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Prosecuting Evil 2018
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00:00:24I carry with me the burden of having seen
00:00:28man in humanity to man in ways which are incredible to a rational mind and that
00:00:34will always remain with me I am Ben Forens 70 years ago I was a prosecutor at
00:00:47the Nuremberg trials in what was certainly the biggest murder trial in
00:00:51history Ben ferns is an icon really in international criminal justice we are
00:01:00talking about a man whose career spans seven decades this trial or what was
00:01:09most significant about it was it gave us an insight into the mentality of mass
00:01:14murderers they had murdered over a million people including hundreds of
00:01:19thousands of children in cold blood Ben is the personification of the
00:01:26international do-gooder somebody who has no goal in life other than to bring
00:01:32justice to an unjust world my dad used to ask us and I kid you not around the
00:01:39dinner table every night what have you done for mankind today war can make
00:01:48murderers out of otherwise decent people it may come as a shock to some of the
00:01:55viewers who perceive these mass murderers as horrible beasts not so
00:02:03that's such a young age in such a critical moment in modern history to be in the thick of things
00:02:09to do the right thing with conviction and courage and to have witnessed what you had witnessed and turn that
00:02:15into a positive contribution for the better of humanity it's really something to admire and try to emulate
00:02:23the impact of war itself on people affected me so that I wanted to stop war making and have in
00:02:32fact devoted most of my life in that effort to trying to create a more humane world
00:02:40his humanity and his compassion and his fearless commitment to justice all of these years make him one of the
00:02:48most important figures of our time
00:02:54so
00:03:32I'm mindful of the fact that the world has always been torn apart by the type of horror
00:03:39which is featured on TV, but I'm also always mindful of the fact that we are, believe it
00:03:46or not, making very significant progress toward creating a more humane and peaceful world.
00:03:57Okay, Ben Ferenc, welcome it says.
00:04:04Ben is somebody who is very driven, who is extremely passionate and has an absolutely unshakable
00:04:13believe in the rule of law and in international law, that's what drives him.
00:04:17He is somebody who thrives on this passion and thrives on the effort to try to move things
00:04:26forward that seem impossible.
00:04:29When I was a boy or a student, there was no such thing as human rights, there was no such
00:04:36thing as international courts.
00:04:38No one heard of the word genocide for one thing, and I was the first I believe to use
00:04:43that word in the opening paragraph of an indictment where I was the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.
00:04:50Benjamin Ferenc is the titan of international criminal prosecutions.
00:04:56He really established an incredible mandate for international criminal responsibility for the commission
00:05:08of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
00:05:12He laid out a legal process that has become a very important one, taking us into the 21st century.
00:05:24I'd never tried a case. I'd never been in a criminal court in my life. I was 27 years
00:05:29old. But I knew at the beginning that this trial doesn't have any significance at all.
00:05:35It has to set a model of what you should and shouldn't do.
00:05:51That gold medal you see hanging there is their Medal of Freedom, which I was particularly glad to
00:05:57receive because the previous recipient of that had been Nelson Mandela, and I was a strong admirer of his.
00:06:07I was told that I'd make a good lawyer or a good crook. And I didn't quite understand it because
00:06:15I
00:06:15didn't know what a lawyer was. But I knew what the crook was, and I didn't care for it at
00:06:20any time.
00:06:21So I think that may have tilted me toward wanting to be a lawyer, whatever that meant.
00:06:29My sister was born in the same bed I was later born in. When she was born, she was a
00:06:38Hungarian.
00:06:39When I was born about 18 months later, I was a Romanian.
00:06:44It doesn't really matter what you call the country. What matters is how you treat the people in the
00:06:50country. And in both Hungary and Romania, they persecuted the Jews. So it was prudent for my
00:06:56parents to get out if they could.
00:07:01We traveled third class because there was no fourth class.
00:07:07Sleeping on an open deck in midwinter in 1920 was not easy.
00:07:14I was crying all the time because my mother had no milk. My father was being driven crazy with this
00:07:22noise. He couldn't sleep. He was very tempted to throw me overboard. And there's been some indication
00:07:29that he would have had he not been interrupted by my uncle, who was traveling with us.
00:07:37My father was trained as an apprentice shoemaker. He thought when he gets to New York, he'll be able
00:07:43to make boots for the people. No one told him there are no cowboys in New York and no cows.
00:07:49So he found himself unemployable, no money, no friends.
00:07:56It was a tough life, but they didn't know it because where they'd come from, it was tougher.
00:08:02So it was an improvement, no matter what.
00:08:08This was an area known as Hell's Kitchen. It got that name because it was a high crime density area.
00:08:17When I became a criminologist, I found that out by seeing maps of where the most crime was in parts
00:08:23of the world. It was right at home. It was a tough neighborhood, Irish and Italian.
00:08:31It was a lot of gang warfare going on, but it was no guns, no knives. It was just, you
00:08:38know,
00:08:38beating each other up or playing craps on the sidewalk.
00:08:44I didn't speak English at all. I spoke Yiddish with the mother tongue. My father took me to school,
00:08:52public school, to enroll me. They wouldn't take me because I was too small. I couldn't speak English.
00:08:57And they said, come back next year. Next year, they said the same thing. So I finally ended up when
00:09:04my parents were divorced and I went to live with an aunt in Brooklyn. That's where I started my
00:09:10educational career.
00:09:14My eighth grade teacher in public school 80 in the Bronx, I was then living back again with my
00:09:21mother and my stepfather. She asked me to bring my father and mother in if she wanted to talk to
00:09:28them.
00:09:28And we had a little conference.
00:09:32The teacher explained that this is a gifted boy and he should go to college. Well, certainly,
00:09:40she didn't know and I didn't know what a gifted boy meant because we never got any gifts. And I
00:09:45didn't know anybody who ever went to college. This was beyond our knowledge range. And my mother said,
00:09:53well, whatever you want to do, you know, she would accommodate that.
00:10:02The Townsend Harris High School, which was the only one of its kind in the country,
00:10:06where if you graduated from there, you were automatically admitted to City College.
00:10:12I had never had to study before. I heard something and I knew it. It was just, you know,
00:10:18it seemed to be quite automatic. But when I got to this advanced high school,
00:10:23I flunked the two subjects of French and algebra. So I found out there was a movie house featuring
00:10:32foreign films right near where we live. And I went there and fell in love with a French actress,
00:10:39Daniel Darrier. And she was being wooed by Charles Boyer. And I could hear them and I could read in
00:10:46English what they were saying. That was a wonderful teaching tool, except I came out speaking like
00:10:51Charles Boyer. And all that. And that was very good in French. Spoke like a Frenchman.
00:11:06City College was known as the poor man's Harvard, actually. I didn't know that at the time.
00:11:10But it was a very tough school for a lot of tough kids, mostly Jewish kids who
00:11:16couldn't afford a college education. It was a very good school. And it taught me there,
00:11:22first of all, I have to study. Secondly, there's a lot I have to learn. And I think I did.
00:11:31You had to decide what you wanted to do while you were still in college. And most of my friends
00:11:37were
00:11:37going into civil service or something like that. I wanted to go into crime prevention
00:11:42because I'd seen enough crime and I've seen juvenile crime. So I was focusing on juvenile delinquency.
00:11:53I didn't know anything about college, about law schools. And I inquired what's the best school.
00:12:01And I heard that Harvard is the best school, not Brooklyn. All right. So I sent a letter to
00:12:07Harvard applying. And lo and behold, I was accepted. I had done so well on my criminal law exam that
00:12:17they
00:12:17gave me a scholarship based on that. Otherwise, I could never have afforded.
00:12:22I realized that there were different classes of people. And the students who got up and said,
00:12:27sir, every time they asked him a question, which seemed to be very strange, and who wore loafers and
00:12:34and no socks, or Argyle socks, and went punting on the Charles on the weekend. This was another world.
