Ben Ferencz, Former Nuremberg Prosecutor HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk with me, Zeinab Badawi, here in Florida, where my

guest is 98-year-old Ben Ferencz. He is the last surviving prosecutor at

the Nuremberg Nazi trials. He also helped liberate the death camps of

Europe while serving in the U.S. Army. So does he believe that the

Nuremberg trials have made genocide and other crimes against humanity

less likely to be committed in the world today?

Ben Ferencz, welcome to HARDtalk. You were born in 1920 in

Transylvania in Central Europe. You moved to the United States with your

family when you were a little baby. You really epitomise the American

dream, a kind of rags to riches story, because it was discovered

that you were highly intelligent and you were put on a fast track to

Harvard Law School. We arrived in America, my parents were young

immigrants fleeing persecution and poverty. No money, no skills, no

language. And lucky to have some friendly New Yorker offer us, my

father, who had been trained as a shoemaker, but they didn't need any

boots made in New York, there were no cobblers. But the owner of a

building offered us the opportunity to sleep in the cellar and my father

would be the janitor. That's where we began, and that's where my memory

begins, in a high crime density area known for good reason as Hells

kitchen. There was a lot of crying, is that what excited your interest

in law and pursuing a career in law? It excited my interest in not being

on the criminal side, put it that way, there was crying all around. I

had made up my mind early that I didn't want to be a cowboy and I

didn't want to be a fireman and I didn't want to be a crook either, so

that pretty much left me to go to law and eyes focused on it ever

since. After you graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943, you join

the US military and joined a battalion preparing for the invasion

of France. What are your key recollections of that time? I

enlisted whenever I could get into the army, I was a private, the

lowest rank you could get, assigned to be in the artillery battalion.

And in that capacity we landed on the beaches of Normandy. France was

occupied by the Germans. The only way to move the war forward and to

get rid of the war was to defeat the Germans. I sailed from lands end at

the tip of England across to Omaha beach, which was still... Had been

cleared by the time I got there a bit. But there were many soldiers in

American uniform still lying in the sea face down. There were many

armoured vehicles still in the water and we had to push on from there

into France and defeat them. There was heavy artillery all the way.

Many battles all the way. And it was only when we got into the German

occupied, and Germany itself, that we began to encounter a possible war

crimes. As Nazi atrocities were uncovered you were transferred to a

newly created war crimes branch of the Army to gather evidence of Nazi

brutality and apprehend the war criminals. You entered the death

camps, like two Kleinveldt, and you described how you sourcing from

hell. Described to us what you saw. -- Buchenwald. I can describe it

vividly because the recollection is clear in my mind but at the same

time you can't understand what it is like because the rational human mind

can't quite grasp it. Coming into Buchenwald for example, dead bodies

lying all on the ground, you can't tell if they're dead or alive.

Skeletons dressed in just rags which had at one time been part of their

work uniform with a triangle indicating they were dues,

homosexuals, communists or whatever. -- dues. Everyone is running in

different directions. The SS is running out. A scene like the pile

of rubbish the size of this room and in it inmates grovelling like rats

for a bite of food and picking out garbage and sticking it into their

mouths. The smell of foul flesh burning. Crematoria, stacks of human

bodies looking like bones stacked one on top of the other while they

are shovelled into a crematorium and turned into ash and the fact is used

for making soap and their ashes are used as fertiliser. The SS is

running out, occasionally getting caught and beaten to death by the

inmates, they were still not able to do anything about it. I wrote

somewhere that I had peered into hell. I think hell would be paradise

compared to what I saw. Are the memories of what you saw still very

vivid for you? Yes, I don't like to talk about them much because I have

difficulty controlling my own emotions. In 1945 you left the U.S.

Army, returned to New York and prepared to practise law but shortly

after that you were recruited for the New York Nuremberg trials, the

international prosecution against the likes of Hermann Goering and

other leading Nazis were already in progress. What was your reaction

when you were asked to be part of that process? When the war was over,

I came back along with 10 million other soldiers looking for a job. I

graduated from the Harvard Law School and I passed the bar but I

had no clients of any kind. I was pleased to get a telegram from the

Pentagon invitingly to come to the Pentagon and they wanted to talk to

me. I arrived and they said dear, Sir, they had never called me serve

before, they wanted me to go back to Germany to help with warcrimes

trials. I had done that during the war days. The last several months in

the war as we occupied portions of Germany and France that had been

occupied, we ran into examples of crimes of all kinds, the most

obvious ones, what we called the allied flyer cases, very little is

known about that. Fliers were being shot down in German held territory

and they were almost invariably the can to death by the German mob. It

was probably our first war crimes cases -- part of. I had that kind of

experience with me as when I left the army. I took that back to

Germany when I agreed without hesitation to go back to Germany and

help with trials which would follow the international military tribunal.

Why did you hesitate? It's a horrible experience for anyone.

