[Music]
let me begin without further adue by
explaining and that I was born in a
little village in Transylvania nobody
knows about that a collective herd of
Dracula but it was a little village the
house had no water no lights and didn’t
even have television and the family a
consisting of my mother father and a
sister myself had been subjected to
persecution and poverty and the only
thing we could do would be to get out of
there as soon as possible the nations
were changing nationalities my sister
was born in Hungary I was born in the
same bed they called it Romania so there
was turmoil following the first world
war we landed
my taking a small ship across the
Atlantic Ocean in December
traveled the
class because there was no fourth class
the voyage itself was very perilous my
grandmother who followed shortly after
us died of pneumonia on the ship when we
landed in New York we were lucky to find
someone who offered a shelter if my
father would become a janitor or an
apartment house a tenement house we
would be allowed to sleep and live in
the cellar
and that’s where my life in America
began my memory begins ah in a dank
cellar in a place called Hell’s Kitchen
in New York which was a high-density
crime area I won’t bore you with the
details we lived in poverty I lived in
poverty most of my life but uh I had the
courage to go to a good school I applied
for admission to the Harvard Law School
and was accepted and given a scholarship
for my exam on criminal law ah I was
still in law school when the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor occurred
everybody I knew went down to enlist it
took me a while because I was very short
less about five feet ball and eventually
I did enlist in the army as a private in
the artillery I was sent to Europe in
that capacity be joining the landing at
Normandy
well the invasion of France I remember
very well since this is a British port
cast the British sailors were
the
charge of the landing craft and as I
jumped out into the water for most of
the soldiers the water went up to their
ankles for me it went up to my knee and
the British sailor
slapped me on the back and he said ah
that’s the way to Berlin young good luck
and that was my return to Europe I won’t
go into the details of war itself that’s
been adequately described elsewhere I
can only tell you the conclusion or is
hell uh-huh and I went through it not
merely the landing on Normandy Beach
well by that time there were dead
soldiers American soldiers in uniform
floating facedown in the water tanks
mired in the sand
the Germans waiting of short distance
away the counter-attack I crossed the
Rhine and the pan onto an bridge in the
Jeep I participated in every major
battle till the final Battle of the
Bulge and the most interesting thing for
my entire war experience was the horrors
that I personally witnessed on
assignment from General Patton’s
headquarters to go into the
concentration camps as they were being
liberated and collect evidence of the
crimes so that the offenders and
perpetrators could be held to account in
a court of law which was intended at
that time and I need not describe in
detail the concentration camps I have
difficulty in doing so bodies lying on
the ground you couldn’t tell if they
were dead or alive his eyes reading for
help stacks of what had been humans
piled up looking like stacks of bones
before the crematoria waiting to be
burned every possible disease typhus
rats lice dysentery the idea was to get
in get the evidence and get out as fast
as you can and move on to the next camp
and that’s what I did moving from Camp
to camp
from born wild which was the first camp
to mutt housing to flossenbürg to a
host of camps with the circumstances
were all rather the same power is the
only word to describe it
human beings were turned into animals
behaving like rats
climbing into a pile of rubble and
garbage trying to find some morsel of
bread of food that would help diminish
some of their starvation so that all of
us I saw a very close hand and of course
it had and in there made an indelible
impression on me
when the war was over all I wanted to do
was to go home and resume a normal life
I never wanted to go back to Germany
I came back to the states with about 10
million soldiers looking for a job I had
been admitted to the bar before I enter
the army um one day I got a telegram
from the Pentagon dear sir
they had never called me sir before oh I
went they wanted to talk to me about a
job um they wanted to send me back to
Germany to help with the military
commissions which I had worked on in my
days as a soldier as at that time a
corporal or a sergeant of infantry they
wanted me to go back to help them set up
these military commission trials which
would take place in Munich and these
have been all but forgotten while we
were discussing that possibility and I
was refusing to go back into military
service unless we declared war on
Germany again and were losing the
military and I didn’t quite see eye to
eye I’m mainly the point not to obey any
order that I knew was illegal was stupid
and so very often I was in hot water
with the over the army bureaucracy any
case I was higher than my a man who has
been general Telford Taylor later we
became law partners in New York he was