00:12:41And they had fraternities and things like that.
00:12:44I had a few friends from City College who also went to Harvard, and I palled around with them.
00:12:50But that was another social world at Harvard itself.
00:12:56I found a program in the government where if you were working for a professor, they gave you a
00:13:00stipend. I had no money. I had no money at all. The Roscoe Pound I particularly admired. He was
00:13:07noted for his jurisprudence. He was an old man. He could hardly see. He had an eye
00:13:12shade. And I wanted to work for him. He said, no, I can't accept that. It has to go through
00:13:18my brain,
00:13:18he said, his brain. I can't get it go through somebody else's brain. So he turned me down.
00:13:23So I went to see the next professor that I was interested in was Sheldon Gluck. He was the only
00:13:29one who taught criminology. And his first question, what was going to cost? I said, it's free. He said,
00:13:35I'll take it. So I became an assistant to him. And when the war had broken out,
00:13:42he began to study war crimes. The first assignment was give me everything in the Harvard Law Library
00:13:47which relates to war crimes. That became more relevant because I suspect, I don't know,
00:13:53that when the army turned to him, he was consulting with the Pentagon. They turned to him because he'd written
00:13:58these books on war crimes. Then he said, go find Benny. He's out there somewhere. And they tapped me
00:14:06and they sent me to Patton's headquarters. And they said, your name has been forwarded from Washington.
00:14:10So I can only imagine that it came from Sheldon Gluck.
00:14:24What opened my eyes was, of course, the headlines. The newspaper, they were murdering all the Jews.
00:14:30I said, how can I sabotage the German government? And so what I did was I wrote to the local
00:14:36consulate.
00:14:37And I said, please, I'd like to disseminate some of your literature to justify Hitler and so on.
00:14:43And they sent me piles and piles of propaganda, absolute propaganda. I took them and threw them
00:14:49in the garbage. That was my form of sabotage against the German government.
00:15:00The war broke out. And I went with everybody I knew to try to volunteer into different branches
00:15:06of the service. And most of them, they wouldn't take me at all. As an airport pilot,
00:15:13they said I couldn't reach the pedals. A navigator, they said, if I were told to bomb Berlin,
00:15:18I'd end up in Tokyo as a paratrooper. They said, you'll go up instead of down.
00:15:23There was a desperate need for my skills. I was furious, absolutely furious,
00:15:28because it wouldn't take me. I asked myself, what can I do to be of most help? And because I
00:15:36could speak
00:15:37French like a Frenchman, I thought if they can drop me behind the lines in occupied France and teach me
00:15:43how to use dynamite, I'll be able to blow up all the German trains and communication lines. I wish they
00:15:49were back in Berlin. And ended up finally as a buck private in the artillery about which I knew
00:15:55absolutely nothing. As a typist in the supply room, I couldn't even type and they never taught me how to
00:16:00type. So the dumbest things you could possibly do with a guy who's eager to serve, they did to me.
00:16:08And I have never forgiven them.
00:16:13We were trained to shoot down high-flying planes. That was going to be our mission.
00:16:24I am of the firm opinion today, still, that we shot down more American and British planes than German
00:16:31planes. I had his assignment, and we all did, when we see an American plane coming over and he doesn't
00:16:40give us the correct signal, friend or foe. You hit the plane and it explodes. I never go to see
00:16:46fireworks.
00:16:47I've seen them. The whole sky is brightened. And then we go, each one of us soldiers carrying a
00:16:54little cardboard box, walking hip to hip, trying to find a piece of finger to identify the body.
00:17:01Find out who the hell it was. We knew it was an American plane by that time, but you've got
00:17:06to
00:17:06report to the next of kin that the guy's dead. Smashed to smithereens. The engine would still be,
00:17:14you know, partly intact. But to find a finger was already a great discovery. I found several
00:17:20fingers. You find a clump of hair, you put it in the box, you send it back to the Agent
00:17:25General and work it over and notify the next of kin. That's war.
00:17:33I tell you, I didn't stop and ask myself, what's my emotional state?
00:17:38I asked myself, what's next? Move, move, you know?
00:17:45No time for emotion. No time for, you know, being shocked for tears or anything like that.
00:17:57My final assignments in the army was to be a war crimes investigator, entering the concentration
00:18:04camps as they were liberated in order to collect evidence for the crimes.
00:18:12We get a report into headquarters, tank battalion so-and-so has come upon a scene where there are
00:18:20people walking out of what looks like a war camp of some kind. They're all dressed in something
00:18:26like pajamas and looks like they're all starving. That was about the gist of the report. I get to the
00:18:33colonel, the colonel hands it to Forenz or to a captain to Forenz. I get in the jeep and off
00:18:38I go.
00:18:45My dad is a guy who's been traumatized by what he saw,
00:18:49smell, heard and felt, you know, with his own eyes, ears, hands.
00:18:54I read quite a number of letters that he wrote while he was there liberating the camps. What he saw,
00:19:01what he felt while this was going on. This has fueled a nuclear reactor inside this man.
00:19:07And it's still, still, still what he does every day.
00:19:14I would first find the commanding officer of the tank battalion. I'd go to him and say,
00:19:20I'm here on orders of General Patton, war crimes investigator. I want 10 men immediately surround
00:19:26the stripes to the office. Nobody goes in or out without my permission.
00:19:33And look back on it, you know, I built a screen, some sort of a screen before my mind to
00:19:40say,
00:19:40this is not real. This is, you know, I just go ahead, you know.
00:19:48It's incomprehensible to a rational human mind.
00:19:53People lying dead on the floor. You don't know if they're dead or alive. The floor is covered with
00:19:59dead people. Some are moving, they're pleading with their eyes, helping, you know. They're dressed
00:20:06in rags, you know, complete rags. The SS is fleeing, trying to run out the other end. Some inmates
00:20:13are alive, catch an SS man and beat him to death or burn him alive. I've seen that too.
00:20:20And the medics are not yet there. You know, they'll be coming in soon. And the crematory are going.
00:20:29Stacks of bodies, looks like skeletons or bones, piled up like cordwood in front of the crematory.
00:20:37Stench in the air. The human beings behaving like rats in the garbage pile, digging, crawling for a bite to
00:20:44eat.
00:20:58I can't go on describing it. It becomes vivid again. And I was ice cold. I didn't
00:21:10shed a tear. I didn't hesitate. I went. I did my job. Because that was my job. And to get
00:21:17out as fast as you can.
00:21:31The war was over. And I joined the army to help win the war. We had won. My primary goal
00:21:39after I was to get home as soon as possible, try to resume a normal life.
00:21:44Not in the wildest imagination, but I have dreamt that I would turn around and go back to Germany.
00:21:50That was the furthest thing from my mind. I was with 10 million other GIs coming home looking for a
00:21:56job.
00:21:58And when they came from the Pentagon saying, dear sir, they'd never called me sir before.
00:22:04Will you please come to Washington? We want to talk to you. I assumed there was a connection with job
00:22:10application.
00:22:11And off I went to Washington. And then my life took a different turn.
00:22:26The end of the Second World War, where Europe, parts of Asia just devastated. How many millions of people dead?
00:22:43And not just deaths, but crimes committed on unimaginable industrial scale by the Third Reich in Germany.
00:23:02The pictures from the liberated concentration camps did horrify people.
00:23:16They were so atrocious that they couldn't be left unanswered. Something had to happen. You couldn't just have a settlement
00:23:23and go back to normal.
00:23:27The Allied powers decided that you had to stigmatize what happened. That this had consequences.
00:23:39We know there are some people who said, just take out the Nazi murderers and shoot them. There are others
00:23:45who said, just let it alone. What's passed is passed.
00:23:49To its credit, the US administration insisted on a trial.
