Samuel & Ida Kaiman Center for International Criminal Justice & Holocaust Studies
Educating Advocates for a More Just World
The Samuel & Ida Kaiman Center for International Criminal Justice & Holocaust Studies fosters a deep connection between the Jewish community and international criminal justice. Established through an estate gift from Howard A. Kaiman, JD’60, the center is home to the signature “Nuremberg to The Hague” summer abroad program.
Rooted in the Jesuit value of cura personalis, the Kaiman Center prepares future attorneys to engage in global justice with a strong ethical foundation, ensuring they are ready to shape and uphold international criminal law whenever called to serve.
The Kaiman Center’s Mission
Our mission is to educate the next generation of attorneys imbued with a sense of concern for humanity, strengthened by their experiences in our programs, who will have a positive impact on the world and who will be ready and willing to participate in shaping and delivering international criminal justice whenever they are called to do so.
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Samuel and Ida Kaiman
The Kaiman Center was made possible by a generous gift from Donna (Kaiman) Gilbert and her children, Dave and Stacey Gilbert. Before he passed away at the age of 93, Donna’s brother, Howard Kaiman, JD'67, asked his family to distribute his estate to worthy causes.
Donna chose to fund the Kaiman Center, naming it for her and Howard’s parents, Samuel and Ida Kaiman. Longtime pillars of Omaha’s Jewish community, Samuel and Ida raised their family to care and show concern for not only their community, but humanity at large. The Kaiman Center carries that legacy forward by strengthening the bridge between the Jewish community and international criminal justice.
Samuel and Ida stressed the virtues of service and education (both Jewish and secular). Samuel worked as an accounting clerk at Union Pacific. Like Howard after him, Samuel took night classes at the Creighton School of Law but never practiced. (Howard graduated in 1967.) Samuel died young, of heart disease, at the age of 55 in 1960. Ida lived another 37 years, passing away in 1997.
Howard A. Kaiman “Nuremberg to The Hague” Summer Abroad Program
For more than a decade, this top-ranked summer abroad program has immersed students in international criminal law and Holocaust studies across Germany, The Netherlands, Poland and Austria. Each year, participants move beyond the classroom to witness live war crimes trials in The Hague, walk through historic concentration camps, and take part in the Nuremberg Principles Academy’s moot court at the Palace of Justice—where Nazi leaders once stood trial.
The estate gift from Howard Kaiman, for whom the program has been renamed, ensures the program’s perpetuity.
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Kaiman Center Speaker Series
The Kaiman Center will bring an impressive array of speakers to Omaha and support speakers abroad in the fields of international criminal justice and Holocaust studies. In so doing, the center builds upon the School of Law’s commitment to supporting this important aspect of developing our community’s rich intellectual life. Past speakers, visiting prior to the center’s founding, include:
- Justice Gabriel Bach – Deputy Prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 in Jerusalem and former Israeli Supreme Court Justice
- Judge Raid Juhi al-Saedi – Chief Investigative Judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi High Tribunal
- Michael Bryant, JD, PhD – Author of “Operation Reinhard” Nazi Death Camp Investigations & Trials (Univ. of Tenn. Press 2014) Winner of the Association Internationale de Droit Penal 2014 Book of the Year Award
- Louis Henkin, JD – Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia University, and chief reporter Restatement (Third) U.S. Foreign Relations
Director, Michael J. Kelly, JD, LLM
Professor Michael Kelly directs both the Samuel & Ida Kaiman Center for International Criminal Justice & Holocaust Studies and the Howard A. Kaiman “Nuremberg to The Hague” Summer Abroad Program. He holds the Senator Allen A. Sekt Endowed Chair in Law. Allen Sekt, JD’36, also a prominent member of the Jewish community, served in the Navy during the Second World War, settled in Guam and was elected to their parliament. His legacy endowment forms part of the foundational support for the programming Professor Kelly undertakes at Creighton.
Perhaps symbolically, Professor Kelly joined Creighton’s law faculty in 2001, filling the tenure line of Professor Manfred Pieck of Germany, himself a Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp.
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Creighton’s Legacy of Participating in
International Criminal Justice
Ever since Ron Delaney, JD’30, traveled to Tokyo in 1947 to help prosecute former Japanese Prime Minister Hideaki Tojo for war crimes, Creighton University’s Law School has been involved in international criminal justice. His role as second chair in the prosecution marked the beginning of the school's longstanding commitment to global justice efforts.
Today, students serve as supervised defense counsel for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, through the Defense Department. They also work on human trafficking issues in the Justice Department and Congress through the Law School’s Government Organization and Leadership (GOAL) joint degree program.
Students travel to Germany each summer to learn about international criminal law and the Holocaust. And for several years, Charles Smith III, JD’70, welcomed American and German law students on our summer abroad program to his court in The Hague. Smith served as Chief Judge of Trial Chamber II at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, tasked with prosecuting former Kosovo Prime Minister Hacim Thaci among other notoriously corrupt Kosovar operatives during the war of liberation from Serbia. Originally a district court judge from Iowa, Smith dedicated his retirement to delivering international criminal justice – embodying the spirit of the Kaiman Center and the Nuremberg program.
“This program and this center at Creighton will continue my family’s work. They will keep the memory of the Holocaust alive for a new generation. They will challenge them never to forget that this happened and that it can happen again, very easily, if we don’t remember.”
Donna (Kaiman) Gilbert
Contact Us
Michael J. Kelly, JD, LLM
402.280.3455