in charge pointed by President Truman to
conduct 12 additional trials in
Nuremberg and the purpose of those
trials was to paint a broader picture of
German life and it was not just a
snapshot of Hermann Goering and Goebbels
and other people in the first
International Military Tribunal trial in
Nuremberg but to see how it was possible
for a country like Germany a civilized
country to not only engage in these
atrocities but do cheer them and
encourage them how is it possible so we
wanted to have a trial of the doctors
who perform medical experiments the
lawyers and judges who perverted them
raw that was the subject of film
judgment at Nuremberg
the generals the members of the SS the
stormtroopers who are doing the actual
murdering the army themselves the
diplomats themselves the tan the
industrialists who built the
concentration camps they provided the
funds for them in order to have free
labor and the people working there would
be literally worked to death and so I
went back to Germany and general Taylor
who was in charge of the 12th Roz
said look Ben you know all about Germany
about the concentration camps you were
collecting evidence of that we have
suspects but we need the evidence to
convict them if we have only a suspect
and no evidence you have no case if you
have the evidence but no suspect in
custody we have no case so my job was to
find enough convicting evidence who hold
the people with heads as suspects in
Nuremberg I went to Berlin set up a
staff of about 50 people and there we
combed through the ruins of the various
German officers the SS the Foreign
Ministry’s etc and we found a batch of
reports from the Eastern Front top
secret of course in all in German are
sent to Berlin where they were
consolidated and these were reports of a
very nondescript or outfit called
Einsatzgruppen ein such in Germany means
action group only means groups and it
was deliberately
nondescript because they didn’t want
anyone to know what their assignment was
their assignment very simple was to go
in behind the German lines and kill they
never used the word kill they said
eliminate or something like that
every single Jewish man woman and child
they could lay their hands on do the
same thing for the gypsies do the same
thing or anybody else who might be
perceived as a threat or future chat
threat to Germany
to Berlin I had these documents I flew
with him with a sampling down to
Nuremberg and I said to general Taylor
we have to put on a new trial he said we
can’t um what cases the whole been
assigned all the lawyers have been
assigned the Pentagon is not keen on
these trials to begin with I’ll never
get approval for it and I was outraged
and said we cannot let these mass
murderers go free I have in my hand mass
murder on a scale never before seen in
human history and we can’t let just walk
away from it he said can you do this in
addition to your other work and I said
sure okay said then you’ll do it and so
I was appointed to became the chief
prosecutor of what was known as the
Einsatzgruppen case
I accused the 22 defendants of murdering
in cold blood over a million people
including thousands of children shot one
shot at a time
I was then 27 years old it was my first
case the difficult thing for me was to
decide what penalty do I ask for
how do you balance in the scale of
justice the calculated murder of a
million people innocent people with the
lives of 22 selected defendants out of
3,000 who every day did these killings
for about a two-year period and I
concluded that to just ask for the death
penalty would be totally inadequate to
match this severity of the crime and
instead of that I asked the court to
affirm my international criminal law the
right of all human beings to live in
peace and dignity regardless of their
race or creed because these people were
murdered simply because they didn’t
share the race creed or ideology of
their executioner’s and I thought that
was quite horrible and if we could get a
rule of law I was already a lawyer and I
was always interested in law if we could
get a rule of law which would protect
humankind against such future atrocities
that would be more significant than
anything we did with the selected
handful of murderers um the judgment of
the court found all of the defendants
guilty 13 of them were sentenced to
death and of course reaffirmed my plea
for the entitlement of all human beings
to live in peace and dignity regardless
of their race or creed
it was my plea or humanity a plea of
humanity to law and that has never left
me I
when the trials were over I recognized
there was more to this punishing a
handful of defendants we have to do
something for the victims as well and I
worked on creating a new precedence in
the law it took a lot of bold action and
bold thinking to say the fact that it
never existed before is irrelevant if
you will do harm to a person illegally
you have a duty morally as well as
legally to try to compensate and undo
the harm and I set up all the
restitution programs for all the Nazi
victims regardless of race or creed to
get compensation from Germany West
Germany that program is continuing to
this day that was another thing but the
most important thing the most important
by far is to prevent it from happening
again
and everybody said then what are you