00:23:57And to see the 22 top Nazi leaders still alive in the dock in that courtroom in Nuremberg,
00:24:09I think sent a signal that these kinds of crimes could be prosecuted fairly and those responsible held to account.
00:24:29Attention! Tribunal! Judges from Britain, America, Russia, and France assemble in Nuremberg's courthouse.
00:24:37Empowered to impose sentence of death or such punishment as it may consider just, the tribunal sits in judgment upon
00:24:4320 leaders of the Nazi party.
00:24:46If you think of the situation in summer 1945, what a lot of German cities looked like. It was really
00:24:53challenging to find a place where you could hold such a trial. You would need the building, you would need
00:24:59a prison, you know, just infrastructure. You would need an airport, something where you could fly in people.
00:25:05And they ended up here in Nuremberg, because the powers of justice had survived the war more or less undestroyed.
00:25:14And of course, there also was the symbolic aspects.
00:25:24Nuremberg was the place where the Nazis held the annual party rallies. So it's more than an infrastructural question. The
00:25:33symbolism was very much in the heads of those planning the Nuremberg trials in July 1945.
00:25:41If you go back and read the original IMT, the International Military Tribunal, the way Robert Jackson addressed the court,
00:25:50I mean, this is not your classic opening statement. This is poetry in motion.
00:25:55The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave
00:26:07responsibility.
00:26:09The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization
00:26:21cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.
00:26:28I do think that he had a sense that the world, when that trial has ended, would not be the
00:26:35same in international law.
00:26:36You know, he had this sentiment that this is world history, that he was part of, or even the driving
00:26:44force of.
00:26:45That four great nations, flushed with victory, and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance, and voluntarily submit their
00:26:58captive enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid
00:27:09to reason.
00:27:11The Nuremberg trials were the first time in modern times that we had defined crimes against humanity, genocide, and war
00:27:23crimes in such an explicit way, and then held men accountable for violating them.
00:27:30I was interviewed by Colonel Mickey Marcus, who was in the Pentagon, and his job was to try to recruit
00:27:38staff for subsequent proceedings after the international military trial was finished.
00:27:45And he said, no, it was then Colonel Telford Taylor.
00:27:54And that was Colonel Telford Taylor had been assigned by the President Truman to carry on the work of Jackson
00:28:00by being the chief of council for the 12 subsequent trials that were being planned.
00:28:04And so he said, I'm considering, you know, you're going back with me, he said, but I have checked your
00:28:12army record and your background.
00:28:14And I understand that you're occasionally insubordinate.
00:28:18And I said, that's not correct, sir.
00:28:20I'm usually insubordinate.
00:28:22I do not obey any orders that I know are stupid or illegal.
00:28:26But I've been checking up on you, too.
00:28:28And I had in the interim.
00:28:29And I don't think you'll give me that kind of orders.
00:28:32He was also a Harvard graduate and he checked my record.
00:28:35So he smiled and he said, you'll go with me.
00:28:42These were to be 12 additional trials because it was recognized by just taking a snapshot of the International Military
00:28:51Tribunal top Nazi leaders.
00:28:53You still didn't quite understand how it would be possible for a civilized country like Germany to engage in that
00:29:01type of atrocities for which they were responsible.
00:29:03And the idea of the subsequent proceedings, as they were called, was to put the doctors on trial, sampling, who
00:29:11perform medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, the lawyers and judges who perverted the law, which is the framework on
00:29:19which they built the film, Judgment at Nuremberg.
00:29:22You had the industrialists like IG Farben, who provided the money to build Auschwitz and who were working people to
00:29:30death for their own profit in their own companies, give them a chance to state their case.
00:29:36Foreign ministry people and then the SS squads who were the real murderers on the scene.
00:29:41So the idea was to take a sampling for these 12 different categories and project that and through the form
00:29:49of these 12 trials to give a comprehensive picture.
00:29:51And Telford Taylor was to be chief of counsel for those 12.
00:29:56I can imagine no two more different people than Telford Taylor and Ben.
00:30:02Telford, this very tall, elegant, waspy gentleman who could not have been more polite and thoughtful.
00:30:12You never got a quick answer out of Telford.
00:30:15It was always, let me think about that.
00:30:18And Ben, this kind of dynamo of a tiny little Jewish guy with none of the kind of elegance of
00:30:27Telford.
00:30:27He had the same elegance of mind, but not elegance of physical appearance.
00:30:32I can easily see the attraction.
00:30:35He was brilliant, insightful, determined.
00:30:39He had all the qualities that one would look for if one were a Telford Taylor.
00:30:48By the time we got there, to that stage, he had already picked lawyers for most of his trials.
00:30:54And he said, Ben, look, you have the experience in the field of going into the camps, collecting evidence for
00:31:01the army trials.
00:31:02We have a number of suspects, but if you have a suspect and no evidence, you have nothing.
00:31:08Your job is to go find the evidence.
00:31:11So I took a staff of about 50 people, I went to Berlin, set up the organization to start searching
00:31:17in the archives of the foreign ministry, the SS, the Gestapo, the army, and the industrialists, to see what evidence
00:31:25we had that they had committed war crimes.
00:31:29It was in that capacity that one of my staff members, a boy from Switzerland, came and he said, look
00:31:35what I found in the offices of the foreign ministry.
00:31:39And it was a complete dossier.
00:31:41The daily reports coming in from the front saying how many Jews these units had murdered.
00:31:47Now, these Jews were called Einsatzgruppen, and it was deliberately disguised so that you couldn't tell from the name what
00:31:55it was, because their assignment was to go in behind the German lines and then murder.
00:32:01They never used the word murder.
00:32:03They said eliminate, exterminate.
00:32:05Every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on and do the same thing for the
00:32:10gypsies and do the same thing for any suspected possible enemies of the Reich.
00:32:15That was their job.
00:32:17They had these daily reports sent back to Berlin, where they were consolidated and put together in a folder.
00:32:24And each of those reports was sent down, and I had the distribution list, to 99 different branches of the
00:32:31German government.
00:32:32The people like the army who said, I never heard anything about that.
00:32:35It was not in my area and so on.
00:32:37That was baloney.
00:32:38They were under my distribution list.
00:32:40So I took a little adding machine and began to add them up.
00:32:43And when I reached a million, million people murdered, I said, that's enough.
00:32:48I took a sampling, took the next plane from Berlin, where I had the headquarters for that, went down to
00:32:54Nuremberg.
00:32:55And I said, General, by that time he had been promoted, we've got to put on a new trial.
00:33:04The Einsatzgruppen were task forces moving behind the front lines, and their only purpose was to kill Jews, minorities, and
00:33:17opposition.
00:33:17So they were really, like, killing squads.
00:33:22These were the forces that rode around, and machine gunned whole villages and communities lined up on the edge of
00:33:37mass graves.
00:33:44This was not the industrial horror of Auschwitz.
00:33:52This was a direct human being to human being atrocity.
00:34:04It concentrated in a very direct way the ability of one human being to savagely destroy another in a way
00:34:17that is just incomprehensible.
00:34:28He said, I'm sorry, we can't do it.
00:34:31All the 12 trials have been approved by the Pentagon.
00:34:36We have the staff has already been assigned.
00:34:38We don't have staff.
00:34:40We probably can't get approval for any more crimes anyway.
00:34:43The Pentagon had already cooled on trials, so we can't do it.
00:34:48Ah, I said, you man, you can't let these guys go.
00:34:51I have in my hand mass murder on an incredible scale.
00:34:54The evidence is all here.
00:34:56You're not going to let these guys walk away.
00:34:58He said, well, can you do it in addition to your other work?
00:35:01And I said, sure.
00:35:02He said, okay, so you do it.
00:35:05Okay.
00:35:05And so it happened, and I became the chief prosecutor of what turned out to be the biggest murder trial
00:35:11in human history.
