All language subtitles for Prosecuting.Evil.2018.720p.NF.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.x264-KAIZEN_Subtitles01.ENG

[dramatic music]

[emotional music]

I carry with me the

burden of having seen

man's inhumanity to man in ways

which are incredible

to a rational mind,

and that will always

remain with me.

I am Ben Ferencz.

70 years ago, I was

a prosecutor at the

Nuremberg Trials,

in what was certainly

the biggest murder

trial in history.

Ben Ferencz is an icon, really

in international

criminal justice.

We're talking about

a man whose career

spans seven decades.

[Ben] This trial, well what

was most significant about it

was it gave us an insight

into the mentality

of mass murderers.

They had murdered

over a million people,

including hundreds of thousands

of children in cold blood.

Ben is the personification

of the international do-gooder.

Somebody who has no goal in life

other than to bring

justice to an unjust world.

My Dad used to ask

us, and I kid you not,

around the dinner

table every night,

"What have you done

for mankind today?"

[Ben] War can make murderers

out of otherwise decent people.

That may come as a shock

to some of the viewers

who perceive these mass

murderers as horrible beasts.

Not so.

At such a young age,

in such a critical moment

in modern history

to be in the thick of things,

to do the right thing with

conviction and courage,

and to have witnessed

what he had witnessed

and turned that into a

positive contribution

for a better humanity.

It's really something to

admire and try to emulate.

[Ben] The impact of

war itself on people

affected me so that I

wanted to stop war-making,

and have in fact devoted most

of my life in that effort

to try and create a

more humane world.

His humanity

and his compassion

and his fearless commitment

to justice all of these years

make him one of the most

important figures of our time.

[emotional music]

I'm mindful of the

fact that the world

has always been torn apart

by the type of horror

which is featured on TV,

but I'm also always

mindful of the fact

that we are, believe it or not,

making very significant progress

toward creating a more

humane and peaceful world.

Okay, Ben Ferencz

welcome it says.

Ben is someone

who is very driven,

who is extremely passionate,

and has an absolutely

unshakeable belief

in the rule of law

and in international law

that's what drives him.

He is somebody who

thrives on this passion

and thrives on the effort to

try to move things forward

that seem impossible.

When I was a boy or a student,

there was no such

thing as human rights.

There was no such thing

as international courts.

No one heard of the word

genocide for one thing,

and I was the first I

believe to use that word

in the opening paragraph

of an indictment

where I was the chief

prosecutor at Nuremberg.

Benjamin Ferencz

is the titan

of international

criminal prosecutions.

He really established

an incredible

mandate for international

criminal responsibility

for the commission of crimes

against humanity and war crimes.

He laid out a legal

process that has become

a very important one, taking

us into the 21st Century.

I'd never tried a case.

I'd never been in a

criminal court in my life.

I was 27 years old.

But I knew at the beginning

that if this trial

is going to have any

significance at all,

it has to set a model of what

you should and shouldn't do.

This is a

"Order National

De La Legion d'Honneur,

Presidente de la

Republique Francaise"

Names me a "Chevalier

de la Legion d'Honneur"

That gold medal you

see hanging there

is the Medal of

Freedom which I was

particularly glad to receive

because the previous

recipient of that

had been Nelson Mandela, and

I was a strong admirer of his.

[gentle piano music]

I was told that I'd make a

good lawyer or a good crook,

and I didn't quite understand it

'cause I didn't know

what a lawyer was,

but I knew what the crook was

and I didn't care

for it at any time,

so I think that

may have tilted me

toward wanting to be a

lawyer, whatever that meant.

My sister was born in the

same bed I was later born in.

When she was born,

she was a Hungarian.

When I was born about 18

months later, I was a Romanian.

It doesn't really matter

what you call the country.

What matters is how you treat

the people in the country,

and in both Hungary and Romania,

they persecuted the Jews.

So it was prudent for my parents

to get out if they could.

We traveled third class because

there was no fourth class.

Sleeping on an open deck in

midwinter in 1920 was not easy.

I was crying all the time

because my mother had no milk.

My father was being driven

crazy with this noise.

He couldn't sleep.

He was very tempted

to throw me overboard.

And there's been some

indication that he would've

had he not been

interrupted by my uncle

who was traveling with us.

My father was trained as

an apprentice shoemaker.

He thought when he

gets to New York,

he'll be able to make

boots for the people.

No one told him there were

no cowboys in New York

and no cows.

So he found himself

unemployable,

no money, no friends.

It was a tough life,

but they didn't know it

because where they'd

come from it was tougher,

so it was an improvement

no matter what.

This was an area known

as Hell's Kitchen.

It got that name because it

was a high crime density area.

When I became a criminologist

I found that out

by seeing maps of where

the most crime was

in parts of the world.

It was right at home.

It was a tough neighborhood,

Irish and Italian.

With a lot of gang

warfare going on,

but it was no guns, no knives.

It was just you know

beating each other up

or playing craps

on the sidewalk.

I didn't speak English at all.

I spoke Yiddish was

the mother tongue.

My father took me to school,

public school to enroll me.

They wouldn't take me

because I was too small,

I couldn't speak English, and

they said come back next year.

Next year they said

the same thing,

so I finally ended up when

my parents were divorced

and I went to live with

an aunt in Brooklyn,

that's where I started

my educational career.

[gentle piano music]

My eighth grade teacher in

public school 80 in the Bronx,

I was then living back again

with my mother

and my stepfather.

She asked me to bring

my father and mother in.

She wanted to talk to them

and we had a little conference.

The teacher explained

that this is a gifted boy,

and he should go to college.

Well certainly she didn't

know and I didn't know

what a gifted boy meant,

'cause we never got any gifts

and I didn't know anybody

who ever went to college.

This was beyond our

knowledge range,

and my mother said well

whatever you want to do,

you know she would

accommodate that.

The Townsend Harris High School

which was the only one of

its kind in the country

where if you

graduated from there

you were automatically

admitted to City College.

I never had to study before.

I heard something and I knew it,

and it was just you know it

seemed to be quite automatic,

but when I got to this

advanced high school,

I flunked the two subjects

of French and algebra.

So I found out there

was a movie house

featuring foreign films

right near where we live

and I went there,

and fell in love

with the French actress

Danielle Darrieux,

and she was being

wooed by Charles Boyer

and I could hear

them and I could

read in English what

they were saying.

That was a wonderful

teaching tool,

except I came out speaking

like Charles Boyer.

[speaks French language]

And all that, and that

was very good in French.