trying to do you’re trying to stop a war
making and the answer is yes I am trying
to stop war making because the current
system whereby if two heads of state are
unable to agree they take young people
like all of you and send them out to
kill all the young people they don’t
even know who may have done them no harm
and when they get tired of killing each
other they rest for a while declare
victory then they start again killing
each other that’s the current system
it’s playing crazy and the money that
they need to take care of the students
and pay their obligations to take care
of the refugees to take care of the poor
and the medical requirements of the
agent it’s wasted on armaments today we
can kill everybody from cyberspace
nuclear weapons are already obsolete
from cyberspace we can cut off the
electrical grid on planet earth which
means if they want to cut off the
electrical grid Oh for London easy just
shut it off what happens to the people
in London or any other state or country
well they’ll be dead in a week or two is
the issue so that’s the world in which
we live you are in a very dangerous
condition today much more so than ever
before I’m not concerned with my welfare
I am concerned with yours so I want to
say since my time here is limited
soon this torch will rub for my hands I
know that someone else will pick it up
ah
whoever people that may be and it would
be more than one I hope and no will be
run with it as far as you can it’s
possible to do the impossible we see it
from cyberspace today we see it from the
emancipation of women we see it from
same-sex marriages this is impossible a
few years ago today it’s a reality but
we can do the impossible what’s so
impossible out stopping war making when
you’re spending all your money on trying
to kill more people instead of trying to
help them so I think that when these toy
shops from my hand someone will pick it
up and run with it if they can’t run
they’ll walk with it it’ll take a while
if they can’t walk they’ll crawl with it
but we are milk moving forward we have
an International Criminal Court we’re
building beginning to create effective
laws we have not yet come to the
enforcement problem which is vital but
we are working on it and there has been
an awakening of the human conscience as
a result largely of the Nuremberg trials
and it’s that what you have to build
upon so I say to all of you do not
despair
be bold and you’re thinking and you’re
actin don’t assume that anything is
impossible do what you know is right and
if you do I know you’ll have a happier
life than I have had thank you very much
[Applause]
let me begin without further adue by
explaining and that I was born in a
little village in Transylvania nobody
knows about that a collective herd of
Dracula but it was a little village the
house had no water no lights and didn’t
even have television and the family a
consisting of my mother father and a
sister myself had been subjected to
persecution and poverty and the only
thing we could do would be to get out of
there as soon as possible the nations
were changing nationalities my sister
was born in Hungary I was born in the
same bed they called it Romania so there
was turmoil following the first world
war we landed
my taking a small ship across the
Atlantic Ocean in December
traveled the
class because there was no fourth class
the voyage itself was very perilous my
grandmother who followed shortly after
us died of pneumonia on the ship when we
landed in New York we were lucky to find
someone who offered a shelter if my
father would become a janitor or an
apartment house a tenement house we
would be allowed to sleep and live in
the cellar
and that’s where my life in America
began my memory begins ah in a dank
cellar in a place called Hell’s Kitchen
in New York which was a high-density
crime area I won’t bore you with the
details we lived in poverty I lived in
poverty most of my life but uh I had the
courage to go to a good school I applied
for admission to the Harvard Law School
and was accepted and given a scholarship
for my exam on criminal law ah I was
still in law school when the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor occurred
everybody I knew went down to enlist it
took me a while because I was very short
less about five feet ball and eventually
I did enlist in the army as a private in
the artillery I was sent to Europe in
that capacity be joining the landing at
Normandy
well the invasion of France I remember
very well since this is a British port
cast the British sailors were
the
charge of the landing craft and as I
jumped out into the water for most of
the soldiers the water went up to their
ankles for me it went up to my knee and
the British sailor
slapped me on the back and he said ah
that’s the way to Berlin young good luck
and that was my return to Europe I won’t
go into the details of war itself that’s
been adequately described elsewhere I
can only tell you the conclusion or is
hell uh-huh and I went through it not
merely the landing on Normandy Beach
well by that time there were dead
soldiers American soldiers in uniform
floating facedown in the water tanks
mired in the sand
the Germans waiting of short distance
away the counter-attack I crossed the
Rhine and the pan onto an bridge in the
