With fifty years, the Spanish Baroque writer Baltasar Gracián, wrote the man is a snake. Fifty years ago, Benjamin B. Ferencz, what should he do with the Rest of his life considered. Ferencz was born in Hungary in 1920, with his parents, he emigrated to the United States, became an American citizen and successfully studied law in Harvard. He would probably become a good lawyer, had not intended for the illegal history of the twentieth century, the role of the chief Prosecutor in the “biggest murder trial of all time” part.
It is amazing that Ferencz’s life until now in Germany, will be honoured with a biography, even if the appearance is in the year 2020. Because Ferencz has just celebrated in March of this year, his hundredth birthday that He lives in Florida, and if we may believe his biographer, Philip Good, he is there every Morning, incredible 115 pushups. This physical vitality suggests a force that enabled him to invent in the course of his life several times, and to remain a leitmotif of loyalty: the flame of Faith on the right that triumphs over the violence.
Where is the justice in that?
Benjamin B. Ferencz came as a soldier to Europe, marched into Germany and was there immediately with NS-crimes faced. He obtained powers of attorney and began to collect evidence. According to the Nuremberg war crimes trials proposed to his big moment. Ferencz was chief Prosecutor in one of the subsequent processes, the use of the group leader process. It was with only 27 years, his first process, and it should shape the Rest of his life. Because the convictions should not allow for future legal, political activities only, but also morally legitimate, and to lead to results which, for a long time, impossible to rails.
The gate, a sensation, opened Fund: An employee of Ferencz discovered in the ruins of Berlin, a bundle of twelve Leitz folders, the the murderous activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union showed. With the name of the killer in the Hand Ferencz was able to convince the then American chief Prosecutor, Telford Taylor, by a further process of the Americans in the Nuremberg Palace of justice. Because the dock had 24 seats, has been made a selection according to rank and education: “I chose twenty-four Suspects for prosecution. I would have been able to transfer 3000 offenders. Where is the justice in that? That was not justice. It was a choice, a pattern, to show the world what had happened, and to draw a few of the perpetrators to justice.“
Denied responsibility, adding, guilt, and refused compensation
These men had murdered over a Million people, of which at the same time, meticulously and veiling run files saved under the title of “event reports USSR” of testimony. Ferencz was thinking about a lot of things: the motives of the perpetrators, biographical imprints, criminal purposes, the innocence of the victims and the ruthless fanaticism of the perpetrators. But in his plea he put value on objectivity: “I don’t never raised his voice, I screamed at them. I was freezing cold.“ Ferencz based – unlike his predecessors and colleagues on the use of the term “genocide”. As its Creator, Raphael Lemkin believed Ferencz, the SS had works officers for their “crimes against humanity” systematic destruction of entire groups of the population, and this penal law must be wrong marked.
According to the Nuremberg judgment Ferencz in Germany and watched, shocked, as the climate of the Cold war, the “revocation of Nuremberg” is progressing: The Germans make a practice of solidarity with the perpetrators, demanding (successfully) pardon and Forget. In the case of the burial of Nuremberg, use the group Manager process of the convicted war criminal, SS-obergruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, six years after the end of the Second world war, show 1300 people to the Hitler greeting. In this constellation, Ferencz begins next phase of life, and again it is connected with the illegitimate history of the twentieth century. Because he takes over in 1948, the responsibility for a number of Jewish organizations, the restitution of the German demand.