Spoke like a Frenchman.

City College.

It was known as the poor

man's Harvard actually.

I didn't know that at the time,

but it was a very tough school

for a lot of tough kids,

mostly Jewish kids who couldn't

afford a college education.

It was a very good school.

Taught me there first

of all, I have to study.

Secondly there's a

lot I have to learn

and I think I did.

You had to decide

what you wanted to do

while you were still in college,

and most of my friends were

going into civil service

or something like that.

I wanted to go into

crime prevention

because I'd seen enough crime

and I've seen juvenile crime

so I was focusing on

juvenile delinquency.

I didn't know anything about

college, about law schools

and I inquired "What's

the best school?"

And I heard that Harvard is

the best school, not Brooklyn.

All right, so I sent a

letter to Harvard applying

and lo and behold,

I was accepted.

I had done so well on

my criminal law exam

that they gave me a

scholarship based on that.

Otherwise I could

never ever afford to.

I realized that there were

different classes of people

and the students who

got up and said "Sir"

every time they

asked him a question,

which seemed to me very strange,

and who wore loafers and

no socks or argyle socks

and went punting on

the Charles on the weekend.

This was another world,

and they had fraternities

and things like that.

I had a few friends

from City College

who also went to Harvard,

and I palled around with them,

but that was another social

world at Harvard itself.

I found a program

in the government

where if you were

working for a professor

they gave you a stipend.

I had no money, I

had no money at all.

Roscoe Pound I

particularly admired.

He was known for

his jurisprudence.

He was an old man.

He could hardly see,

he had an eye shade

and I wanted to work for him.

He said "No,

I can't accept that."

"It has to go through my

brain," he said, his brain.

"I can't get it go through

somebody else's brain."

So he turned me down.

So I went to see

the next professor

that I was interested

in was Sheldon Glueck.

He was the only one

who taught criminology

and his first question

"How much is it gonna cost?"

I said it's free.

He said "I'll take it."

So I became an assistant to him

and when the war had broken out,

he began to study war crimes.

So his first assignment

was get me everything

in the Harvard law library

that relates to war crimes.

That became more relevant

because I suspect,

I don't know that when

the army turned to him

he was consulting

with the Pentagon.

They turned to him

because he'd written

these books on war crimes.

That he said go find Benny,

he's out there somewhere

and they tapped me and they

sent me to Patton's headquarters

and they said your name has

been forwarded from Washington.

So I can only imagine that

it came from Sheldon Glueck.

[somber music]

What opened my eyes was

of course the headlines.

Newspapers they were

murdering all the Jews.

I said how can I sabotage

the German government?

And so what I did was I

wrote to the local consulate

and I said please, I'd

like to disseminate

some of your literature to

justify Hitler and so on

and they sent me piles and piles

of propaganda,

absolute propaganda.

I took them and threw

them in the garbage.

That was my form of sabotage

against the German government.

The war broke out, and I

went with everybody I knew

to try and volunteer at the

different branches

of the service,

and most of them they

wouldn't take me at all.

As an Air Force pilot they said

I couldn't reach the pedals.

A navigator they said if

I'd been told to bomb Berlin

I'd end up in Tokyo.

As a paratrooper they said

you'll go up instead of down.

'Cause there was a desperate

need for my skills,

I was furious,

absolutely furious

because they wouldn't take me.

I asked myself what can

I do to be of most help?

And because I could speak

French like a Frenchman,

I thought if they can

drop me behind the lines

in occupied France and teach

me how to use dynamite,

I'll be able to blow up

all the German trains

and communication lines.

They'll wish they

were back in Berlin.

And ended up finally as a

buck private in the artillery

about which I knew

absolutely nothing.

As a typist in a supply room.

I couldn't even type and they

never taught me how to type.

So the dumbest things

you could possibly do

with a guy who's eager

to serve, they did to me.

And I've never forgiven them.

We were trained to shoot down

high flying planes.

That was going to

be our mission.

I am of the firm

opinion today still

that we shot down more American

and British planes

than German planes.

I had an assignment,

we all did,

and when we see an

American plane coming over

and he doesn't give

us the correct signal,

friend or foe, bum bum bum

you hit the plane

and it explodes.

I never go to see fireworks.

I've seen 'em.

The whole sky is

brightened, and then we go

each one of us soldiers

carrying a little cardboard box,

walking hip to

hip trying to find

a piece of finger to

identify the body.

Find out who the hell is what.

We knew it was an American

plane by that time,

but you gotta report to next

of kin that the guy's dead.

Smashed to smithereens.

The engine would still be,

you know, partly intact

but to find a finger was

already a great discovery.

I found several fingers or

you find a clump of hair.

You put it in the box,

you send it back to

the adjutant general

let 'em work it over and

notify the next of kin.

It's war.

[gentle piano music]

I tell ya', I didn't stop

and ask myself what's

my emotional state?

I asked myself what's next?

Move move, you know?

There's no time for emotion.

No time for being shocked for

tears or anything like that.

[gentle piano music]

My final assignment

in the army

was to be a war

crimes investigator

entering the concentration

camps as they were liberated

in order to collect

evidence for the crimes.

We get a report

into headquarters.

Attack battalion so and

so has come upon a scene

where there are

people walking out of

looks like a work

camp of some kind.

They're all dressed in

something like pajamas

and looks like

they're all starving.

That was about the

gist of the report.

Get to the colonel, the

colonel hands it to Ferencz,

or to captain to Ferencz.

I get in a Jeep and off I go.

[gentle piano music]

My dad is a guy who has been

traumatized by what he saw,

smelled, heard,

and felt you know

with his own eyes, ears, hands.

I read quite a number

of letters that he wrote

while he was there

liberating the camps.

What he saw, what he felt

while this was going on.

This has fueled a nuclear

reactor inside this man,

and it's still, still, still

what he does every day.

[gentle piano music]

I would first find

the commanding officer

of the tank battalion.

I'd go to him and say I'm here

on orders of General Patton.

War crimes investigator.

I want 10 men

immediately surround

the [speaks German] office,

nobody goes in or out

without my permission.

And look back on it, you know

I built a screen,

some sort of a screen

before my mind to

say this is not real.

This is you know, just

go ahead you know?

It's incomprehensible to

a rational human mind.

People lying dead on the floor.

You don't know if

they're dead or alive.

The floor is covered

with dead people.

Some of them are moving.

They're pleading with their

eyes, help me, you know?

They're dressed in rags.

They don't-- Complete rags.