Jeep I participated in every major
battle till the final Battle of the
Bulge and the most interesting thing for
my entire war experience was the horrors
that I personally witnessed on
assignment from General Patton’s
headquarters to go into the
concentration camps as they were being
liberated and collect evidence of the
crimes so that the offenders and
perpetrators could be held to account in
a court of law which was intended at
that time and I need not describe in
detail the concentration camps I have
difficulty in doing so bodies lying on
the ground you couldn’t tell if they
were dead or alive his eyes reading for
help stacks of what had been humans
piled up looking like stacks of bones
before the crematoria waiting to be
burned every possible disease typhus
rats lice dysentery the idea was to get
in get the evidence and get out as fast
as you can and move on to the next camp
and that’s what I did moving from Camp
to camp
from born wild which was the first camp
to mutt housing to flossenbürg to a
host of camps with the circumstances
were all rather the same power is the
only word to describe it
human beings were turned into animals
behaving like rats
climbing into a pile of rubble and
garbage trying to find some morsel of
bread of food that would help diminish
some of their starvation so that all of
us I saw a very close hand and of course
it had and in there made an indelible
impression on me
when the war was over all I wanted to do
was to go home and resume a normal life
I never wanted to go back to Germany
I came back to the states with about 10
million soldiers looking for a job I had
been admitted to the bar before I enter
the army um one day I got a telegram
from the Pentagon dear sir
they had never called me sir before oh I
went they wanted to talk to me about a
job um they wanted to send me back to
Germany to help with the military
commissions which I had worked on in my
days as a soldier as at that time a
corporal or a sergeant of infantry they
wanted me to go back to help them set up
these military commission trials which
would take place in Munich and these
have been all but forgotten while we
were discussing that possibility and I
was refusing to go back into military
service unless we declared war on
Germany again and were losing the
military and I didn’t quite see eye to
eye I’m mainly the point not to obey any
order that I knew was illegal was stupid
and so very often I was in hot water
with the over the army bureaucracy any
case I was higher than my a man who has
been general Telford Taylor later we
became law partners in New York he was
in charge pointed by President Truman to
conduct 12 additional trials in
Nuremberg and the purpose of those
trials was to paint a broader picture of
German life and it was not just a
snapshot of Hermann Goering and Goebbels
and other people in the first
International Military Tribunal trial in
Nuremberg but to see how it was possible
for a country like Germany a civilized
country to not only engage in these
atrocities but do cheer them and
encourage them how is it possible so we
wanted to have a trial of the doctors
who perform medical experiments the
lawyers and judges who perverted them
raw that was the subject of film
judgment at Nuremberg
the generals the members of the SS the
stormtroopers who are doing the actual
murdering the army themselves the
diplomats themselves the tan the
industrialists who built the
concentration camps they provided the
funds for them in order to have free
labor and the people working there would
be literally worked to death and so I
went back to Germany and general Taylor
who was in charge of the 12th Roz
said look Ben you know all about Germany
about the concentration camps you were
collecting evidence of that we have
suspects but we need the evidence to
convict them if we have only a suspect
and no evidence you have no case if you
have the evidence but no suspect in
custody we have no case so my job was to
find enough convicting evidence who hold
the people with heads as suspects in
Nuremberg I went to Berlin set up a
staff of about 50 people and there we
combed through the ruins of the various
German officers the SS the Foreign
Ministry’s etc and we found a batch of
reports from the Eastern Front top
secret of course in all in German are
sent to Berlin where they were
consolidated and these were reports of a
very nondescript or outfit called
Einsatzgruppen ein such in Germany means
action group only means groups and it
was deliberately
nondescript because they didn’t want
anyone to know what their assignment was
their assignment very simple was to go
in behind the German lines and kill they
never used the word kill they said
eliminate or something like that
every single Jewish man woman and child
they could lay their hands on do the
same thing for the gypsies do the same
thing or anybody else who might be
perceived as a threat or future chat
threat to Germany
to Berlin I had these documents I flew
with him with a sampling down to
Nuremberg and I said to general Taylor
we have to put on a new trial he said we
can’t um what cases the whole been
assigned all the lawyers have been
assigned the Pentagon is not keen on
these trials to begin with I’ll never
get approval for it and I was outraged