Germany was associated in my mind with atrocity and terrible crimes, I

didn't want to go back to Germany. This is horror glorified. Nothing

heroic about it at all. It shows how human beings can be debased in times

of war. So you did go back to Germany and you've scoured Nazi

officers and archives and trying to find evidence of the Nazi atrocities

-- you scoured Nazi offices. It was quite all pervasive, wasn't it? The

people that were involved in the atrocities. The United States in

particular felt The International Monetary Fund criminal trial against

Hermann Goring was a camera shot of a small sampling and to really

understand how a civilised country like Germany could commit and

tolerate the kind of atrocities that were committed, you should

understand the position that doctors who perform medical experiments, the

lawyers and judges that perverted the law, the SS officers that did

the killings, the industrialists that were working people to death,

all of these were specific groups. So the United States said let us

take a sampling from the drop these groups to help us understand it. So

I went to Berlin with about 50 people, scoured all of the archives,

hours of Nazi archives, to gather the evidence to cover the broad

spectrum of German society which basically was responsible for the

crimes. In previous interviews you described how ingathering witness

testimonies you did resort to duress, for instance lining up

villagers and threatening to shoot them if they lied. I'm in, such

methods now would amount to witness harassment of the most extreme order

-- I mean. Perhaps it would. But it's only because the people that

make the allegations don't understand what war is about. If I

bring a room of 20 people and this is a natural case, and line them up,

and say I want you to all right out exactly what happened, what your

role was, what others did, anybody who lies will be shot. How can you

do a thing like that, you're threatening them with torture! What

am I going to tell them? Anybody who lies will get a paddy cake tonight?

What do you want me to tell them, be honest, please confess you're a

murderer, please, I don't want to threaten new, what are you talking

about? There's a war going on, they work killing people. -- pretty new.

What am I going to do? I didn't shoot them but I threaten them, that

was the only weapon I had in -- and if that makes me a torturer then

call me a torturer -- threaten new. You became the chief officer at --

threaten you. There was a case described by the associated press

news agency as the biggest murder trial in history. 22 Nazi war

criminals who were part of these death squads, shooting more than 1

million people, most of them civilians. It was quite a

responsibility for a young man, you were only 27, to take. And in fact,

just before you talk to me about that, I just want to show you, this

is you at the Nuremberg Trials. The leading judge, these are the

defendants. 22 defendants. Each one charged with mass murder. All of

them pleaded not guilty. No one ever showed any sign of Rob Moore is

whatsoever. I remember very well what I said. -- no sign of remorse.

It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the murder of over

1 million innocent and defenceless men, women and children.

Vengeance is not our goal. Nor do we seek merely just retribution. We ask

this taught 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, that these men who

wrote the darkest page in human history, people were murdered

because they didn't share the race and colour and the ideology of their

executioners. I thought it was horrible then, I think it is

horrible now. And I appealed for the rule of law, which would in future

protect people from that type of atrocity. When you look at that

picture of view, though, I mean, 27 years of age, chief prosecutor in

the Nuremberg process. That was an accident, that I was the chief

prosecutor. One of my research is, I had about 50 of them in Berlin, came

across the daily reports from the front of the special extermination

squads whose job it was to kill without pity or remorse, every

single Jewish man, woman and child they could lay their hands on,

including the same for Gypsies and any other perceived or suspected

opponent of the Reich. No such process had been planned. I flew

down to your boat to talk to the general who was the judge, and he

said we can't put on this trail now, because of all the lawyers are

already assigned, the trials in profits, the Pentagon has an

approved it, I doubt doubt if they will approve it, and I haven't may

hand evidence of mass murder on a scale never before seen in human

history. You can't let these guys go. He said can you do it in

addition to your other work? I said Shaw, and I did, and I rested my

case in two days. You said you wanted to prosecute the offices. You

won't as interested in the foot soldiers, you wanted to get the

educated officers among them. It is very hard for the public today to

understand. The special extermination squad, Einsatzgruppen,

the German word means action groups. They were 3000 man. I selected at

least 3000. All of whom were complicit in mass murder. I selected

those based on several factors. First of all, we had to have them in

captivity. If you have got the evidence and you haven't got the

prisoner, you have got nothing. I want a list of everybody who was a

Einsatzgruppen member from all of our intelligence services, sent down

immediately to neuron boat. I went over the list, I picked those of the

highest rank and then checked out their background, from the Nazi

party records which we captured in Berlin. Those who had Doctor

degrees, and had... Or generals, they got priorities. I picked out 21

or 28, it was we only had 22 seats in the dock. Is that absurd? Of

course it is absurd. There were only 22 seats in the dock for the Hermann

Goering trial, so we have a selection. Of the 22 who you tried

in a Einsatzgruppen case, about a dozen were given death sentences.

Four were actually executed, the others remained in prison, but only

for a few years, until an agreement, a deal, was made between the

American and German governments, and they were released. So it wasn't...

It wasn't that formalistic. The political atmosphere had changed.

General George Patton, who was my commander, made a speech in London

to a group before the war was over in which he said we have fought the

wrong enemy. We should not have been fighting the Germans, we should have

been fighting the Russians. While the war was on, American general!

