Benjamin Ferencz will be 102 years old next week, but his voice has the ferocity of a much younger man.
The only surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials, held to convict Nazis of war crimes committed during World War II, is back there, peering into the whites of those monsters’ eyes 75 years ago.
Despite everything Nuremberg stood for and enforced, events in Ukraine have pulled him back, making him terribly aware that he’s lived long enough to face the threat of history repeating again.
Two of the 22 Nazis he prosecuted at the time, high-ranking members of the Einsatzgruppen, Nazi extermination squads responsible for the murders of over two million people, were the masterminds behind the September 1941 massacre of Babyn Yar in Kyiv.
He was horrified when he learned that Putin’s forces had blown the mass grave of its 33,771 mostly Jewish victims on Tuesday.
Hearing the International Criminal Court (ICC) proclaim this week that it was already deploying war crimes investigators to Ukraine and that it will call Russian offenders to account at the highest level for any war crimes committed has given him reason to be hopeful again.
As evidence mounts that Russia is targeting civilians and employing indiscriminate cluster munitions, he and others have little doubt that crimes are being committed.
“The crimes now being committed against Ukraine by Russia are a disgrace to human society,” he continued, raising his voice and shouting at times, “those responsible should be held accountable for aggression, crimes against humanity and plain murder. As soon as they start dragging the criminals before a court the happier we will be.”
Proven war crimes would have to be tied directly to Putin and his circle in order for them to be prosecuted. To make their arrests possible, a completely new government may be required.
Russia has already withdrawn from the International Criminal Court.
Mr. Ferencz, on the other hand, believes Putin can be imprisoned – perhaps here, like Bosnian Serb commander Radovan Karadzic.
“It’s very realistic,” Mr. Ferencz said, from his now Florida home. “All we need is the determination to do it, they’re not living on the moon.
“I want to see Putin behind bars, it is possible.”
Mr. Ferencz, a New Yorker from a Jewish immigrant family, was tasked with establishing a Nazi war crimes division in 1944, which required him to witness firsthand the horrors of concentration camps.
He even went so far as to search shallow graves for proof with his bare hands.
Today, he is “still traumatised”.
He was the prosecutor when 22 members of the Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted. At the age of 27, this was his first case.
Commanders SS Colonel Paul Blobel and Otto Rasch, who organized the Babyn Yar massacre, were among his defendants.
Thousands were forced to undress and walk into the ravine, then shot.
“The Einsatzgruppen was very active in Ukraine and Kyiv, now we’re back at the same old game,” he said, his outrage formidable.
“Then, they machine gunned them and threw them in the ditch. At what point do we stop and say that’s enough? I thought WW2 would be enough.
“We had hoped the Nuremberg precedent would deter them but apparently it’s not been as effective as we hoped.”
Mr. Ferencz is a tough cookie. He believes that the war crimes inquiry will dissuade Russia since it will be clear that “the international community intends to hold them accountable.”
He also believes that order can be restored, though it will be “slow and difficult”.
And he’s still convinced that war isn’t inherently human.
“The lesson can be learned,” he insisted. “I can’t believe this is inevitable, it’s not inevitable.”
Image Credit: Getty
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