and said we cannot let these mass
murderers go free I have in my hand mass
murder on a scale never before seen in
human history and we can’t let just walk
away from it he said can you do this in
addition to your other work and I said
sure okay said then you’ll do it and so
I was appointed to became the chief
prosecutor of what was known as the
Einsatzgruppen case
I accused the 22 defendants of murdering
in cold blood over a million people
including thousands of children shot one
shot at a time
I was then 27 years old it was my first
case the difficult thing for me was to
decide what penalty do I ask for
how do you balance in the scale of
justice the calculated murder of a
million people innocent people with the
lives of 22 selected defendants out of
3,000 who every day did these killings
for about a two-year period and I
concluded that to just ask for the death
penalty would be totally inadequate to
match this severity of the crime and
instead of that I asked the court to
affirm my international criminal law the
right of all human beings to live in
peace and dignity regardless of their
race or creed because these people were
murdered simply because they didn’t
share the race creed or ideology of
their executioner’s and I thought that
was quite horrible and if we could get a
rule of law I was already a lawyer and I
was always interested in law if we could
get a rule of law which would protect
humankind against such future atrocities
that would be more significant than
anything we did with the selected
handful of murderers um the judgment of
the court found all of the defendants
guilty 13 of them were sentenced to
death and of course reaffirmed my plea
for the entitlement of all human beings
to live in peace and dignity regardless
of their race or creed
it was my plea or humanity a plea of
humanity to law and that has never left
me I
when the trials were over I recognized
there was more to this punishing a
handful of defendants we have to do
something for the victims as well and I
worked on creating a new precedence in
the law it took a lot of bold action and
bold thinking to say the fact that it
never existed before is irrelevant if
you will do harm to a person illegally
you have a duty morally as well as
legally to try to compensate and undo
the harm and I set up all the
restitution programs for all the Nazi
victims regardless of race or creed to
get compensation from Germany West
Germany that program is continuing to
this day that was another thing but the
most important thing the most important
by far is to prevent it from happening
again
and everybody said then what are you
trying to do you’re trying to stop a war
making and the answer is yes I am trying
to stop war making because the current
system whereby if two heads of state are
unable to agree they take young people
like all of you and send them out to
kill all the young people they don’t
even know who may have done them no harm
and when they get tired of killing each
other they rest for a while declare
victory then they start again killing
each other that’s the current system
it’s playing crazy and the money that
they need to take care of the students
and pay their obligations to take care
of the refugees to take care of the poor
and the medical requirements of the
agent it’s wasted on armaments today we
can kill everybody from cyberspace
nuclear weapons are already obsolete
from cyberspace we can cut off the
electrical grid on planet earth which
means if they want to cut off the
electrical grid Oh for London easy just
shut it off what happens to the people
in London or any other state or country
well they’ll be dead in a week or two is
the issue so that’s the world in which
we live you are in a very dangerous
condition today much more so than ever
before I’m not concerned with my welfare
I am concerned with yours so I want to
say since my time here is limited
soon this torch will rub for my hands I
know that someone else will pick it up
ah
whoever people that may be and it would
be more than one I hope and no will be
run with it as far as you can it’s
possible to do the impossible we see it
from cyberspace today we see it from the
emancipation of women we see it from
same-sex marriages this is impossible a
few years ago today it’s a reality but
we can do the impossible what’s so
impossible out stopping war making when
you’re spending all your money on trying
to kill more people instead of trying to
help them so I think that when these toy
shops from my hand someone will pick it
up and run with it if they can’t run
they’ll walk with it it’ll take a while
if they can’t walk they’ll crawl with it
but we are milk moving forward we have
an International Criminal Court we’re
building beginning to create effective
laws we have not yet come to the
enforcement problem which is vital but
we are working on it and there has been
an awakening of the human conscience as
a result largely of the Nuremberg trials
and it’s that what you have to build
upon so I say to all of you do not
despair
be bold and you’re thinking and you’re
actin don’t assume that anything is
impossible do what you know is right and
if you do I know you’ll have a happier
life than I have had thank you very much
[Applause]
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