The SS is fleeing, trying

to run out the other end.

Some inmates who were

alive catching SS men

and beat 'em to death

or burn 'em alive.

I've seen that too.

And the medics

are not yet there.

You know they'll

be coming in soon,

and the crematorium going.

Stacks of bodies, looks like

skeletons, all of 'em bones

piled up like cord wood in

front of the crematorium.

The stench in the air,

the human beings behaving

like rats in the garbage pile

digging, crawling

for a bite to eat.

I can't go on describing it.

It becomes vivid again,

and I was ice cold.

I didn't shed a tear,

I didn't hesitate.

I did my job, because

that was my job

and to get out as

fast as you can.

The war was over, and I joined

the army to help win the war.

We had won.

My primary goal after

that was to get home

as soon as possible, try

to resume a normal life.

Not in the wildest imagination

would I have dreamt that

I would've turned around

and gone back to Germany.

That was the furthest

thing from my mind.

I was with 10 million

other GIs coming home,

looking for a job.

And when the cable

came from the Pentagon

saying "Dear sir," they'd

never called me sir before,

"will you please

come to Washington?

"We want to talk to you,"

I assumed that was

in connection with

job application

and off I went to Washington,

and then my life took

a different turn.

[somber music]

Richard Dicker: The end

of the second World War,

where Europe, parts of

Asia, just devastated.

How many millions

of people dead?

And not just deaths, but crimes

committed on unimaginable,

industrial scale by the

Third Reich in Germany.

The pictures from the

liberated concentration camps

did horrify people.

They were so atrocious

that they couldn't

be left unanswered.

Something had to happen.

You couldn't just

have a settlement

and go back to normal.

The Allied powers

decided that you had to

stigmatize what happened.

That this had to

have consequences.

We know there are some people

who said "Just take out

the Nazi murderers

and shoot them."

There are others who

said "Just let it alone.

What's past is past."

To its credit, the

US administration

insisted on a trial.

And to see the 22 top

Nazi leaders still alive

in the dock in that

courtroom in Nuremberg,

I think sent a signal

that these kinds of crimes

could be prosecuted fairly

and those responsible

held to account.

[dramatic music]

Attention, tribunal.

Narrator: Judges from

Britain, America, Russia,

and France assemble in

Nuremberg's courthouse.

Empowered to impose

sentence of death

or such punishment as

it may consider just,

the tribunal sits in judgment

upon 20 leaders

of the Nazi party.

Henrike: To think of the

situation in summer 1945,

what a lot of German

cities looked like,

it was really challenging

to find a place

where you could

hold such a trial.

You would need the building,

you would need the prison.

You know just infrastructure,

you would need an airport,

something where you

could fly in people

and they ended up

here in Nuremberg

because the palace of

justice had survived the war

more or less undestroyed,

and of course there also

was the symbolic aspect.

[speaks German]

Nuremberg was the

place where the Nazis

held their annual party rallies,

so it's more than an

infrastructural question.

The symbolism was

very much in the heads

of those planning the

Nuremberg Trials in July 1945.

If you go back and

read the transcript

of the original IMT, the

International Military Tribunal,

the way Robert Jackson

addressed the court,

I mean this is not your

classic opening statement.

This is poetry in motion.

The privilege of opening

the first trial in history

for crimes against

the peace of the world

imposes a grave responsibility.

The wrongs which we seek

to condemn and punish

have been so calculated, so

malignant, and so devastating

that civilization cannot

tolerate their being ignored

because it cannot survive

their being repeated.

I do think that he had a sense

that the world, when

that trial has ended,

would not be the same

in international law.

You know, he had this sentiment

that this is world history,

that he was, that he was part of

or even the driving force of.

That four great nations,

fleshed with victory

and stung with injury,

stay the hand of vengeance

and voluntarily submit

their captive enemies to

the judgment of the law

is one of the most

significant tributes

that power has ever

paid to reason.

The Nuremberg Trials

were the first time

in modern times that we had

defined crimes against humanity,

genocide, war crimes,

in such an explicit way

and then held men accountable

for violating them.

I was interviewed by

a colonel Mickey Marcus

who was in the Pentagon,

and his job was to

try to recruit staff

for subsequent

proceedings after the

International Military

Trial was finished.

And he said there's somebody

else wants to talk to you

and that was then

colonel Telford Taylor.

Telford Taylor had been

assigned by president Truman

to carry on the work of Jackson

by being the chief of counsel

for the 12 subsequent trials

were being planned.

So he said "I'm

considering you know

you going back

with me," he said

"but I have checked your army

record and your background

and I understand that you're

occasionally insubordinate'"

and I said "That's

not correct, sir.

I'm usually insubordinate.

I do not obey any orders that

I know are stupid or illegal,

but I've been

checking up on you too,"

and I had in the interim,

"and I don't think you'll

give me that kind of order."

He was also a Harvard graduate,

and he'd checked my record.

So he smiled and he said

"You'll go with me."

These were to be 12

additional trials

because it was recognized

by just taking a snapshot

of the International Military

Tribunal top Nazi leaders,

you still didn't

quite understand

how it would be possible

for a civilized

country like Germany

to engage in the

type of atrocities

for which they

were responsible.

And the idea of these

subsequent proceedings,

as they were called, was to

put the doctors on trial,

a sampling who performed

medical experiments

on concentration camp inmates.

The lawyers and judges

who perverted the law

which was the framework on

which they built the film

Judgment at Nuremberg.

You had the industrialists

like IG Farben

who provided the money

to build Auschwitz,

and who were working people

to death for their own profit

in their own companies.

Give them a chance

to state their case.

The foreign ministry people,

and then the SS squads

who were the real, the

murderers on the scene.

So the idea was

to take a sampling

for these 12 different

categories and project that

and through the form

of these 12 trials

to give a comprehensive picture,

and Telford Taylor was to be

chief of counsel for those 12.

I can imagine no two

more different people

than Telford Taylor and Ben.

Telford, this very tall,

elegant, WASPy gentlemen

who could not have been

more polite and thoughtful,

you never got a quick

answer out of Telford.

It was always let

me think about that.

And then this kind of dynamo

of a tiny little Jewish guy

with none of the kind

of elegance of Telford.

He had the same

elegance of mind,

but not elegance of

physical appearance.

I can easily see the attraction.

He was brilliant,

insightful, determined.

He had all the qualities

that one would look for

if one were Telford Taylor.

