Transcribed Remarks from Loyola Lemkin Award Q&A

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review, Mar 2017

By Ben Ferencz, Published on 01/01/17

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Transcribed Remarks from Loyola Lemkin Award Q&A

Ben Ferencz, Transcribed Remarks fr om Loyola Lemkin Award Q&A Transcribed Remarks from Loyola Lemkin Award Q&A Comparative Law Review 0 Law Reviews 0 Recommended Citation 0 0 Thi s Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital - LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LAW & GENOCIDE The Last Prosecutor: The Remarkable Life of Benjamin B. Ferencz INTERVIEWER: STANLEY A. GOLDMAN PROFESSOR OF LAW DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GENOCIDE LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL, LOS ANGELES Professor Goldman: Hi, I’m Stan Goldman from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and I’m here in Del Rey Beach, Florida, at the home of Ben Ferencz, who’s graciously allowed us to come in and ask him a few questions today, and also, discuss with him the Rafael Lemkin Award of which he is this year’s recipient. Ben, how are you today? Ben Ferencz: Fine. The trick to that is if you want to be always fine, think of the alternatives; when I do that I have every reason to be content every day. Mr. Goldman: Speaking of the alternatives, when you were in the American Army during the waning days of the war, you were at a concentration camp when it was being liberated. Could you discuss that for a moment? Mr. Ferencz: Well, it wasn’t a casual visit. I had graduated from the Harvard Law School. I had done the research for a professor there, Sheldon Glueck, on a book of war crimes. The Army had immediately recognized that talent and so they made me a private in the artillery, typical Army. But toward the end of the war, we began running into the 64 Loy. L.A. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. German concentration camps. The president of the United States, and Churchill and Stalin as well, had promised that there would be war crimes trials, and so I was reassigned from the artillery to the Judge Advocate section of General Patton’s Army. I had met a colonel there who said, “What’s a war crime?” I believe I was the first man in the United States Army to deal with war crimes. One of the assignments, in addition to digging up American fliers who had been shot down and beaten by the mob, was to go into the concentration camps as they were being liberated and collect evidence of the crimes so that we could have trials against the mass murderers who were responsible for all the dead bodies who were lying on the ground, and still burning when I came into the crematorium. So it wasn’t just a casual visit. I was there on business of the United States, which led to the subsequent war crimes trials. Mr. Goldman: Were you able to document these in a way that was eventually used at the trials? Mr. Ferencz: Some of the documentation was incredible and very fortunate. For example, I seized immediately everything in the the office, which were registers of the people who were in the camp, or transports who had arrived, how many people had died, by nationality and number. The numbers having been assigned in Auschwitz with a tattoo on their arm. But we had something of the following, which I think is worth noting. One of the inmates was responsible for issuing new cards to an SS club which existed at the camp. And when the club members had used up the thing, they had to issue a new card. He had kept the cards, which he was expected and ordered to destroy, and saved them in a box, which he had buried near the electrified fence. When I came into his office in the camp, he said, “I’ve been waiting for you. Come with me.” He took me to the electrified fence, dug up a wooden box, took it out, and there he handed over to me the portrait of every SS guard who had been in that camp. Gave me name, place of birth, address and so on. Every time he saved that card, he took his life into his own hands. And he did it deliberately, knowing and feeling that one day there would be a day of reckoning, and that was the day. So that was a priceless piece of evidence, as well as a beautiful illustration of human courage in the face of adversity, and willingness to run risks in order to do the right thing and to bring to justice the criminals. Mr. Goldman: Where were you born? Mr. Ferencz: I was born in a little village in Transylvania—there is such a place—as was my wife, to whom I’ve been happily wed for The Last Prosecutor 65 seventy years. My parents immigrated to the United States when I was an infant. They were two young immigrant people. My sister was born a year and a half before me; she’s Hungarian. I was born in the same bed, a year and a half later; I’m Romanian. An indication that the borders are not so significant. It’s how you treat the people that’s significant, not the name of the place. My father had no skills which could be translated here, and we lived in poverty most of our lives in the United St (...truncated)


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Ben Ferencz. Transcribed Remarks from Loyola Lemkin Award Q&A, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review, 2017, Volume 39, Issue 1,