00:35:13I have to say, looking back on myself at 27, I don't know about you.
00:35:18I can't think of very many people who would have had the confidence, the skill, and the knowledge in a
00:35:27new legal territory to be so persuasive in that role.
00:35:40First of all, you only pick a guy who's in captivity.
00:35:43You don't name Adolf Hitler because you know he's dead, and there's no sense putting him in.
00:35:48So I first said, is he dead or alive?
00:35:51And how do we have him?
00:35:53If we haven't got him, you know, Mengele and people like that, forget it.
00:35:57They may be the top two.
00:35:58We haven't got him.
00:35:59So you have to know he's in captivity.
00:36:06Now, then what evidence do we have against it?
00:36:10The Einsatzgruppen was easy.
00:36:12I had their daily reports.
00:36:14I had the roster of all the members of the Einsatzgruppen.
00:36:18So I just went through them and picked me out the highest-ranking ones.
00:36:22And so I had about five or six generals.
00:36:25I had no enlisted men in my dock.
00:36:27Having been an enlisted man in the United States Army, maybe I was biased.
00:36:30I had no enlisted men in my dock.
00:36:33Give me the highest rank and the best educated.
00:36:36Those are the two criteria.
00:36:40Many of them with doctor degrees.
00:36:43Dr. Dr. Rush had a double doctorate, and I never had heard that before.
00:36:47I was surprised.
00:36:48I said, Dr. Dr. Two doctorates.
00:36:50He killed 33,721 Gs in two days.
00:36:5429,30 September, 1941.
00:36:59I got the bastard.
00:37:10I was the first one in the courtroom.
00:37:16I went in.
00:37:17I sat down.
00:37:18There was nobody but me.
00:37:24I was thinking over my statement, which I had written the day before.
00:37:28I was seeing if I could improve it.
00:37:30And I was waiting for the trial to begin.
00:37:36I was calm.
00:37:38I was determined.
00:37:42I didn't realize I would be making history.
00:37:54We are now ready to hear the presentation by the prosecution.
00:37:58I made the opening statement, which stated the case.
00:38:02It did not appear on the film.
00:38:04The film didn't start rolling until after the first paragraph had been done.
00:38:09And what it left out was the important beginning.
00:38:11It was, may it please your honors, it is with sorrow and with hope that we hear disclose
00:38:17the massive murder of a million people, et cetera.
00:38:21This was a tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance.
00:38:28But I was very specific.
00:38:30Vengeance is not our goal.
00:38:33No one we seek merely a just retribution.
00:38:38We ask this court to affirm by international penal action, man's right to live in peace
00:38:47and dignity, regardless of his race or creed.
00:38:53The case we present is a plea of humanity to law.
00:38:59So here at 27, I don't know about you, 27 is just the beginning of being a grown-up.
00:39:05And he was in front of the world.
00:39:07He wasn't just in front of these judges and these defendants.
00:39:11He was in front of the world, making a case as a prosecutor.
00:39:15Looking at the judges and saying the case we present is a plea of humanity to law.
00:39:21Beautiful stuff.
00:39:23Honestly, it was years for me before I wouldn't get literally teary-eyed and emotional just
00:39:28saying those words because I think they're so powerful, so beautiful, so applicable, so
00:39:33apropos to what's happening today.
00:39:35We shall show that these deeds of men in uniform were the methodical execution of long-range
00:39:44plans to destroy ethnic, national, political, and religious groups which stood condemned
00:39:52in the Nazi mind.
00:39:55Here's Ben standing on some books so that he can be taller than the lectern that is immediately
00:40:05in front of him.
00:40:07I can only imagine what he must have felt like here.
00:40:10This little Jewish guy who had his parents not left would have been one of those gassed
00:40:15and killed, standing and looking at these German supermen and saying, I have more power
00:40:23now, but I'm just a kid.
00:40:25It must have been such a mixed feeling of passion and determination.
00:40:30And I have to do this.
00:40:32And nervousness and a combination of self-confidence and self-doubt.
00:40:48You know, this was really every prosecutor's dream.
00:40:51You don't have to call a witness.
00:40:53All you have to do is enter the documents, primary documents, saying when, where, who did
00:40:58the killing.
00:40:58Because you had enough written documentary material that you can point at, could point
00:41:04at, saying, yeah, here you say, is this your signature?
00:41:07And that's it.
00:41:09You didn't need to have any more approved by witnesses.
00:41:13And of course, the Germans were cautious enough to put everything into the books that they did.
00:41:20And offered as prosecution exhibit 29.
00:41:26I see there's another objection coming.
00:41:28I'll continue the quote.
00:41:37The defense lawyers, who were generally German, were actually a highly talented group of lawyers.
00:41:45And they bore themselves quite well in the courtroom.
00:41:49And they sometimes were able to challenge the prosecution quite effectively.
00:41:55They were very much individualists.
00:41:58And they didn't come up with a sort of common strategy.
00:42:02They all had their own strategies.
00:42:04They were paid by the tribunal.
00:42:08And for the times then, it was a considerable amount of money.
00:42:13You know, in 1945, Germany was totally destructed.
00:42:16And for your lawyer, I think it was quite a good thing to work at the tribunal because you were
00:42:22given money on a regular basis.
00:42:24It should be recognized that in 1945 and 46, the German people were not necessarily seeking to tarnish the reputation
00:42:35of their surviving leaders at that time.
00:42:39There was a lot of opposition to Nuremberg by the German people.
00:42:43And so when they saw their leaders up on the stand, this was an assault on German honor.
00:42:49And so, you know, the defense lawyers knew that they sort of had the German people behind them in representing
00:42:58the Nazi defendants on the stand.
00:43:11Not guilty in the sense of the indictment is what they said.
00:43:17But what did that mean?
00:43:18The judge said he correctly would take that as a plea of not guilty.
00:43:22I think the defendants honestly believed they were not guilty.
00:43:27They had persuaded themselves that they did the right thing.
00:43:32These were people who were not necessarily born to become mass murderers.
00:43:40They were susceptible to the pressures that made them mass murderers in the Nazi regime.
00:43:47That doesn't mean that I could ever do that.
00:43:50I could never do that, no matter what the circumstances were.
00:43:53There were certain people who could never, ever become Nazis.
00:43:57And there were others who could have gone either way.
00:43:59And I think many of the defendants in Nuremberg could have gone either way.
00:44:05I had no chance to control the killing.
00:44:11Because, for example, Noske was at the time 250 kilometers away from me.
00:44:18Dr. Otto Ollendorf, general of the SS, I knew him quite well.
00:44:25Now, would I call him an animal?
00:44:27He was rational.
00:44:29He was, I'm sure, good to his cats and dogs.
00:44:32He was the father of five children.
00:44:34He made a sensible argument.
00:44:37He was reasonably honest in his answers.
00:44:40He said he would do it again, even if they ordered him to kill his own sister.
00:44:45And the reason was, Hitler knew that the Germans were going to be attacked by the Russians.
00:44:52And Hitler had more knowledge than he did.
00:44:55Therefore, he was in no position to challenge that.
00:44:58And it was lawful, therefore, to act in anticipatory self-defense to prevent that from happening.
00:45:06And that's what he was doing.
00:45:07He made an argument which the Pentagon would make today.
00:45:12Self-defense was his plea.
00:45:16Very well.
00:45:17We'll leave this after one more question.
00:45:20The figure of 90,000 is the best estimate you can give at this moment.
00:45:29I take it we must continue to read that with the qualification which you gave in direct testimony
00:45:38that you think there's a great deal of exaggeration in it.
00:45:42He made the point.
00:45:44Some of the commanders would take the infants and just hold them by a leg and smash their head against
00:45:50a tree.
00:45:50And he said, I didn't believe in that.
