How was justice addressed after the war? And what is the legacy, in terms of the laws that now exist regarding genocide and crimes against humanity? Have they prevented crimes being repeated since then? You will read the testimony of Ben Ferencz on the legacy of justice and international law up to the present day.
Ben Ferencz was born in 1920 and was known for his work as an investigator and chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials from 1945-1946. He learned that “if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race." He dedicated the rest of his life to advocacy for the establishment of international law and the International Criminal Court.
He says “I had never tried a case, I had never been to a criminal court in my life. I was twenty-seven years old. The impact of war itself affected me so that I wanted to stop warmaking. The stench in the air, the human beings behaving like rats. I can’t go on describing it ... these people were murdered because they did not share the race, the religion, the ideology of their executioners. It is a crime against humanity and I called it a crime against humanity. If we could establish a principle of law which would protect humanity in the future, then this trial would be significant.” After a career of seven decades, Ben laid out a legal process that carried us through the 20th century and into the 21st century.
Describe the work Ben Ferencz pursued for over seven decades after the war. Are these issues still relevant today? If so, how?