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Ii Mrr-41997 F UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES POSTAL AODRESS-ADRESSE POSTALE: UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. 10017 CABLE ADDRESS-ADRESSE TELEGRAPHIQUE: UNATIONS NEW YORK EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL CABINET DU SECRETAIRE GENERAL II •5 1 MRR-41997 3 March 1997 Dear Mr. Ferencz, I would like to thank you for your letter of 3 February and your congratulations on my appointment. I would also wish to apologize for my delay in replying to it. Your suggestion to offer a copy of your book "New Legal Foundations for Global Survival" to the Secretary-General is most kind. I regret that the vast range of commitments imposed on him during these first months in office will make it difficult for the Secretary-General to personally receive the book from you. The Secretary-General would however be very appreciative if this interesting work be sent to him. Also, were you to come to New York, I would be very happy to meet again with you. Yours sincerely, Mr. Benjamin B. Ferencz Delray Beach, Florida BENJAMIN B. FERENCZ o ESJLL1 Seville Boulevard #355 |j Delray Beach, Florida 33446-2150 III (winter residence only) Phone (561) 499-8642 February 3, 1997 Under-Secretary-General S. Iqbal Riza Chef de Cabinet, Office of the Secretary-General United Nations, New York 10017 Dear Under-Secretary-General Riza: Although my computer and I are often not on speaking terms, I was pleased to receive its recent report that you had been elevated to your new and very important post Please allow me to convey my sincere congratulations to you along with every good wish for your future success and happiness. I know that Secretary-General Kofi Annan must be swamped with congratulatory messages from all over the world and that the Chef de Cabinet will have to shield him from such intrusions. I have therefore refrained from adding to his correspondence ( particularly since I personally wished him success BEFORE the elections, which may be more important). But I would welcome your guidance on the folio whig: You may recall that in my opening APPRECIATION in my book New Legal Foundations for Global Survival (see flyer) I expressed my gratitude for the help you had given me when you were Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. I had sent a copy of the book to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali and from the responses of Jean-Claude Aime I believe it may have been helpful in some respects. I would be pleased to personally present, or send, a copy of the book to Mr. Kofi Annan - if you believe that would not be an imposition. I would appreciate your candid guidance. With renewed good wishes, Benjamin B. Ferencz Ferencz became Chief Prosecutor for the United States in what the Associated Press called "the biggest murder trial in history." Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over a million people. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was his first case. All of the defendants were convicted. Thirteen Benjamin B. were sentenced to death. The verdict was hailed as a Ferencz was born in great success for the prosecution. Ferencz's primary the Carpathian moun- objective had been to establish a legal precedent that tains of Transylvania would encourage a more humane and secure world in in 1920. When he was the future. ten months old his Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of family moved to tolerance and compassion would be a long and ardu- America. His earliest ous task. And I also learned that if we did not devote memories are of his ourselves to developingeffective world la w,thesame small basement apartment in a Manhattan district— cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible appropriately referred to as "Hell's Kitchen." Even at might one day destroy the entire human race. an early age, he felt a deep yearning for universal In 1970, with the United States sinking ever deeper friendship and world peace. into the quagmire of Vietnam, it was only natural that After he graduated from Harvard Law School in his mind should turn to the need for a peaceful world. 1943, he joined an antiaircraft artillery battalion prepar- After careful deliberation, Ferencz decided that he would ing for the invasion of France. As an enlisted man under gradually withdraw from the private practice of law General Patton, he fought in every campaign in Europe. and would dedicate himself to studying and writing As Nazi atrocities were uncovered, he was trans- about world peace. ferred to a newly created War Crimes Branch of the His book Defining International Aggression—The Army to gather evidence of Nazi brutality and appre- Search for World Peace was published in 1975. It seemed hend the criminals. to him that there was little sense in denouncing aggres- Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes sion, terrorism, and other crimes against humanity un- I witnessed while liberating these centers of death less these offenses became part of an accepted interna- and destruction. Camps like Buchenwald, tional criminal code enforced by an international court. Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in He wrote another two-volume documentary history, my mind's eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget—the cre- An International Criminal Court—A Step Toward World matoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the Peace, which was published in 1980. It was intended to mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cord wood be a tool that nations could use to build a structure for waiting to be burned I had peered into Hell. peace. On the day after Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honor- While still at Harvard, he had studied jurispru- ably discharged from the U.S. Army with the rank of dence with Professor Roscoe Pound, one of the most Sergeant of Infantry. He returned to New York and learned jurists in the world. The results of his research prepared to practice law. Shortly thereafter, he was were recorded in another two-volume book, Enforcing recruited for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. International Law—A Way to World Peace, which was The U.S. had decided to prosecute a broad cross published in 1983. In order to spread the word to a section of Nazi criminals once the trial against Goering larger audience, he condensed the gist of his thinking and his henchmen was over. Ferencz was sent with into a small, inexpensive paperback, A Common Sense about fifty researchers to Berlin to scour Nazi offices Guide to World Peace. The title was influenced by that and archives. In their hands lay overwhelming evidence greatpatriot, TomPaine, whose pamphlet Common Sense of Nazi genocide by German doctors, lawyers, judges, had inspired the American Revolution. generals, industrialists, and others who played leading Benjamin B. Ferencz wrote PlanetHood with Ken roles in organizing or perpetrating Nazi brutalities. Keyes, Jr., to offer practical steps for the average citizen Without pity or remorse, the SS murder squads killed to take to help establish international law and urge U.N. every Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay reform. He lives with his wife, Gertrude, in New their hands on. Gypsies, communist functionaries, and Rochelle, New York. He is Adjunct Professor of Inter- Soviet intellectuals suffered the same fate. It was national Law at Pace University and founder of the tabulated that over a million persons were deliberately Pace Peace Center. He continues to write and speak murdered by these special "action groups." worldwide for international law and global peace. -At Liberty- A Guest Column After the genocide and inhumanity of Germany -began to resist the Treaty World War II, the United States took of Versailles on the grounds that it was the lead in drawing the charter for the a diktat that it had been forced to International Military Tribunal at Nur- accept. The Kaiser had already escaped emberg. The Nuremberg principles, to neutral Holland, and Germany re- which provided the legal basis of the fused to hand over any of its nationals tribunal, were affirmed by the United for trial by an Allied court. Nations in 1946 and made clear that In 1920 a Committee of Jurists ap- aggressive war and crimes against hu- pointed by the League of Nations and manity would no longer be tolerated. dominated by Elihu Root, a former U.S. In opening the Nuremberg tribunal, secretary of both war and state and a Justice Robert Jackson, on leave from senator from New York, proposed that the U.S. Supreme Court to serve as an international criminal court be estab- chief prosecutor for the United States, lished "to try crimes constituting a heralded the rule of law. "That four breach of international public order or great nations," he said, "flushed with against the universal law of nations." victory and stung with injury stay the The advice of these expert jurists was hand of vengeance and voluntarily sub- politely brushed aside by professional mit their captive enemies to the judg- Needed: An International diplomats. Sovereign states were not ment of the law is one of the most Criminal Court ready to yield authority to a permanent significant tributes that Power ever has international tribunal, even after World paid to Reason.... We must never forget by Benjamin B. Ferencz War II when the U.N. was founded. that the record on which we judge Although the United Nations charter these defendants today is the record on for the sole purpose of prosecuting per- requires that peace be maintained "in which history will judge us tomorrow." sons responsible for serious violations conformity with the principles of justice Yet, since Nuremberg there has of international humanitarian law com- and international law," the U.N.
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