00:45:53He said, I told my men, when a mother has an infant, and of course the infant is crying and
00:45:59the mother is crying,
00:46:01and she's holding the infant to her breast, aim for the infant, because you'll kill both of them with one
00:46:07shot,
00:46:07you'll quiet the mother, you'll save ammunition, and it's much more humane.
00:46:13And there were other things.
00:46:14For example, we had gas vans.
00:46:16They were ordinary, you know, like trailers here, except that they attached the hose from the engine to the inside,
00:46:24so the fumes would asphyxiate the people inside the van, and they'd pack them in, solid, lock them in,
00:46:31and about 20 minutes they'd get to the place where they're going to dump them, open the van and dump
00:46:35them all into the ditch.
00:46:36But Holendorf said, I didn't like the gas vans, because some of them were not dead.
00:46:42And then you had to sort them out by hand.
00:46:44And they were screaming, and they were bloody, and they were messy.
00:46:48And he said, I was bad for the morale of the men to have to do that.
00:46:52So I told him I didn't want any more gas vans.
00:46:55So Holendorf was really quite a decent chap, you might say, aside from the fact that he killed 90,000
00:47:02Jews.
00:47:02I'm sure he was quite a gentleman.
00:47:15These million people were murdered because they didn't share the race, the religion, or the ideology of their executioners.
00:47:23And I said, that's a terrible crime, and it's a crime against humanity, and I called it a crime against
00:47:29humanity.
00:47:32And I said, if we can prevent that in future by condemning crimes against humanity,
00:47:37we will reassert the legal right of all people to be protected.
00:47:46If we could establish a principle of law, which would protect humanity in the future, then this trial would be
00:47:52significant.
00:47:59For the first time, the international community tried to put law as an answer to these most horrible crimes
00:48:10that originated from Nazi Germany, and this was the revolution.
00:48:14It started the way we think about international criminal law, about international law generally.
00:48:23I had a list I made myself on a yellow page in which I listed all the defendants,
00:48:29and I listed what I thought the sentence should be.
00:48:33The actual sentences were more severe than what I would have listed.
00:48:40I was numb.
00:48:42They were all imprisoned below the courthouse.
00:48:46There is a lift, like Mariah the Covec, which keeps going around,
00:48:50into the courthouse and a sliding door which opens.
00:48:53As each defendant came up,
00:48:56they would hear the judge for the crimes of which you are convicted.
00:49:01This tribunal sentenced you to death by hanging.
00:49:05Put the earphones back.
00:49:07Take it off.
00:49:08Bow.
00:49:09Step back a step into the lift.
00:49:11The door closes, and he drops down into hell.
00:49:14That's what I saw.
00:49:17One after the other.
00:49:18For the crimes of which you have been convicted, this tribunal sends you death by hanging.
00:49:23Death by hanging.
00:49:24Death by hanging.
00:49:25I thought my head was going to bust.
00:49:28It was customary for the chief prosecutor to invite his staff for a party when every trial was ended.
00:49:34I had a party arranged for my house.
00:49:36I couldn't go to my own party.
00:49:38I went home, went to bed.
00:49:40My head was pounding with it.
00:49:43So, how do you describe that emotion, that feeling?
00:49:47I didn't say I'm sorry for them.
00:49:49I didn't say I'm sorry for them.
00:49:50I didn't say hooray for me.
00:49:51It was a very tense, very severe emotional reaction, knowing that you're responsible for killing this guy.
00:50:02Otto Ohlendorf, he was the only defendant that I ever talked to, man to man, after he was sentenced to
00:50:12death.
00:50:13I felt, look, this guy is going to hang for sure.
00:50:18He's the father of five kids.
00:50:20He has a wife.
00:50:22He was honest on the trial.
00:50:25Maybe he'll tell me something, you know, tell my children I love them, tell my wife I'm sorry.
00:50:30Nobody ever said they were sorry.
00:50:33So I went down to talk to him.
00:50:36And he's locked up in a cell behind bars, under the courthouse.
00:50:40And a little window opens up.
00:50:44And I said to him,
00:50:46Herr Ohlendorf, kann ich Sie etwas tun?
00:50:47In German, I said, can I do something for you?
00:50:51And then he began.
00:50:53You'll see, I was right.
00:50:55The Russians are going to take over the Jews.
00:50:58The Jews in America will suffer.
00:51:00And he goes, repeating the argument he read on the trial.
00:51:03I let him go for about a minute.
00:51:06And then I said, goodbye, Mr. Ohlendorf in English.
00:51:10Closed the door and left.
00:51:11The next thing I saw, I was invited to come to the hanging.
00:51:14I refused to go.
00:51:16But they sent me the tape anyway.
00:51:18So I have a picture of him hanging by the neck for eight minutes and then pronounced dead.
00:51:33I wanted to go home.
00:51:35But then something terrible happened.
00:51:39I was approached by Jewish organizations and they said, hey, boy, there's something else
00:51:46to be done here.
00:51:47What about the victims?
00:51:48And it didn't take a long time to convince me.
00:51:51They had managed to get a military government law enacted saying that the property of murdered
00:51:57Jews would go not to the German state, but to a consortium of Jewish organizations, which would
00:52:04use it for charity purposes of the survivors.
00:52:07And that sounded like a very good idea, except they wanted me to take it over and to do the
00:52:12job.
00:52:13I said, how long do you think it'll take?
00:52:16They said, well, we'd like a commitment of two years.
00:52:19So I went back to my dear wife and she said, well, the cause seems good enough, but they
00:52:26said two years, but as I know you, it would only take one year, so take the job.
00:52:32Whereupon, being the sole employee, I declared myself the director general and set about to
00:52:39recover the airless, unclaimed Jewish property.
00:52:41Naturally, the cemeteries were unclaimed because the Jewish congregations, which had built up
00:52:47these cemeteries for centuries, were gone.
00:52:50They were abolished and the cemeteries became property of the Reich.
00:52:54So I immediately asserted ownership of all these cemeteries on behalf of the successor
00:53:00organization.
00:53:02All well and good, except the question arose, who pays the cost of the maintenance of the
00:53:08cemeteries?
00:53:10Hundreds of cemeteries.
00:53:16The Polish government and the Polish Red Cross invited me to come to Poland and be their
00:53:22guest for a week.
00:53:24I said, the only thing I really wanted to see in Poland was Auschwitz because I'd never
00:53:28been there and had been liberated by the Russians.
00:53:33The field behind Auschwitz is covered with wild grass.
00:53:40And under the grass, there was the fertilizer taken from the crematorium.
00:53:46And I noticed there were some, looked like bones.
00:53:49They were little bones of some kind.
00:53:51They may have been bones of a child or of a hand.
00:53:54And I picked them up and I put them in my pocket.
00:53:57And somebody asked me, why am I doing that?
00:53:59I said, I want to be reminded what the hell I'm doing in Germany.
00:54:04Anyway, the question comes up, who's going to maintain those cemeteries and whose expense?
00:54:11The Germans assure us that they will take care of it as they would their own cemeteries for 20 years.
00:54:18I said, wait a minute.
00:54:19You take care of your own cemeteries for 20 years, but in the Jewish tradition, once a cemetery, always a
00:54:25cemetery.
00:54:26One of them says, Mr. Ferentz, you know, be reasonable.
00:54:30I mean, do you expect us to give them more rice than what we give to our own German citizens?
00:54:37At that point, I exploded.
00:54:41I really got mad and I pulled the bones out.
00:54:45I said, if they were alive, they wouldn't ask you to take care of the cemeteries.
00:54:49You killed them.
00:54:50That's why they have to ask you.
00:54:51And I pounded the bones on the table.
00:54:54And I said, you want them to pay?
00:54:56You ask them.
00:54:58And the high tension, because I very seldom get angry.
00:55:03The chairman, who was very wise, he said, meeting is adjourned for 15 minutes.
