What was just as notable was his lasting commitment to the rule of law and its use as an alternative to war. His work inspired the creation of the International Criminal Court. He was as tireless in seeking reparations for those who had suffered wrongs at the hands of the Nazis.
I love the comment his co-author made on the three pieces of advice that he always offered to anyone who asked what he had learned from living as long as he did. He said first, never give up. Second, never give up. And third, never give up. The message was, of course, that there is always hope.
It is hard not to be awed by a person who lived their life in pursuit of a greater purpose. That seems to be what Ben Ferencz did.
I will heed his advice.
Sheesh. So, Cummings and Gowing, what do you think?
The only bright side is that it keeps this section of the blog ticking over? No prospect of retirement from the man himself. The irony is he’d have most likely been one of the people Ferencz was involved in the prosecution of given his distaste for human freedom in general and worship of the strong state but he is too stupid to realize that…
At least he refrained from making reference to his Dachau victim moment.
“Nothing quite prepares you for the walk through the suburban streets that lead to the gates of Dachau.
………
After only a few minutes my elder son came up to me and said “They’d have put you in here, Dad.”
Who is going to tell Murphy that grifting in Ely isn’t living a life in pursuit of a great purpose?
Dennis:
I think many have been, but you can’t make a man listen when his income depends on not doing so.
Re: the Nazis.
We knew they were bad uns, but I think people have forgotten (or were never told) just how much the Germans enjoyed killing random civilians for a laugh.
Der Spiegel had an article about it years ago:
Greim: “We once flew a low-altitude attack near Eastbourne . When we got there we saw a big castle where there was apparently a ball or something like that being held. In any case, there were lots of women in nice clothes and a band. We flew past the first time, but then we attacked and really stuck it to them. Now that, my dear friend, was a lot of fun.”
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/rape-murder-and-genocide-nazi-war-crimes-as-described-by-german-soldiers-a-755385.html
To be fair Steve, it does sound like a lot of fun.
BiC – you’re not supposed to enjoy war, except when you’re high off your nut on amphetamines and driving a panzer across the steppes.
To be fair the Allies were responsible for a fair few war crimes of their own (obviously particularly the Red Army) but those were never considered crimes by the victors, or if they were there was no point trying to do much about it (in the case of Soviet actions). So making a big deal about Nuremburg being about ‘upholding the rule of law’ is a bit of a joke. It was victors justice nothing more. Thats not to say that the Nazis didn’t deserve everything they got, but it would have been more honest to just round them up and shoot them there and then rather than go through the pretence of a legal process.
Remember Steve, you can’t have slaughter without laughter.
Seeking reparations for the First World War were a direct cause of the Second….
Those seeking reparations for the First World War were far too soft on the Germans. The price should have been steeper and the punishment for not paying harsher.
True it might have meant Britain giving up her policy of never having a large peacetime army, but the Boche would have been paying for it and it would have been stationed safely overseas.
Some words from Ben Ferencz himself
“I once saw DPs [displaced persons] beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder? You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I’d say, “Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.” It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.”
Evidently someone with flexible morals so exactly like the Spudtator
Jim – I dunno if that’s, eh, true.
Yes, the Allies committed war crimes (war is a crime) but I don’t think Brits, Americans, Free French, Canadians, Australians and Poles were regularly going around murdering random civvies in order to steal their bikes. The Allies didn’t order any mass rapes, to my knowledge, and they rarely forced the local peasantry to dig their own mass graves, before murdering them.
The Germans did, and lots worse. They seem to have taken a special delight in cruelty to a degree that’s rare for Western armies.
A bit like the Japs, who went insane in China and became something like a horde of wild demons.
War, huh? Good God.
After only a few minutes my elder son came up to me and said “They’d have put you in here, Dad.”
As an SS guard maybe.
An old Russian saying: “The German? A good fellow perhaps, but better to hang him.”
And now that their cars are shit and they’re too fat and lazy to fight said Russians, there really isn’t a reason for keeping them around, now is there?
Does that make me an accomplice to murder?
You’re talking about an SS concentration camp guard here: It was an execution, not a murder.
“Yes, the Allies committed war crimes (war is a crime) but I don’t think Brits, Americans, Free French, Canadians, Australians and Poles were regularly going around murdering random civvies in order to steal their bikes. The Allies didn’t order any mass rapes, to my knowledge, and they rarely forced the local peasantry to dig their own mass graves, before murdering them.”
Well we all know about the rapey tendencies of the Red Army, and no-one ever did anything about that now did they? Because they were our ‘allies’ and what the hell could we do anyway? Much of the Allied bombing campaigns in Europe and the Pacific were war crimes, under the strict application of the Geneva convention. I mean everyone made a big fuss about Guernica, but that was an amoeba compared to a blue whale when considering what we did. Now of course needs must, and sow the wind reap the whirlwind etc etc, but lets not pretend we fought the war with clean hands. No-one can fight a total war cleanly, that is the nature of war. So when you win and mete out ‘justice’ based on the fact you won, just don’t pretend you’re all morally superior to boot. Thats the sort of thing the Left does.
Well said, Jim.
Steve said:
“I think people have forgotten (or were never told) just how much the Germans enjoyed killing random civilians for a laugh.”
Is it just the Germans? Didn’t universities stop doing those scenario roleplay psychology tests on people because they were embarrassed at how brutal randomly selected members of the public were prepared to be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
To be fair, perhaps I can mention the Jerry who carried my father back to the Aussie trenches during the skirmishing before First Alamein.
Perhaps the bloke shot him first. And of course, it was getting a bit hot out there, so the bloke got sent to a prison camp where no one was shooting at him.
But it was still the exact opposite of a war crime. As was the fact that no one, British or German, shot him while he was doing it.
I’m with Steve on this one, the germans seemed to delight in cruelty. I visited Auschwitz and what struck me was the punishment cells for prisoners. Not content with gassing prisoners, hanging them from hooks, shooting them, starving and working them to death they had punishment cells. One was where the prisoner was locked in the cell which was air tight until he suffocated from lack of oxygen. For added fun the germans often put in a candle to use the oxygen up quicker. Another cell the prisoner had to stand all the while, there was no room to lay down or even kneel, after this punishment he’d be killed after they let him out. This seemed to be above and beyond gratuitous violence.
The Abu Ghraib affair shows that soldiers of all nations will, if given carte blanche to behave however they like and a sense of moral superiority over the enemy will behave in increasingly violent and twisted ways. Hell even our own experience of the last 3 years shows us that there’s a good 20-30% of the UK population who would happily round up ‘the other’ and treat them like subhumans. Look how easy it was to whip up the population against the unvaccinated. And you don’t have to go far back in our own history to see how we used to treat ‘traitors’, gratuitous torture for the sake of it was the order of the day.
The truth is all human populations contain bitter and twisted people who gain pleasure from human suffering. And should the circumstances arise such that those people gain positions of power and licence to indulge themselves then they would. And most of the remainder would either ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening, or become dragged into it too. Only a very few would have the stones to fight it, and most of those would die.