cbsnews | It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in
history like Ben Ferencz. He's 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and
he served as prosecutor of what's been called the biggest murder trial
ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a
group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of
Nazi killings outside the concentration camps -- more than a million
men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in
cold blood.
Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn't content just to be part of 20th century history -- he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.
"If it's naive to want peace instead of war, let 'em make sure they say I'm naive. Because I want peace instead of war."
- Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+ people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.
- The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews.
- Ferencz believes "war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people" and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes.
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