Americans were still being killed in battle and the Russians were being

slaughtered. Indicated the change of political scene in the United

States. A Conservative group was saying what we are getting involved

in this? This action against the Germans, we need the Germans. The

British were particular keen about not executing some of the German

generals that the British Army wanted. So the political pressure

was such, together with some feeling of Amnesty, for humanitarian

considerations. They stopped the trials, they released the people who

were there, and then began to rehire people like Werner von Brown, who

knew about rockets, and some of his deputies came to the United States,

as they had the new rocket science. So when the trial that you presided

over at Nuremberg was hailed as a success, as some did at the time, it

can't really be described as that some of those who were found guilty

were subsequently released. I was of course disappointed, but I never

anticipated or tried to do justice in the broad sense of holding every

criminal accountable. It would have been a practical impossibility. So I

was careful in the selection of having the men in custody, having

high rank, having good education, having absolute proof beyond any

doubt of his guilt. I had his report, top-secret, to his

commanders, saying how many people executed. They were not quite

accurate. They exaggerated the body count. So more, how many more they

killed? Then they said it was against our will, superior orders.

Loonie. Was a? They were ordered to kill all the Jews, but they wanted

to brag. They said how many they killed. You said the lessons, if we

do not devote ourselves to developing effective world more, the

same inhumanity which made the Holocaust possible might one day

destroy the entire human race. So today, so many years later, here you

are in your 90th year, and you look around you at the world, the

conflicts that have happened in recent times, what is your

assessment? Have we made progress? We have made progress. We have not

learned the lesson of Nuremberg. We have made progress. I will come back

to it. But first let me emphasise the fact, I learnt that war makes

murderers. Mass murderers, part of otherwise decent people. And it

applies to all wars and all nationalities, and I have seen it.

And all the wars, these are not wild animals or out for blood, these are

patriots who are trying to do their duty to protect either their

religion or their nationality or the economic security. These are the

three major causes. We have not learned that you can't kill an

ideology with a gun. We still go at it with the same stupid approach, of

spending all of your assets on building weapons and more weapons to

kill more people, and depriving people of the things they need to

eliminate the fear is which they have in their life. The man who is

desperate, who has no job, who has no money, if the money spent on

weapons could be spent on eliminating the cause of his

discontent, it is not going to risk his life and go out and kill people

the way they do today. So you were very instrumental in the setting up

of the International Criminal Court, which was established by the Rome

Statute in 1998. Do you think that has really help -- helped prevent

crimes against humanity, war crimes, do you think it has stopped his

crimes being committed with impunity? It has helped, but not

enough. Certainly the existence of laws prohibiting certain behaviour

has some deterrent effect, what we have to bear in mind that, for

centuries, we have glorified warmaking. Ever since David hit

Goliath in the head with a rock, we have glorified the praise and

watching, no politician appears without flags flying on both sides,

and the ban is going and marching. And I was a soldier, and I know, and

they gave me all the battle stars and they gave me all the decoration

of war and all that stuff. We have to reverse those dozens of years,

because the world has changed. We are not throwing rocks any more. We

are going to kill everybody from cyberspace. We can cut off the

electrical grid of any city on the planet. Are you all crazy? You are

standing there watching it happen, the students don't have money to pay

tuition, the refugees have no homes to go to, the old people are dying

because they can't afford medical care, and you are pouring billions

of dollars every day in the killing machines. What, in your long life

and career, have you learned about the nature of evil and human beings'

capacity to commit the most unspeakable, horrific acts against

their fellow human beings? Well, I have learnt simply, it is very

obvious, that people in very high places, people of good education and

high rank are quite competent at becoming mass murderers against any

group that they think threatens either their nationality or their

religion or their economic circumstances. I have seen that.

These are not crimes committed by devils with horns. These are

committed by educated, well intentioned, patriotic people. But

we have to change the hearts and minds of people, so that they

recognise that it is not cowardice to be willing to compromise, and to

be conciliatory and be compassionate when you are dealing with people who

have other points of view. And I know that it takes courage not to be

discouraged. But we have got to have that kind of courage, because it is

a tough job, and it will take a long time, and we have to begin in the

cradle. So this re-education of the human spirit and the human mind, on

a worldwide basis, is the task before us. And we are doing it. Look

at the among the patient, without the Borrett doormat limitations, --

look at the Emancipation, without limitations, of the black man. Look

at marriage, a man can marry a man, a man can become a woman. Our

realities today, 25 years ago they said you are out of your mind. And I

say don't give up. Law is always better than war, and that is my firm

decision, no matter if you get a bad decision. Law is always better than

war. Murder is terrible, and there are three ways of preventing it.

One, never give up, two, never give up, three... And then I hear the

echo from the audience... Never give up. Ben Ferencz, thank you very much

for coming on HARDtalk. It has been a pleasure. I hope you all... Don't

enjoy it, but think about it. Thank you.