By the time we got

there to that stage,

he had already picked lawyers

for most of his trials,

and he said "Ben look, you have

the experience in the field

of going into the camps,

collecting evidence

for the army trials.

We have a number of suspects,

but if you have a suspect and

no evidence you have nothing.

Your job is to go

find the evidence."

So I took a staff

of about 50 people

and went to Berlin,

set up the organization

to start searching

in the archives

of the Foreign Ministry,

the SS, the Gestapo, the

army, and the industrialists

to see what evidence we had

that they had

committed war crimes.

It was in that capacity that

one of my staff members,

a boy from Switzerland came

and he said look what I found

in the offices of

the Foreign Ministry,

and it was a complete dossier,

the daily reports

coming in from the front

saying how many Jews

these units had murdered.

Now these units were

called Einsatzgruppe,

and it was

deliberately disguised

so you couldn't tell from

the name what it was,

because their

assignment was to go in

behind the German

lines and then murder,

they never used the word murder,

they said eliminate,

exterminate,

every single Jewish man, woman,

and child they could lay

their hands on and do the same

thing for the Gypsies

and do the same thing

for any suspected

possible enemies of the Reich.

That was their job.

They had these daily

reports sent back to Berlin

where they were consolidated

and put together in a folder

and then each of those

reports was sent down

and I had the distribution list,

to 99 different branches

of the German government.

To people like the army who said

I never heard

anything about that

down in my area and so on.

That was baloney, they are

under my distribution list

so I took an adding machine

and began to add them up

and when I reached a

million people murdered,

I said that's enough.

I took a sampling, took

the next plane from Berlin

where I had the

headquarters for that,

went down to Nuremberg

and I said "General,"

by that time he

had been promoted,

"we got to put on a new trial."

The Einsatzgruppe

were task forces

moving behind the front lines

and their only

purpose was to kill

Jews, minorities,

and opposition.

So they were really

like killing squads.

These were the

forces that rode around

and machine gunned

whole villages and communities

lined up on the

edge of mass graves.

This was not the industrial

horror of Auschwitz.

This was a direct

human being to human

being atrocity.

It concentrated in

a very direct way

the ability of one human being

to savagely destroy another

in a way that is just

incomprehensible.

He said "I'm sorry,

we can't do it.

All the 12 trials have been

approved by the Pentagon.

We have, the staff has

already been assigned.

We don't have staff, we

probably can't get approval

for any more crimes anyway.

The Pentagon had already cooled

on the trials, so

we can't do it."

"Ah," I said, "you can't

let these guys go.

I have in my hand mass murder

on an incredible scale.

The evidence is all here.

You're not gonna let

these guys walk away."

He said, "Well can you do it in

addition to your other work?"

And I said, "Sure!"

And he said

"Okay, so you do it."

Okay, and so it happened that

I became the chief prosecutor

of what turned out to be

the biggest murder

trial in human history.

I have to say looking

back on myself at 27,

I don't know about you, I

can't think of very many people

who would've had the

confidence, the skill,

and the knowledge in

a new legal territory

to be so persuasive

in that role.

First of all, you only pick

a guy who's in captivity.

You don't name Adolf Hitler

'cause you know he's dead,

and there's no sense

putting him in.

So I first said is he dead

or alive, and do we have him?

If we haven't got him, you know

Mengele and people

like that, forget it.

They may be the top,

but we haven't got 'em.

So you have to know

he's in captivity.

[somber music]

Now, and what evidence

do we have against him?

The Einsatzgruppe was easy.

I had their daily reports.

I had the roster of all the

members of the Einsatzgruppe.

So I just went through

them and picked me out

the highest ranking ones,

and so they had about

five or six generals.

I had no enlisted

men in my dock.

Having been an enlisted man

in the United States Army

maybe I was biased.

No enlisted men in my dock.

Give me the highest rank

and the best educated.

Those are the two criteria.

Many of them with

doctor degrees,

doctor, Dr. Rasch had

a double doctorate

and I never had

heard that before.

I was surprised at doctor

doctor, two doctorates.

He killed 33,721

Jews in two days.

29, 30 September, 1941.

I got the bastard.

[laughs]

[somber music]

Ben: I was the first

one in the courtroom.

I went in, I sat down,

there was nobody but me.

I was thinking over my statement

which I had written

the day before.

I was seeing if I

could improve it,

and I was waiting for

the trial to begin.

I was calm.

I was determined.

I didn't realize I

would be making history.

We are now ready to hear

the presentation

by the prosecution.

I made the opening statement,

which stated the case.

It did not appear on the film,

because the film

didn't start rolling

until after the first

paragraph had been done,

and what it left out was

the important beginning.

It was, "May it

please your honors,

it is with sorrow and with hope

that we here disclose

the massive murder

of a million people et cetera."

This was the tragic fulfillment

of a program of

intolerance and arrogance.

But I was very specific.

Vengeance is not our goal.

Nor do we seek merely

a just retribution.

We ask this court to affirm

by international penal action

man's right to live

in peace and dignity

regardless of his race or creed.

The case we present is a

plea of humanity to law.

So here at 27, I

don't know about you,

27 is just the beginning

of being a grownup

and he was in

front of the world.

He wasn't just in front of these

judges and these defendants.

He was in front of the world

making a case as a prosecutor.

Looking at the

judges and saying

the case we present is a

plea of humanity to law,

beautiful stuff.

Honestly, it was years for me

before I wouldn't get literally

teary eyed and emotional

just saying those words

because I think they're

so powerful, so

beautiful, so applicable,

so apropos to what's

happening today.

We shall show that these

deeds of men in uniform

for the methodical execution

of long range plans

to destroy ethnic, national,

political, and religious groups

which stood condemned

in the Nazi mind.

Here's Ben standing

on some books

so that he can be

taller than the lectern

that is immediately

in front of him.

I can only imagine what

he must have felt like here.

This little Jewish guy who,

had his parents not left,

would've been one of

those gassed and killed,

standing and looking at

these German supermen

and saying "I have

more power now,

but I'm just a kid."

It must have been

such a mixed feeling

of passion and determination,

"I have to do this,"

and nervousness

and a combination

of self-confidence

and self-doubt.

[Ben] I wasn't nervous at all.

I didn't kill anybody.

They were the ones

who were nervous,

and they should have been

'cause I had the evidence.

You know this was really

every prosecutor's dream.

You don't have to

call a witness.

All you have to do is

enter the documents,

primary documents saying when,

where, who did the killing.

[Safferling]

Because you had enough written

documentary material

that you could point

at saying, "Yeah."