00:55:09And we all got up and they all left me too.
00:55:13They come back after 15 minutes and the chairman says, we accept your terms.
00:55:20Just like that.
00:55:21Thank you very much.
00:55:22And I left as soon as I could.
00:55:24That meant that the German government was legally responsible, and I assume they've done it, because they're pretty good that
00:55:30way, on maintaining all the Jewish cemeteries in perpetuity.
00:55:34That's a fortune.
00:55:37Those bones clinched the argument.
00:55:40Without the bones, it would not have happened, I'm sure.
00:55:44So I thought these were historic bones, and I sent them to the Holocaust Museum, and I told them the
00:55:51story.
00:55:58My wife, Gertrude, with whom I've been happily wed for over 71 years.
00:56:04She's also from Transylvania, as I am.
00:56:08She came to America when she was about 16 years old.
00:56:12Also no language, no money, no skills.
00:56:15Immediately went to work, went to night school, and got herself a master's degree in due course and became a
00:56:22health teacher.
00:56:26I've been very fortunate, because she had believed in what I was doing.
00:56:31She tolerated my absences when I was going on trips around the world.
00:56:37My dad used to tuck us in at night.
00:56:40He would tell us stories every night.
00:56:42He would take each of his kids on what he called dates on the weekend, one at a time.
00:56:47He used to play King of the Hill and, you know, Blind Man's Bluff or whatever the games were.
00:56:53He was very involved with his kids, particularly when we were young, growing up.
00:56:58So he made time for his kids.
00:57:03It was time to go home.
00:57:05I have my wife, I have four children, born in Nuremberg.
00:57:09I have to go home.
00:57:12So I went home.
00:57:15The big law firm said, oh, it's great.
00:57:18We have to hang Nazis, we'll call you.
00:57:20You got any clients?
00:57:21You know?
00:57:23So I began to take the typical New York case of somebody who fell down on the subway and broke
00:57:27a leg.
00:57:28Okay.
00:57:28You know?
00:57:30Telford had a similar experience.
00:57:33He came back and he went into partnership with his brother-in-law, who happened to be the dean of
00:57:39the Harvard Law School, when he signed my diploma.
00:57:41His name was Landis, James Landis.
00:57:44So he said, Ben, why don't you come in with us?
00:57:46That didn't bring us any clients either.
00:57:49But I was known as the lawyer who takes hopeless cases on a contingent fee.
00:57:54And what I did was I would find a moral situation where the claimant didn't seem to have a chance,
00:58:02but I felt it was right.
00:58:03I went after them on a contingent fee, which was usually much less than the normal contingent fee.
00:58:08They practiced human rights law at a time when there was no such thing.
00:58:14They practiced civil liberties law.
00:58:17Every case they took was a do-gooder case.
00:58:21Free speech cases, anti-McCarthyism cases, every kind of case that I wanted to take when I was a lawyer.
00:58:29And I think that both Telford and Ben had an enormous impact on a generation of lawyers my age.
00:58:36And I made enough money to invest it wisely and carefully.
00:58:39And so from being a poor boy, I got to be a rich boy.
00:58:42And I gave away all my money.
00:58:44I'm in the process of doing it still, including to Cardozo, including to Harvard Law School, etc.
00:58:52Teller went to Vietnam.
00:58:53And he wrote a book, Nuremberg and Vietnam, in which he made the point that the United States forgot the
00:58:59lessons we try to teach the world in Nuremberg.
00:59:04And he was an outspoken critic of the McCarthy regime.
00:59:08He was very courageous, absolutely correct, a good writer, high moral standards.
00:59:15He deserved much more recognition and responsibility than he had.
00:59:21He was an excellent lawyer, never properly appreciated.
00:59:39We are in a time where we find the world in many different areas in Hina's horrible conflicts.
00:59:51And the world, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had the hope and expectation that we'll be in a
01:00:01more peaceful environment.
01:00:02And this turned out to be a horrible fallacy.
01:00:08You know, after the Holocaust, we said never again.
01:00:11And we've seen it again and again and again and again.
01:00:15And there's no indication that it's going to end.
01:00:20We are now spending even more money to be in an arms race.
01:00:25Who can build the weapons to kill more people?
01:00:28That is the current state of the world.
01:00:31And we have to recognize that the only way out of this, law, not war.
01:00:37The world is struggling for an answer.
01:00:42And an answer could be found in international criminal law.
01:00:47Law could be an answer to conflicts with human suffering of an almost unseen nature.
01:01:01The time has come, guys, to stop this killing.
01:01:04Have a court settle your disputes by peaceful means.
01:01:08And until you do that, you're going to continue killing yourselves.
01:01:13It's just common sense.
01:01:15If you have international crimes, you need an international court.
01:01:17So I began to write on the international criminal court.
01:01:22I remember as a young lawyer, very interested in international law.
01:01:27I was in the international law firm.
01:01:29I probably was the only person in the law firm that bought Ben's books.
01:01:35Because I was so impressed with what Ben Ferencz had written in 1980 about,
01:01:40you have to build an international criminal court.
01:01:43You have these individuals who become part of international lawmaking
01:01:48that have an enormous individual impact.
01:01:51And Ben was that.
01:01:52He worked for decades to try and get a replacement for the Nuremberg tribunals
01:01:58within the United Nations General Assembly, an international criminal court.
01:02:03I was the ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues
01:02:06during the second term of the Clinton administration.
01:02:10Ben Ferencz was one hell of a lobbyist.
01:02:14He reminded me of Raphael Lemkin, who, you know, was the father of the Genocide Convention
01:02:19and who spent the 1950s going up and down Capitol Hill
01:02:22urging ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United States.
01:02:26Well, Ben Ferencz was there in the 1990s pressing hard,
01:02:31and he kept at me.
01:02:34And he was persistent.
01:02:36He's knocking on every delegate's door to try and get them to support a strong international criminal court.
01:02:45And the mantra that you hear when you interview him today
01:02:48is the mantra that he had back then about the importance of justice and the rule of law,
01:02:55not only in international affairs, but in the survival of the human race.
01:03:08It becomes reachable in Rome.
01:03:24I made an opening statement there.
01:03:27They invited me because they knew me.
01:03:29I went to all the meetings, and I wrote papers.
01:03:31I wrote, you know, hundreds and dozens of articles, pieces, lectures, nagging, and so on.
01:03:39I said, the place is here, the time is now.
01:03:42And I began it by saying,
01:03:45I have come to speak for those who cannot speak, the victims.
01:03:57Well, the time is fall of 2000.
01:04:02We're coming towards the end of the Clinton administration.
01:04:06We have a deadline, which is December 31st, 2000,
01:04:12the last opportunity for any country to sign the Rome Statute.
01:04:17In the government, I was working feverishly to get President Clinton to that decision point.
01:04:23But, you know, it's a funny thing about government and about presidents.
01:04:28You can do an enormous amount internally to get everything lined up and to his desk, you know,
01:04:34in big three-ring binders where he's going to sit down and diligently consider this issue.
01:04:41But to really trigger that man's interest,
01:04:45you have to have something hit him from the outside.
01:04:48You just have to have it.
01:04:50Well, with respect to the International Criminal Court,
01:04:54that moment arrived, not on TV,
01:04:58it arrived on the op-ed page of the Washington Post by two men,
01:05:03Ben Ferenz and Robert McNamara.
01:05:05Our $50 billion defense program is explained by Secretary of Defense McNamara.
01:05:12In the past year, we've doubled the rate of building Polaris submarines.
01:05:16One day, I had a call.
01:05:19My wife took the message.
01:05:21She's saying, Secretary McNamara wanted to talk to you.
01:05:26And he said, I want you to write an op-ed piece for The New York Times,
01:05:30which both of us can sign,
01:05:32calling on the United States to sign on to the International Criminal Court.
