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It has long been a cause of disagreement between historians what role the Nuremberg Trials accorded to the Nazi regime’s genocidal policies. While some consider ‘Nuremberg’ the starting point of judicial and historical efforts to tackle the Holocaust others have argued that genocidal crimes were eclipsed by other counts. The present contribution adds nuance to this debate by documenting how frequently, and indeed evidently, the destruction of the European Jews featured in the trials. It also traces the jurists’ efforts to conceptualize ‘genocide’ as a heuristically helpful category to comprehend the Nazi regime’s wide-ranging policy of mass murder.