Here you say, "Is

this your signature?"

And that's it.

You didn't need to have any

more proof by witnesses.

And of course the Germans

were cautious enough

to put everything into

the books that they did.

And offered as

prosecution exhibit 29,

I see there's another

objection coming.

I'll continue the quote.

[speaks foreign language]

The defense lawyers

who were generally German

were actually a highly

talented group of lawyers,

and they bore themselves

quite well in the courtroom

and they sometimes

were able to challenge

the prosecution

quite effectively.

They were very

much individualists,

and they didn't come up with

a sort of common strategy.

They all had their

own strategies.

They were paid by the tribunal,

and for the times then

it was a considerable

amount of money.

You know, in 1945 Germany

was totally destructed

and for a lawyer I think it

was quite a good thing to,

to work at the tribunal because

you were given money

on a regular basis.

It should be recognized

that in 1945 and '46,

the German people

were not necessarily

seeking to tarnish

the reputation

of their surviving

leaders at that time.

There was a lot of

opposition to Nuremberg

by the German

people, and so when

they saw their leaders

up on the stand

this was an assault

on German honor.

And so you know the

defense lawyers knew

that they sort of had the

German people behind them

in representing the Nazi

defendants on the stand.

Judge: Have you

read the indictment?

Yeah.

Judge: How do you plead

to this indictment?

Guilty or not guilty?

[speaks foreign language]

"Not guilty in the

sense of the indictment"

is what they said, but

what did that mean?

The judge said correctly,

"We'll take that

as a plea of not guilty."

I think the defendants

honestly believed

they were not guilty.

They had persuaded themselves

that they did the right thing.

These were people who were

not necessarily born to

become mass murderers.

They were susceptible

to the pressures

that made them mass

murderers in the Nazi regime.

That doesn't mean that

I could ever do that.

I could never do that, no matter

what the circumstances were.

There are certain people who

could never, ever become Nazis

and there are others who

could've gone either way

and I think many of the

defendants at Nuremberg

could have gone either way.

[speaks foreign language]

Dr. Otto Ohlendorf,

General of the SS.

I knew him quite well.

Now, would I call him an animal?

He was rational.

He was I'm sure good

to his cats and dogs.

He was the father

of five children.

He made a sensible argument.

He was reasonably

honest in his answers.

He said he would do it again,

even if they ordered him

to kill his own sister

and the reason was Hitler

knew that the Germans

were going to be

attacked by the Russians

and Hitler had more

knowledge than he did,

therefore he was in no

position to challenge that.

And it was lawful,

therefore to act

in anticipatory self-defense

to prevent that from happening

and that's what he was doing.

He made an argument which the

Pentagon would make today.

Self-defense was his plea.

Man: Very well, we'll leave

this after one more question.

The figure of 90,000 is the

best estimate you can give

at this moment.

I take it we must

continue to read that

with the qualification which

you gave in direct testimony

that you think there's a great

deal of exaggeration in it.

He made the point,

some of the commanders

would take the infants

and just hold 'em by a leg

and smash their

head against a tree

and he said I didn't

believe in that.

He said, "I told my men

when a mother has an infant

and of course the

infant is crying

and the mother is crying

and she's holding the

infant to her breast,

aim for the infant because

you'll kill both of them

with one shot, you'll

quiet the mother,

you'll save ammunition

and it's much more humane."

"And there were other things.

For example, we had gas vans.

They were ordinary, you

know, like trailers here

except that they attached

the hose from the engine

to the inside so the fumes would

asphyxiate the people

inside the van,

and they'd pack 'em

in solid, lock 'em in,

and about 20 minutes

they get to the place

where they're going to

dump 'em, open the van

and dump 'em all

into the ditch."

But Ohlendorf said,

"I didn't like the gas vans

because some of

them were not dead,

and then you had to

sort 'em out by hand

and they were screaming

and they were bloody

and they were messy,"

and he said, "it was bad

for the morale of the

men to have to do that.

So I told 'em I didn't want

any more of the gas vans."

So Ohlendorf was really

quite a decent chap,

you might say,

aside from the fact

that he killed 90,000 Jews,

I'm sure he was

quite a gentleman.

[somber music]

These million

people were murdered

because they didn't share

the race, the religion,

or the ideology of

their executioners,

and I said, "That's

a terrible crime

and it's a crime

against humanity."

And I called it a

crime against humanity.

And I said, "If we can

prevent that in future

by condemning crimes

against humanity,

we will reassert the

legal right of all people

to be protected."

If we could establish

a principle rule

which would protect

humanity in the future,

then this trial

would be significant.

For the first time, the

international community

tried to put law as an answer

to these most horrible crimes

that originated

from Nazi Germany.

And this was a revolution.

It started the

way we think about

international criminal law.

About international

law generally.

I had a list I made

myself on a yellow page

in which I listed

all the defendants

and I listed what I thought

the sentence should be.

The actual sentences

were more severe

than what I would have listed.

I was numb.

They're all imprisoned

below the courthouse.

There is a lift, Black

Maria they called

which keeps going around

into the courthouse

and a sliding door which opens.

As each defendant came up,

they would hear the judge,

"For the crimes of which

you are convicted,

this tribunal sentenced

you to death by hanging."

Put the earphones

back, take it off.

Bow, step back a

step into the lift,

the door closes, and he

drops down into hell.

That's what I saw.

One after the other,

for the crimes of which

you are convicted, this tribunal

sentences you death by

hanging, death by hanging,

death by hanging.

I thought my head

was gonna bust.

It was customary for

the chief prosecutor

to invite his staff for a party

when every trial was ended.

I had a party

arranged for my house.

I couldn't go to my own party.

I went home, went to bed.

My head was pounding with it.

So how do you describe

that emotion, that feeling?

I didn't say I'm sorry for them.

I didn't say hooray for me.

It was a very tense, very

severe emotional reaction

knowing that you're responsible

for killing this guy.

Otto Ohlendorf, he

was the only defendant

that I ever talked to

man to man

after he was sentenced to death.

I felt, look, this guy

is gonna hang for sure.

He's the father of five

kids, he has a wife,

he was honest on the trial.

Maybe he'll tell me something,

you know tell my

children I love them,

tell my wife I'm sorry.

Nobody ever said

they were sorry.

So I went down to talk to him,

and he's locked up in a cell

behind bars under the courthouse

and a little window opens up,

and I said to him

[speaks foreign language]

in German and I said:

"Can I do something for you?"

