At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive
and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world.
• Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of over a million people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.
• The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews.
• Ferencz believes “war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people” and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes.
It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz. He’s 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what’s been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps — more than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood.
Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn’t content just to be part of 20th century history — he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.
Ferencz has spent the rest of his life trying to deter war and war crimes by establishing an international court – like Nuremburg. He scored a victory when the international criminal court in The Hague was created in 1998. He delivered the closing argument in the court’s first case.
Interview by Leslie Stahl for 60 Minutes; May 7, 2017
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