http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=xAmz2ltedy&Content=887On November 10, 2006, the Democratic Lawyers of Germany, along with the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights, presented CCR President Michael Ratner with the Hans Litten Prize in recognition of his pioneering work on international human rights with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Lawyers for both East and West Germany agreed to name the country's bar association after Litten. In 1931, Litten was a 29-year-old lawyer who represented two workmen stabbed by Hitler's Nazi Storm Troopers. Litten grilled Hitler on the witness stand for two hours, and the Storm Troopers were convicted.
Hitler never forgot his embarassing cross-examination or Hans Litten. On the night of the Reichstag fire, February 28, 1933, the SS arrested Litten. He was considered an enemy of the state, and held in 'protective custody' without charge. For years he was transferred from camp to camp, from Spandau to Dachau, where he was tortured and subject to mock executions.
Litten's mother wrote a book about her struggle to free her son called Beyond Tears. She thought she had a chance to free her son, as she "still imagined that we were living in a legal state." But as she writes, "law had become weaker and weaker as a guardian of justice." After enduring five years of detention and torture, Litten committed suicide in 1939.
In his acceptance speech, CCR President Michael Ratner said Litten's story emphasizes "the dangers of the direction in which the Bush Administration is taking us. In a number or respects we in the United States are no longer living in a legal state; and law has become weaker as a guardian of justice. The constraints on the executive, an executive under law and beholden to law, are rapidly evaporating. This is particularly so regarding detention and torture. For if the state can, as it did in Germany, arrest and detain you without charges, there is no freedom." Ratner concluded: "Hans Litten's story should be a warning to us all."
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