The world's only full-scale re-creation of the Nuremberg Trials' courtroom is accurate to the smallest detail.

The clock on the wall looks just like the one overlooking one of the most important trials of the 20th century, the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. The uniforms worn by mannequins representing American and Russian soldiers are actual uniforms from the time. Even some of the hardware on the Nazi uniforms is authentic.

The exhibit, permanently housed at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, held a grand opening yesterday, with dignitaries from several countries scheduled to attend.

The Nuremberg Trials were held from 1946 to 1949 to try Nazi officials by an international tribunal. Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen for the site, museum co-founder and director Jay P. Ipson said, because it was a major seat of Nazi power and the home of the infamous anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws.

The museum's exhibit is set up to resemble the courtroom as it looked during the first and most important of the trials, in 1946. Lifelike mannequins of the major players are in their appropriate places, with carefully sculpted faces and real hair.

American prosecutor Robert Jackson stands at a podium, judges from several countries sit behind a desk, and a photographer, stenographer and several translators hold positions of importance.

Of most interest are the defendants, seated in the places they were assigned during the trial.

Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, is on the end. Foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop is nearby, along with Albert Speer, the Nazi architect and minister for armaments. Field Marshal Hermann G?ring, the highest-ranking defendant, sits on the witness stand.

Of the 21 defendants at the trial, 11 were sentenced to death. G?ring committed suicide with a cyanide capsule before he could be executed.

Ipson said the idea to re-create the courtroom came to him in the middle of the night. The museum had exhibits about what led up to the Holocaust, and about the Holocaust itself, but nothing to show what happened later, the meting out of justice.

The trials were held "to convince the world that the war was just," Ipson said.

To make their case, the prosecutors showed film of what the Allied troops found at the concentration camps. It was the first time much of this horrifying footage had been screened in public; even some of the defendants were reportedly shocked - though others were not.

The footage was shown on a 16 mm U.S. Army projector, so such a projector is in the exhibit. A video screen shows heartbreaking images from the concentration camps, as well as scenes from the trial.

The video loop was going to be only a few minutes long, until Ipson learned that part of the evidence against the defendants was the story of the massacre of his own family. Now the video loop runs an hour.

The exhibit includes photographs from the trials and pictures of each of the defendants. Also included are a security pass that allowed a visitor into the trials, a stick with a dagger inside and what may be the most historically significant items: from the collection of Richmonders Craig and Karen Bell, a collection of autographs the defendants gave to their guards as souvenirs.

Only one defendant's autograph is missing. Hess was angry at the guards and refused to provide an autograph.