01:05:36Remember who these people are.
01:05:38Ben Ferenz, prosecutor from Nuremberg,
01:05:43unimpeachable credentials.
01:05:44But who's the other guy?
01:05:47Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War.
01:05:52My response to him in practically these words, I'm sure,
01:05:56Mr. Secretary, I think you realize that if we had such a court,
01:06:01you might be one of the first defendants.
01:06:03He said, I know that.
01:06:05I said, then why do you ask me to get the United States to sign on?
01:06:10He said, I didn't know it was illegal.
01:06:12We're talking about the Vietnam War.
01:06:13If I had known, I wouldn't have done it.
01:06:16I said, okay, I drafted the letter.
01:06:19That was a very powerful partnership.
01:06:24And you bet President Bill Clinton would read that op-ed.
01:06:30And if there's anything anyone should know about President Clinton is,
01:06:33he actually makes decisions at the last moment.
01:06:36He makes good decisions, but he does wait until the last moment.
01:06:40And so he did finally reach that decision early of December 31st,
01:06:45and I was authorized then to go to New York and sign the treaty.
01:06:51Well, on December 30th, I receive a call instructing me to get a train ticket for the next morning on
01:06:58Amtrak so that I'm in New York.
01:07:00And it happened to be a huge snowstorm.
01:07:02But they said, the president has not made a decision yet, but we want you on that train,
01:07:07because there were no flights.
01:07:08The weather was preventing that.
01:07:10You'll receive instructions when you arrive in New York.
01:07:13And I finally got to Penn Station, and I still had not received the final instruction.
01:07:20I'm riding up the escalator at Penn Station, and I receive a call from the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright,
01:07:29my boss.
01:07:31She informed me that the president had made the decision that the treaty would be signed,
01:07:36and that I had authority now to proceed to the United Nations to sign the document.
01:07:41New York City was completely covered by snow.
01:07:44There were no taxis running.
01:07:45And so I had my snow boots on, and I hiked from Penn Station to the United Nations.
01:07:51The UN had to open just for me to walk in and sign the treaty, because it was closed that
01:07:56day.
01:07:57It was New Year's Eve.
01:07:58They close at the UN.
01:08:00And I walked in to the room where treaties are signed,
01:08:05and there was a very small group of people to witness it.
01:08:09Very interesting.
01:08:10The last official act of the president of the United States, when everybody's sound asleep,
01:08:17and he tells his ambassador to go, sneak in there and sign the goddamn thing.
01:08:23Unfortunately, what George W. Bush did was that he said,
01:08:27with respect to that signature on the treaty,
01:08:29we're no longer going to perform our obligation as a signatory state.
01:08:33So that was the downslide after the Clinton administration, much to my regret.
01:08:39And that's the political process.
01:08:41Or as Churchill's reporter to have said,
01:08:44it's a terrible system.
01:08:46We can't think of a better one.
01:09:13When we started this,
01:09:14every time we met with a UN leader or government,
01:09:18they said, well, work on this, but it'll never happen.
01:09:20Not in your lifetime, not in your children's lifetime.
01:09:23And less than four years later, we had a treaty.
01:09:26Then we were told the treaty would take 20, 25 years,
01:09:30like the law of the sea, to get 60 ratifications.
01:09:33Again, four years later, we had that.
01:09:36It is simply not plausible anymore to argue
01:09:40that any political or military leader
01:09:44who is responsible for the commission of atrocity crimes
01:09:48has the right to get away with it.
01:09:52Nuremberg started that process.
01:09:54We got detracted by the Cold War.
01:09:56The Cold War ended.
01:09:58We regenerated the process
01:10:00in order to hold these individuals responsible
01:10:03and to send a loud and clear signal,
01:10:06you are subject to criminal law, period.
01:10:09And you cannot negotiate your way out of it.
01:10:13May it please, your honors.
01:10:16This is a historic moment
01:10:18in the evolution of international criminal law.
01:10:23For the first time,
01:10:25a permanent international criminal court
01:10:27will hear the closing statement
01:10:30for the prosecution
01:10:31as it concludes its first case
01:10:34against its first accused,
01:10:36Mr. Thomas Lubongo Dila.
01:10:39When the court finally begets its first case,
01:10:42they ask me to do the closing statement.
01:10:44I'm 92 years old.
01:10:46This is against a guy
01:10:47who had been using child soldiers.
01:10:50They go and say,
01:10:51give us food, give us money.
01:10:52And if you have no money to give them
01:10:54and no food they don't,
01:10:55you got a couple of kids,
01:10:56we'll take the kids.
01:10:57And they were taking kids, 13, 14.
01:11:00And the boys,
01:11:01they taught them how to use a gun.
01:11:02The kids loved the excitement of that.
01:11:04And they taught them how to kill.
01:11:06And that happens to be a war crime.
01:11:07When the statute that binds this court
01:11:10was overwhelmingly approved,
01:11:14over 100 sovereign states decided
01:11:17that child recruitment
01:11:19and forcing them to participate in hostilities
01:11:22were, and I'm quoting now from the statute,
01:11:26among the most serious crimes of concern
01:11:29for the international community as a whole.
01:11:31This was the first ICC case.
01:11:35And I believe that it was only fitting
01:11:37that from Nuremberg, Ben Ferenc,
01:11:40to The Hague,
01:11:42it was only fitting that he would be called
01:11:44to do the closing remarks
01:11:47of this historic case.
01:11:49What makes this court so distinctive
01:11:54is its primary goal
01:11:56to deter crimes before they take place
01:12:00by letting wrongdoers know in advance
01:12:03that they will be called to account
01:12:06by an impartial international criminal court.
01:12:10It's not an easy feat
01:12:11to create an institution like this.
01:12:13It requires courage,
01:12:14it requires leadership,
01:12:15it requires the right moment
01:12:17in historical perspective,
01:12:20it requires political will.
01:12:22Without Ben, his contribution,
01:12:24and people like him,
01:12:26this field will not have evolved
01:12:27the way that he has.
01:12:28We still have a long way to go,
01:12:29but it's still an incredible achievement.
01:12:31Ben has played a critical role
01:12:33in the evolution
01:12:34of the international criminal justice
01:12:35and in the creation of the ICC.
01:12:37Rome's statute
01:12:38for the International Criminal Court
01:12:39is one of the strongest,
01:12:41if not the strongest,
01:12:43international law treaty
01:12:44since the end of World War II.
01:12:46You now have an institution
01:12:48in The Hague
01:12:49to hold individuals,
01:12:51no matter who they are,
01:12:53responsible for committing
01:12:54these worst crimes.
01:12:55And that's something
01:12:56to continue to be very positive about
01:12:59and to do everything you can
01:13:01to make it work.
01:13:03But the job is not done.
01:13:05Now we need to persuade
01:13:08all the states
01:13:09to be part of this ICC.
01:13:15The United States
01:13:16has signed the Rome Statute
01:13:17and the signature is still there.
01:13:19The problem is
01:13:20we are not a ratified party
01:13:24to the Rome Statute.
01:13:26You know,
01:13:27this is part of a much larger picture
01:13:29in America.
01:13:30We often describe ourselves
01:13:32as the exceptional nation.
01:13:34We discipline ourselves,
01:13:37but we're not eager
01:13:39to have any international regime
01:13:41with supreme authority
01:13:44discipline us.
01:13:46The attitude is,
01:13:47well,
01:13:47the United States
01:13:48does this already,
01:13:49or the United States Constitution
01:13:50already has these protections in it.
01:13:52Why should we sacrifice
01:13:54any of that
01:13:54to an international regime
01:13:56of any character?
01:13:58Why?
01:13:58Because we're
01:13:59the exceptional nation.
01:14:00We will meet
01:14:01all of these standards,
01:14:02but we meet them
01:14:02on our terms,
01:14:03not on the terms
01:14:05being dictated
01:14:06from an international body.