And then he began:

"You'll see I was right.

The Russians are gonna

take over the Jews.

The Jews in America

will suffer."

and he just goes repeating

the argument he

read on the trial.

I let him go for about a minute,

and then I said, "Goodbye

Mr. Ohlendorf" in English,

closed the door and left.

The next thing I saw I was

invited to come to the hanging.

I refused to go, but they

sent me the tape anyway

so I have a picture of

him hanging by the neck

for eight minutes and

then pronounced dead.

[gentle piano music]

I wanted to go home, but then

something terrible happened.

[laughs]

I was approached by

Jewish organizations

and they said, "Hey boy,

there's something

else to be done here.

What about the victims?"

And it didn't take

long to convince me

they had managed to get a

military government law enacted

saying that the property

of murdered Jews

would go not to

the German state,

but to a consortium of

Jewish organizations

which would use it for charity

purposes of the survivors

and that sounded like

a very good idea,

except they wanted

me to take it over

and to do the job.

I said, "How long do

they think it'll take?"

They said, "Well, we'd like

a commitment of two years."

Well I went back

to my dear wife,

and she said, "Well the

cause seems good enough,

but they said two

years but if I know you

it'll only take one year.

So take the job."

Whereupon, being

the sole employee,

I declared myself

the director general

and set about to recover

the heirless unclaimed

Jewish property.

Naturally, the

cemeteries were unclaimed

because the Jewish

congregations which had

built up these cemeteries

for centuries were gone.

They were abolished,

and the cemeteries

became property of the Reich.

So I immediately

asserted ownership

of all these cemeteries

on behalf of the

successor organization.

All well and good,

except the question arose

who pays the course of the

maintenance of the cemeteries?

Hundreds of cemeteries.

The Polish government

and the Polish Red Cross

invited me to come to Poland

and be their guest for a week.

I said, "The only thing I really

wanted to see in

Poland was Auschwitz

because I'd never been there

and it had been liberated

by the Russians."

The field behind Auschwitz

is covered with wild grass.

And under the grass,

there was the fertilizer

taken from the

crematorium, and I noticed

there were some black bones.

There were little

bones of some kind.

They may have been the bones

of a child or of a hand,

and I picked them up and

I put them in my pocket.

Somebody asked me

why am I doing that?

I said, "I want to be reminded

what the hell I'm

doing in Germany."

Anyway, the question comes up

who's gonna maintain

those cemeteries,

and at whose expense?

The Germans assure us that

they will take care of it

as they would their own

cemeteries for 20 years.

I said, "Wait a minute,

you take care of your own

cemeteries for 20 years,

but in Jewish tradition once

a cemetery, always a cemetery."

One of them says,

"Mr. Ferencz you know,

be reasonable I mean, do

you expect us to give them

more rights than we give

to our own German citizens?"

At that point I exploded.

I really got mad and

I pulled the bones out

and I said, "If they were alive

they wouldn't ask you to

take care of the cemeteries.

You killed them, that's

why they have to ask you!"

And I pounded the

bones on the table

and I said, "You want them

to pay you, ask 'em."

And the high tension because

I very seldom get angry.

The chairman was very wise.

He said, "Meeting is

adjourned for 15 minutes."

And we all got up and

they all left me to...

We come back after 15 minutes

and the chairman says,

"We accept your terms."

Just like that.

"Thank you very much."

And I left as soon as I could.

That meant that the

German government

was legally responsible and

I assume they've done it

'cause they're

pretty good that way,

on maintaining all the Jewish

cemeteries in perpetuity.

That's a fortune.

Those bones clinched

the argument.

Without the bones, it would

not have happened, I'm sure.

So I thought these

were historic bones,

and I sent them to

the Holocaust Museum

and I told them the story.

My wife Gertrude

with whom I've been

happily wed for over 71 years,

she's also from

Transylvania as I am.

She came to America when

she was about 16 years old.

Also no language,

no money, no skills.

Immediately went to work

and went to night school

and got herself a Master's

Degree in due course

and became a health teacher.

I've been very fortunate

because she has believed

in what I was doing.

She tolerated my absences

when I was going on

trips around the world.

My dad used to

tuck us in at night.

He would tell us

stories every night.

He would take each of his kids

on what he called dates on

the weekend, one at a time.

He used to play King of the Hill

you know, Blind Man's Bluff

or whatever the games were.

He was very involved

with his kids,

particularly when we

were young growing up.

So he made time for his kids.

Ben: It was time to go home.

I have my wife, I have four

children born in Nuremberg.

I have to go home.

So I went home.

The big law firm said,

"Oh it's great.

If we have to hang

Nazis, we'll call you.

You got any clients?"

You know.

So I began to take your

typical New York cases.

Somebody fell down the subway

and broke a leg, okay you know?

Telford had a

similar experience.

He came back and he

went into partnership

with his brother-in-law

who happened to be

the dean of the

Harvard Law School

when he signed my diploma.

His name was Landis,

James Landis.

So he said, "Ben, why don't

you come in with us?"

It didn't bring us

any clients either.

But I was known as the lawyer

who takes hopeless cases

on a contingent fee.

And what I did was I would

find a moral situation

where the claimant didn't

seem to have a chance,

but I felt it was right.

I went after them

on a contingent fee

which was usually much less

than the normal contingent fee.

They practiced

human rights law

at a time when there

was no such thing.

They practiced

civil liberties law.

Every case they took

was a do-gooder case.

Free speech cases,

anti-McCarthyism cases,

every kind of case

that I wanted to take

when I was a lawyer,

and I think that

both Telford and Ben

had an enormous impact

on a generation

of lawyers my age.

I made enough money to

invest it wisely and carefully,

and so from being a poor

boy I got to be a rich boy.

And I gave away all my money.

I'm in the process

of doing it still,

including to Cardozo, Harvard

Law School, et cetera.

Taylor went to Vietnam

and he wrote a book,

Nuremberg in Vietnam in

which he made the point

that the United States

forgot the lessons

we tried to teach the

world in Nuremberg.

And he was an outspoken

critic of the McCarthy regime.

He was very courageous,

absolutely correct,

a good writer, high

moral standards.

He deserved much

more recognition

and responsibility than he had.

He was an excellent lawyer and

never properly appreciated.

[gentle piano music]

We are in a time

where we find the world

in many different areas

in heinous, horrible conflicts.

And the world after the

fall of the Berlin Wall

had the hope and

expectation that we'll

be in a more

peaceful environment

and this turned out to

be a horrible fallacy.

