Meet the Man Who Brought Top Nazis to Justice
Seventy years ago, Ben Ferencz presented his opening remarks in what came to be known as the “biggest murder trial in history.” Today, he is the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, a series of proceedings to hold Nazi leaders and followers accountable for the crimes of the Holocaust.
Ferencz, now 97, took a circuitous route to his place in history. He was inducted into the US Army and assigned an artillery battalion during World War II after being turned down for other posts. He was disqualified for a job in intelligence because his parents had immigrated too recently, denied a position as a pilot in the Air Force because, at just over five-feet tall, he was too short, and prevented from being a navigator due to his poor eyesight.
Ferencz, a Harvard Law grad, eventually found his fit on a U.S. Army war crimes investigations team. Not long after leaving the Army and returning to America, he received a call asking him to join the effort to prepare the cases that would be brought at Nuremberg.
While you were investigating war crimes at Nazi camps, what did you witness yourself?
Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes I witnessed while liberating these centers of death and destruction. When I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget — the crematoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cordwood waiting to be burned. I had peered into hell.
How did you cope with what you saw?
I think the human body has a capacity for survival which enables it to build up insulation, insulating mechanisms to prevent yourself from going mad. And I do not recall feelings of rage. I do not recall feelings of fear. I do not recall feelings of hatred. I do recall the urgency of doing something and getting the job done before it’s too late. So I went about my business as best I could — and I did it, I think, very well — by putting myself into a mental cocoon which was surrounded by an ice barrier which just enabled me to go on. And that little ice barrier lasted until it melted you know, but as long as it was necessary to do the job it remained there, as a self-protective device, I think.
Can you tell us about the Einsatzgruppen case and how you came to prosecute it?
One of my researchers came in with these folders, three or four of them, with all these daily reports from the front: how many Jews they’d killed in which towns, and the reports would read: “Today we entered the town of So-and-So. Within the first 24 hours we succeeded in eliminating” — they always used euphemisms — “in eliminating 14,312 Jews, 127 Communist officials, 816 Gypsies,” and they would list them, you know. And they sent that off to Berlin.
I looked at it and said, “My God, we have here a chronological listing of mass murder.” I got into the next plane, and I flew down to Nuremberg, and I presented this to Telford Taylor, who was the Chief of Counsel. And he said, “This is terrific, where can we use it?” I said, “Well, look, it’s enough for a separate trial by itself. Look, here we’ve got the names of all the commanding officers. There were 3,000 men there, we have four big commandos, Einsatzgruppen A, B, C, D, and each one with ten or twelve different units under them.” He said, “We don’t have staff anymore for that.” I said, “You’ve got to make staff.” He said, “Well, maybe we can pull somebody off from somebody else.” I said, “Well, whom have you got? Somebody’s got to do it.” He said, “Well, could you do it?” I said, “Sure I could do it. Why can’t I do it?” “Well, you’ve got your other job, you’ve got to do it in addition to your other job.” I said, “I’ll do them, I’ve got it all lined up.” He said, “If you want it you’ve got it.” So I became then the chief prosecutor for the United States in what the United Press called “the biggest murder trial in history.”
You were 27 in your first turn as a prosecutor, and this was a case on the world stage. Were you intimidated?
I was frequently asked, after the trial started, whether as a totally inexperienced young lawyer, I was nervous about facing Germany’s mass killers, including six SS generals, who would have shot me on sight. No, I was not nervous. They were nervous. I didn’t murder anyone. They did. And I would prove it. I would convict the accused on their own official records.
Your trial came to be known as the “biggest murder trial in history.” How did you approach the case?
As I was preparing my opening statement, there was never any doubt in my mind that all of the defendants deserved to be convicted. Nearly 200 contemporaneous secret reports, backed up by dozens of affidavits given by the accused themselves when they were first arrested, were incontrovertible. At the same time, I was keenly aware that there was no way for the scales of justice to balance the murder of more than a million innocent human beings against the lives of two dozen of their executioners. It was my hope that the trial would serve a more useful and enduring purpose; that it might somehow help to deter the repetition of such horrors in the future. I was determined to do whatever I could to help lay a foundation for a more humane world than the one that had indelibly traumatized me during World War II.
You have made a point to say that it’s inaccurate to characterize Nazi perpetrators as some kind of monsters.
The notion that these crimes were committed by sadistic beasts is a mistake. These crimes were led by very well-educated, distinguished German cultured citizens. They were kind to their cats and dogs. Could quote (Johann Wolfgang von) Goethe. They all loved (Wilhelm Richard) Wagner. And they killed human beings like they would be flies.
You have said that war has the potential to make murderers out of otherwise decent people.
War is itself the worst of all crimes. Because in a war, all the other crimes are committed. That spawns all of the other crimes. The crimes against humanity: the rapes, the pillage, the killing of the children and all that. That comes out of war.
After the Nuremberg trials, Ferencz worked to secure restitution for Nazi victims as director of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the United Restitution Organization. He also wrote a book advocating for a legal body that eventually came to be the International Criminal Court. Ferencz continues to work for justice, recently inaugurating the Ferencz International Justice Initiative at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Ben’s answers are culled from oral histories he provided the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, his personal website, his 1998 book “PlanetHood: The Key to Your Future,” and “An Evening with Ben Ferencz,” a program at the Museum.
