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
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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
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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)