You know after the

Holocaust we said never again

and we've seen it again and

again and again and again

and there's no indication

that it's going to end.

[Ben] We are now spending

even more money

to be in an arms race.

Who can build the weapons

to kill more people?

That is the current

state of the world,

and we have to recognize that

the only way out of

this: law, not war.

[man] The world is

struggling for an answer.

And an answer could be

found in international

criminal law.

Law could be an answer to

conflicts with human suffering

of an almost unseen nature.

[Ben] The time has come, guys

to stop this killing.

Have a court settle your

disputes by peaceful means,

and until you do that,

you're going to

continue killing yourselves.

And it's just common sense.

We have international crimes,

you need an international court.

So I began to write on the

international criminal court.

[Scheffer] I remember as a young

lawyer

very interested in

international law

I was with an

international law firm.

I probably was the only

person in the law firm

that bought Ben's books

because I was so impressed

with what Ben Ferencz

had written in 1980

about you have to build

an international criminal court.

You have these individuals who

become part of

international law making

that have an enormous

individual impact

and Ben was that.

He worked for decades to

try and get a replacement

for the Nuremberg Tribunals

within the United

Nations General Assembly,

an international

criminal court.

I was the ambassador at

large for war crimes issues

during the second term of

the Clinton administration.

Ben Ferencz was one

hell of a lobbyist.

He reminded me of

Raphael Lemkin who

you know was the father

of the Genocide Convention

and spent the 1950s going

up and down Capitol Hill

urging ratification of the

Genocide Convention

by the United States.

Well Ben Ferencz was

there in the 1990s

pressing hard and he kept at me.

And he was persistent.

He's knocking on

every delegate's door

to try and get them to support

a strong international

criminal court,

and the mantra that you hear

when you interview him today

is the mantra that

he had back then

about the importance of

justice and the rule of law.

It not only in

international affairs

but in the survival

of the human race.

It becomes reachable in Rome.

I made an opening

statement there.

They invited me

because they knew me.

I went to all the meetings,

and I wrote papers.

I wrote you know hundreds and

dozens of articles, speeches,

lectures, nagging and so on.

I said, "The place is

here, the time is now,"

and I began it by saying,

"I have come to speak

for those who cannot

speak, the victims."

[applause]

Well the time is fall of 2000.

We're coming towards the end

of the Clinton administration .

We have a deadline, which

is December 31, 2000.

The last opportunity

for any country

to sign the Rome Statute.

In the government I

was working feverishly

to get President Clinton

to that decision point.

But you know, it's a funny thing

about government and

about presidents.

You can do an enormous

amount internally

to get everything lined

up and to his desk,

you know in big

three ring binders

where he's going to sit down

and diligently

consider this issue,

but to really trigger

that man's interest

you have to have something

hit him from the outside.

You just have to have it.

Well, with respect to the

international criminal court,

that moment arrived not on TV.

It arrived on the op-ed

page of the Washington Post

by two men, Ben Ferencz

and Robert McNamara.

Narrator: Our 50 billion

dollar defense program

is explained by secretary

of defense McNamara.

In the past year,

we've doubled the rate

of building Polaris submarines.

One day, I had a call.

My wife took the message.

She's saying secretary

McNamara wanted to talk to you.

And he said I want you

to write an op-ed piece

for the New York Times,

which both of us can sign

calling on the United

States to sign on

to the international

criminal court.

Remember who these people are.

Ben Ferencz, prosecutor

from Nuremberg.

Unimpeachable credentials,

but who's the other guy?

Robert McNamara, the

architect of the Vietnam War.

My response to him in

practically these words

I'm sure,

"Mr. Secretary I

think you realize

that if we had such a court,

you might be one of

the first defendants."

He said I know that.

I said then why do you ask me

to get the United

States to sign on?

He said, "I didn't

know it was illegal."

we're talking the Vietnam War.

"If I had known, I

wouldn't have done it."

I said, "Okay."

I drafted the letter.

That was a very

powerful partnership

and you bet President

Bill Clinton

would read that op-ed.

And if there's anything

anyone should know

about president Clinton is

he actually makes decisions

at the last moment.

He makes good decisions,

but he does wait

until the last moment,

and so he did finally

reach that decision early

of December 31st and

I was authorized then

to go to New York

and sign the treaty.

Well on December

30th I receive a call

instructing me to

get a train ticket

for the next morning on Amtrak

so that I'm in New York,

and it happened to

be a huge snowstorm

but they said, "The President

has not made a decision yet,

but we want you on that train,"

because there were no flights.

The weather was preventing that.

"You'll receive instructions

when you arrive in New York,"

and I finally got

to Penn Station

and I still had not received

the final instruction.

I'm riding up the

escalator at Penn Station

and I receive a call from

the Secretary of State,

Madeleine Albright, my boss.

She informed me that the

president had made the decision

that the treaty would be signed

and that I had authority now

to proceed to the United

Nations to sign the document.

New York City was

completely covered by snow.

There were no taxis running,

and so I had my snow boots on

and I hiked from Penn Station

to the United Nations.

The UN had to open just for me

to walk in and sign the treaty,

because it was closed that day.

It was New Year's Eve.

They close at the UN.

And I walked in to the room

where treaties are signed,

and there was a very small

group of people to witness it.

Very interesting.

The last official act of the

President of the United States

when is everybody sound asleep

and he has his ambassador

go sneak in there

and sign the goddamn thing.

[cheering]

Unfortunately what

George W. Bush did

was that he said,

"with respect to that

signature on the

treaty, we're no longer

going to perform our obligation

as a signatory state."

So that was the

downslide after the

Clinton administration,

much to my regret.

And that's the

political process.

Or as Churchill's

reported to have said,

"It's a terrible system, but he

can't think of a better one."

[gentle piano music]

When we started this, every

time we met with a UN leader

or a government they said

"We'll work on this

but it'll never happen,

not in your lifetime,

not in your

children's lifetime,"

and less than four years

later we had a treaty.

Then we were told the treaty

would take 20, 25 years

like the law of the sea

to get 60 ratification.

Again, four years

later we had that.

It is simply not

plausible anymore to argue

that any political

or military leader

who is responsible for the

commission of atrocity crimes

has the right to

get away with it.

Nuremberg started that process.

We got detracted

by the Cold War.

The Cold War ended, we

regenerated the process

in order to hold these

individuals responsible

and to send a loud

and clear signal

you are subject to

criminal law, period

and you cannot negotiate

your way out of it.

