*EPF103 03/12/01
Backgrounder: Nuremberg War Crimes Legacy -- Part Two
(The Nuremberg Precedent) (1140)
By David Pitts
Washington File Staff Writer

(This is the second of two articles based in part on an interview with Ben Ferencz, one of only a few U.S. Nuremberg prosecutors still living. The articles were written to provide background for the 57th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva to be held March 19-April 27. The Commission, like many postwar human rights organizations, owes much to the legacy of Nuremberg, the first major international human rights and war crimes trials in history.)

Few men alive today stood face-to-face with senior Nazis in a court of law and held them responsible for their crimes. Ben Ferencz is one of them. As chief U.S. prosecutor, he tried top SS officials for the murder of a million people. "Death was their tool and life was their toy. If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning," he said at the time. It was the first case he had ever tried. He was just 27 years old.

Now 80, he is still speaking out on human rights and war crimes more than half a century after he stood in the courtroom at Nuremberg. In a recent interview with the Washington File, he says, "I am only one of a handful (U.S. Nuremberg prosecutors) who are still living. I feel it is important for me not only to speak about the importance of Nuremberg, but also to help further human rights progress. Nuremberg was the beginning," he says. "We are now building on what was done there."

On September 29, 1947, Ferencz stood before a court in Nuremberg and accused 22 members of the SS Eisatzgruppen of "responsibility for the cold-blooded massacre of a million innocent and defenseless men, women and children." The Eisatzgruppen were elite units of the SS that followed the German army into the neighboring countries that it invaded. "These extermination squads, totaling some 3,000 men, were to murder without pity or remorse every Jewish man, woman or child and every Gypsy they could lay their hands on," he says. Perceived political enemies of the Third Reich, such as Communists and labor leaders, also were included, he adds.

The evidence presented by the prosecution was based on the records the Nazis themselves kept, Ferencz recalls. "Daily reports (of the killings) were consolidated, marked Top Secret, and then distributed in about 100 mimeographed copies to higher echelons of the Nazi and military hierarchy," he remembers. Incredibly, Ferencz and his researchers recovered the records intact, copies of which they gave to the Nazis' defense attorneys. In addressing the court, Ferencz was -- even then -- mindful of the importance of setting the right precedent for history.

"It is with sorrow and with hope," he said, "that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women and children. Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution. We ask this court to affirm by international penal action man's right to live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or creed. The case we present is a plea of humanity to law."

Today, Ferencz remembers "I didn't call a single witness and rested my case after just three days. The defense case took months; 44 defense lawyers were retained." The lead defendant, an SS general named Otto Ohlendorf, testified that it was his job to order the machine gunning of enemies of the Reich and drop them in to ditches. Ferencz recalls that Ohlendorf saw himself "as a humanitarian. He said he never allowed his troops to take pleasure from what they did. He testified that when he saw them enjoying it, he sent them to the rear."

It was testimony such as this that helped the prosecution case prevail. "Their own records convicted them," says Ferencz. All 22 defendants, including six SS generals, were convicted; 13 were sentenced to death. But the veteran American lawyer stresses that he does not regard the penalties as harsh. "As a soldier in the American army participating in the liberation of many concentration camps, I personally witnessed the remnants of indescribable Nazi atrocities," he says. "Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a vision I can never forget -- the crematoria aglow with burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cardboard waiting to be burned. I had peered into hell."

Asked if this was "victors' justice," Ferencz responds passionately. "The implication of that question is totally wrong. The question is not whether it was 'victors' justice' but whether the defendants received a fair trial -- who else could have tried them? The defendants did receive a fair trial, according to rules of evidence that would stand the test of time. The Nazis' own records convicted them." Few murder cases have involved the deaths of a million people. Even then, at the age of 27, Ferencz realized that this would be the most important work of his life.

Ben Ferencz was born in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania in 1920. He came to America as an infant. His was one of many immigrant families that settled in New York where he was educated. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943 and then joined the U.S. military. He was an enlisted man fighting under the command of the legendary General George Patton. As the allies increasingly learned the scope of Nazi atrocities, Ferencz was transferred to the war crimes branch of the U.S. Army to gather evidence of Nazi brutality. It was this experience that set the stage for the important role he would play after the war at Nuremberg.

After the Nuremberg trials concluded, Ferencz continued to work in the international human rights movement as a New York lawyer, writing a number of books and scores of articles. More recently, he has championed the cause of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Last December, he wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times, co-authored with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, urging former President Clinton to sign the ICC treaty, which the president did shortly before leaving office. The U.S. Senate has not yet ratified it, however.

"But Nuremberg was the beginning," Ferencz says proudly. "Nuremberg's greatest contribution was that it sought to eliminate the source of the most devastating human rights violations -- war-making itself. For the first time in human history, aggressive war was repudiated as a national right and condemned as an international crime. The Nuremberg, and subsequent war crimes trials, were the foundation stones on which a new order of humanity, international justice and peace were to be built."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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