recognizing their faces, professional contributions, expertise, and physical presence in the archive from the trials,” Kahkoska said.
Unexpected finds, such as employee badges used by staffers to enter the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, also offered a snapshot of the people who worked at the trials.
The records do not tell the whole story, but, as Kahkoska explained, “That tension between where the archive ends and what the actual experiences and stories might have been is a tension that’s very much the heart of my work as an artist.”
Through the Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellowship, Kahkoska gleaned enough source material for both fictional and nonfictional accounts of American women at the Nuremberg Trials.
“The fellowship quite literally took this project from creative dream to project in development,” Kahkoska said. “It’s been amazing to have this fellowship and partner so directly with the National Archives because they really are the definitive record keeper for the Nuremberg Trials.”
Kahkoska is a writer, producer, and researcher for theater and television. She is on faculty at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and a guest lecturer at Wesleyan University.
She received her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University and is working on her Master of Business Administration degree at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
She is conducting her research as a 2022 recipient of the Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellowship.
Supported by the National Archives Foundation, the fellowships are awarded to early to mid-career historians, journalists, authors, or graduate students who perform and publish new research to elevate women’s history using records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The fellowship launched in 2019 to honor noted author and journalist Cokie Roberts, who spent her career shining light on the stories of many women who had an impact on U.S. history.
“Cokie was a leader on our board and a lifelong advocate for the Archives,” said Jim Blanchard, President and Chair of the National Archives Foundation Board of Directors and former Michigan governor. “These fellowships are a wonderful tribute to her ongoing inspiration to the field of women’s history.”
Read about the other Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellows: Kara Dixon Vuic, Lois Leveen, and Randa Tawil.