May it please your honors,

this is a historic

moment in the evolution

of international criminal law.

For the first time a permanent

international criminal court

will hear the closing statement

for the prosecution

and it concludes its first case

against its first accused,

Mr. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.

When the court finally

gets its first case,

they asked me to do the closing

statement I'm 92 years old.

This is against a guy who had

been using child soldiers.

They go and say, "You give

us food, give us money,"

and if you have no money

to give them and no food

they go, "Oh you got a couple

of kids, we'll take the kids,"

and they were taking kids 13, 14

and the boys they taught

'em how to use a gun.

The kids loved the

excitement of that,

and they taught 'em how to kill

and that happens

to be a war crime.

When the statute

that binds this court

was overwhelmingly approved,

over 100 sovereign

states decided

that child recruitment

and forcing them

to participate in

hostilities were

and I'm quoting now

from the statute,

"among the most serious

crimes of concern

"for the international

community as a whole."

This was the first ICC case,

and I believe that

it was only fitting

that from Nuremberg, Ben

Ferencz, to the Hague,

it was only fitting

that he would be called

to do the closing remarks

of this historic case.

What makes this

court so distinctive

is its primary goal to deter

crimes before they take place

by letting wrongdoers

know in advance

that they will be

called to account

by an impartial

international criminal court.

It's not an easy feat to

create an institution like this.

It requires courage,

it requires leadership,

it requires the right moment

in historical perspective.

It requires political will.

Without Ben, his contribution

and people like him,

this field will not have

evolved the way it already has.

We still have a long way to go,

but it's still an

incredible achievement.

Ben has played a critical

role in the evolution

of international

criminal justice

and in the creation of the ICC.

Rome Statute for the

International Criminal Court

is one of the strongest

if not the strongest

international law treaty

since the end of World War II.

You now have an

institution in the Hague

to hold individuals,

no matter who they are,

responsible for committing

these worst crimes.

And that's something to continue

to be very positive about

and to do everything

you can to make it work.

But the job is not done.

Now we need to persuade

the other states

to be part of this, this ICC.

The United States has

signed the Rome Statute

and the signature

is still there.

The problem is, we are

not a ratified party

to the Rome Statute.

You know this is part of a

much larger picture in America.

We often describe ourselves

as the exceptional nation.

We discipline ourselves,

but we're not eager

to have any international regime

with supreme authority

discipline us.

The attitude is, "Well the

United States does this already,

or the United

States Constitution

already has these

protections in it.

Why should we

sacrifice any of that

to an international

regime of any character?"

Why, because we're the

exceptional nation.

We will meet all

of these standards,

but we meet them on our

terms, not on the terms

being dictated from

an international body.

From the outset, the United

States was concerned that

maybe it wouldn't

always be objective.

That since we were doing

a lot of the peacekeeping

and the intervening,

maybe we'd be held

specifically

specially accountable

by rival powers who

were on the other side,

either overtly or covertly.

And so we couldn't go along.

U.S. policy makers will say

it's fine for the Belgians

and the Brazilians, but we're

the greatest country on Earth.

We don't need to be subject

to the same law

that applies to everyone else.

And that's true for

Russia, it's true for China,

it's true for Pakistan and

India and Israel and Indonesia.

And most of the Arab world,

and we're just not there yet.

There are 124 countries

that have joined

the International

Criminal Court.

That's unfortunate.

It's a loss in credibility

in terms of US policy

when these crimes

arise anywhere in the world.

No country which

prefers to use its power

rather than the rule of law

would vote for the rule of law.

That's logical.

That's still the

situation today.

There are some people who do

not trust the rule of law,

and they prefer to use military

power to achieve their goals

as they decide and when

they decide they should.

That's led by the United States

to which China replies,

when you're ready to change

and give it up, come see me.

We'll talk about it then

and the Russians say

we're not trusting you.

We don't trust anybody.

So we have this

political tension

still exists in the world

and they're still talking

about using weaponry

to settle their disputes,

not seeming to realize

how very devastating and

dangerous that is to themselves

and to their people.

It's decisive.

War will make mass murderers

out of otherwise decent people

and I have seen it again

and again and again.

And it's inevitable.

They become mass murderers

whether they are Americans,

or they're Germans,

or anybody else.

That's the effect of war.

My answer to that

is stop war making.

Well, how are you

gonna stop war making?

It's been glorified

for centuries.

Yes, it has been glorified.

It's time to stop before

you kill everybody

and we're on that path too, so

you gotta make up your mind.

Either you're going

to try to behave

in a humane and rational way,

or you're going

to kill everybody.

Goodbye kids, I'm 95

years, 98 years old.

Not my world.

That's my message.

From the examples that

Ben has given all of us,

he has never wavered, never.

He believes that we can

achieve justice for humanity.

This is one person, you know.

One great man in history

who continues to give his best.

Who continues to

show his commitment.

Who continues to show that

this world can be better.

I don't think a personal

legacy is important to him.

I think it is important

to him that we advance

the rule of law, advance

the ball for all humankind

to diminish suffering.

Ben: Good

afternoon young lady.

Ben's presence

and his tireless

efforts are still needed

in reminding us of

Nuremberg and a good thing

that was started there

to be continued today

and to be brought into

these new institutions.

Think this is what keeps

him going, keeps him young.

You know he's very

committed to this idea

that law as you know

is better than war.

[Ben] I work incredible hours.

I work starting sometimes

seven o'clock in the morning

'til 10 o'clock at night.

I don't know what a holiday is.

I don't know what

retirement means.

I have no desire

to go play golf

or to go fishing, things

that normal people do

when they retire.

[Abella] I mean if all he had

done was argue at the age of 27

in front of the

Nuremberg Tribunal,

I would've said,

"That's a remarkable person."

To go on and use that as the

fire that ignites his soul

and his brain on

behalf of humanity

is what makes him

an iconic figure,

and the reason it's iconic

is because he never forgot

what he saw and heard, and

he's used it to make it better

not for him, for everybody else

so he's a conscience.

He's a roving conscience

that says to people,

"This isn't right.

You can't do this.

This is wrong."

[Ben] I consider myself very

fortunate to have been able to

go from rags to riches,

to have been married to a woman

with whom I have

never had a quarrel

and she's 98 years old.

We've been married

for over 71 years.

I have survived

the battles of war.

So life has been good to me.

And I have no

wish other than to serve the

United States and the world

by trying to make it a more

humane and peaceful world order.

That's my goal in life.

[gentle piano music]