01:14:08From the outset,
01:14:09the United States
01:14:10was concerned
01:14:11that maybe
01:14:12it wouldn't always
01:14:13be objective.
01:14:14That since we were doing
01:14:16a lot of the peacekeeping
01:14:17and the intervening,
01:14:19maybe we'd be held
01:14:20specifically,
01:14:22specially accountable
01:14:23by rival powers
01:14:25who were on the other side,
01:14:29either overtly
01:14:30or covertly.
01:14:31And so,
01:14:32we couldn't go along.
01:14:34U.S. policy makers
01:14:36will say,
01:14:37it's fine
01:14:38for the Belgians
01:14:39and the Brazilians,
01:14:42but we're the greatest
01:14:43country on Earth.
01:14:45We don't need
01:14:46to be subject
01:14:47to the same law
01:14:49that applies
01:14:51to everyone else.
01:14:52And that's true for Russia,
01:14:53it's true for China,
01:14:54it's true for Pakistan
01:14:55and India
01:14:56and Israel
01:14:57and Indonesia
01:15:00and most of the Arab world.
01:15:03And we're just not there yet.
01:15:04There are 124 countries
01:15:06that have joined
01:15:07the International Criminal Court.
01:15:09That's unfortunate.
01:15:11It's a loss
01:15:13in credibility
01:15:14in terms of U.S. policy
01:15:17when these crimes
01:15:19arise anywhere in the world.
01:15:24No country
01:15:26which prefers
01:15:27to use its power
01:15:27rather than the rule of law
01:15:28would vote for
01:15:29the rule of law.
01:15:30That's logical.
01:15:31That's still
01:15:32the situation today.
01:15:34There are some people
01:15:35who do not trust
01:15:36the rule of law
01:15:37and they prefer
01:15:38to use military power
01:15:40to achieve their goals
01:15:41as they decide
01:15:42and when they decide
01:15:43they should.
01:15:44that's led
01:15:44by the United States
01:15:45to which China replies
01:15:47when you're ready
01:15:48to change
01:15:49and give it up
01:15:49come see me
01:15:50we'll talk about it then.
01:15:52And the Russians say
01:15:53we're not trusting you.
01:15:54We don't trust anybody.
01:15:55So we have
01:15:56this political tension
01:15:58still exists in the world
01:15:59and they're still talking
01:16:00about using weaponry
01:16:02to settle their disputes
01:16:03not seeming to realize
01:16:05how very devastating
01:16:07and dangerous
01:16:08that is to themselves
01:16:10and to their people.
01:16:14It's decisive.
01:16:15War will make
01:16:16mass murderers
01:16:18out of otherwise
01:16:19decent people
01:16:20and I have seen it
01:16:21again and again
01:16:22and again
01:16:22and it's inevitable.
01:16:24They become
01:16:25mass murderers
01:16:26whether they are Americans
01:16:27or they're Germans
01:16:28or anybody else.
01:16:30That's the effect of war.
01:16:31My answer to that
01:16:32is stop war making.
01:16:35Well how are you
01:16:35going to stop war making?
01:16:36It's been glorified
01:16:37for centuries.
01:16:38Yes it has been glorified.
01:16:40It's time to stop
01:16:41before you kill everybody.
01:16:43And we're on that path too.
01:16:45So you've got to
01:16:45make up your mind.
01:16:46Either you're going
01:16:47to try to behave
01:16:48in a humane
01:16:49and rational way
01:16:50or you're going
01:16:51to kill everybody.
01:16:51Goodbye kids.
01:16:52I'm 95 years,
01:16:5398 years old.
01:16:54Not my world.
01:16:56That's my message.
01:16:59From the examples
01:17:00that Ben has given
01:17:01all of us
01:17:02he has never wavered.
01:17:05Never.
01:17:05he believes
01:17:07that we can achieve
01:17:08justice for humanity.
01:17:10This is
01:17:12one person
01:17:13you know
01:17:14one great man
01:17:15in here
01:17:17in history
01:17:18who's
01:17:19continues
01:17:20to give his best
01:17:22who continues
01:17:23to show his commitment
01:17:24who continues
01:17:25to show that
01:17:26this world
01:17:26can be better.
01:17:28I don't think
01:17:29a personal legacy
01:17:30is important to him.
01:17:32I think
01:17:32it is important
01:17:33to him
01:17:33that we advance
01:17:35the rule of law
01:17:36advance the ball
01:17:37for all humankind
01:17:38diminish suffering.
01:17:40Good afternoon
01:17:41young lady.
01:17:45Ben's
01:17:47presence
01:17:48and
01:17:48his
01:17:49tireless efforts
01:17:50are still needed
01:17:52in reminding us
01:17:54of Nuremberg
01:17:55and the good thing
01:17:55that was started there
01:17:57to be continued today
01:17:58and be brought
01:17:59into
01:17:59these new institutions.
01:18:03I think
01:18:04this is what
01:18:04keeps him going
01:18:05keeps him young.
01:18:06You know
01:18:06he's very committed
01:18:07to this idea
01:18:08that law
01:18:09as you know
01:18:09is better than war.
01:18:13I work
01:18:16incredible hours.
01:18:17I work
01:18:18starting sometimes
01:18:197 o'clock
01:18:19in the morning
01:18:20until 10 o'clock
01:18:20at night.
01:18:21I don't know
01:18:22what a holiday is.
01:18:23I don't know
01:18:23what retirement means.
01:18:25I have no desire
01:18:26to go play golf
01:18:27or to go fishing
01:18:29things that normal
01:18:30people do
01:18:30when they retire.
01:18:34I mean
01:18:34if all he had done
01:18:36was argue
01:18:37at the age of 27
01:18:38in front of the
01:18:38Nuremberg Tribunal
01:18:40I would have said
01:18:41that's a remarkable
01:18:43person.
01:18:43To go on
01:18:45and use that
01:18:46as the fire
01:18:47that ignites
01:18:48his soul
01:18:48and his brain
01:18:49on behalf
01:18:50of humanity
01:18:50is what makes
01:18:52him an iconic figure.
01:18:54And the reason
01:18:55it's iconic
01:18:55is because
01:18:56he never forgot
01:18:57what he saw
01:18:58and heard
01:18:58and he's used it
01:19:00to make it better
01:19:00not for him
01:19:01for everybody else.
01:19:03So he's a conscience.
01:19:05He's a roving
01:19:06conscience
01:19:07that says
01:19:07to people
01:19:08this isn't right
01:19:10you can't do this
01:19:11this is wrong.
01:19:16I consider myself
01:19:18very fortunate
01:19:19to have been
01:19:20able to
01:19:21go from rags
01:19:23to riches
01:19:23to have been
01:19:24married to a woman
01:19:26with whom
01:19:26I've never had a quarrel
01:19:28and she's 98 years old.
01:19:30We've been married
01:19:32for over 71 years
01:19:36I've survived
01:19:37the battles of war
01:19:42so life
01:19:43has been good
01:19:44to me
01:19:47and I have
01:19:48no wish
01:19:51other than
01:19:51to serve
01:19:52the United States
01:19:54and the world
01:19:56by trying
01:19:57to make it
01:19:57a more humane
01:19:58and peaceful
01:20:00world order
01:20:01that's my goal
01:20:02in life.
01:20:43I've never had a
01:20:44I've never had a
01:20:45I've never had a
01:20:45I've never had a
01:20:46I've never had a
01:20:47I've never had a
01:20:48I've never had a
01:20:48I've never had a
01:20:48I've never had a
01:20:48I've never had a
01:20:48I've never had a
01:20:49I've never had a
01:20:49I've never had a
01:20:50I've never had a
01:20:50I've never had a
01:20:51I've never had a
01:20:52I've never had a
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