Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

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Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hannover » 6 years 3 weeks ago (Sat May 13, 2017 12:05 am)

Below we have the notorious Zionist Ben Ferencz of Nuremberg fame talking about the Einsatzgruppen.

excerpts:
1. He says he is still haunted by what he saw and the stories he heard, remembering the story of a son whose father had hidden bread for him under his arm every night so other prisoners couldn’t steal it.

2. Though he returned home to the United States, he has soon summoned again. General Telford Taylor, who was in charge of the Nuremberg trials, requested Ferencz’ legal expertise, sending him multiple binders of top secret documents from the Nazi regime.

3. “He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. And these were daily reports from the Eastern Front — which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others,” he told 60 Minutes.

4. “Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,” killing communists, gypsies, and Jews, the outlet reported. These murders were independent of concentration camp exterminations and occurred in the victims’ own towns.

5 “They were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose, and directed to kill without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on,” Ferencz recounted.
But, as Ferencz proved with written evidence, they had documented their atrocities in cold, plain language. 60 Minutes noted the Nazi reports:

6. “Exhibit 111: ‘In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews.’ Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: ‘The city’s Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.’ Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678.”

7. Otto Ohlendorf, who led Einsatzgruppen D, actually claimed the murders were carried out in self-defense. “He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government’s instructions,” Ferencz told 60 Minutes.

1. There as obviously bread or the man would never have been able to conceal it on a daily basis.

2. "Top Secret documents" that were laughably manufactured after the war or are claimed, but never shown.
see here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11124

3. And the narrative says they were all buried in allegedly known mass graves .... which do not exist.

4. The Einsatzgruppen were formed to fight the illegal, non-uniformed 'partisans', aka: terrorists.
Both sides of the war executed these types when caught. Those executions were very legal under international law.
Yes, Jews, communists, & some gypsies were among them, so what? Nothing new about that fact.

5. A blatant and unprovable lie.
There are countless "survivor$" that debunk that absurd claim.

6. This is the Babi Yar claim for which no mass grave can be shown even though it's alleged to exist. Aerial photos at the time of the alleged action do not show what is claimed. It never happened, period.
see: 'Babi Yar debunked'
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41

7. The very legitimate Einsatzgruppen actions were indeed in self defense and legal. Ohlendorf did nothing that the Allies didn't do.

The Industry now claims that ca. 2,000,000 Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, so, anyone, please show us the excavated enormous mass graves that are claimed to exist, their locations are allegedly known.
Is that:
100 graves of 20,000?
200 graves of 10,000?
400 graves of 5,000?
500 graves of 4,000?
1000 graves of 2000?
2000 graves of 1000?

More on the vile Ferencz here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10939&p=82020&hilit=ferencz#p82020
and:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8968&p=81490&hilit=ferencz#p81490
Ferencz Admits to Using Forced Confessions and Death Threats
and:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7543&p=56469&hilit=ferencz#p56469
Ferencz engaged in murder

Read on, comments invited.

- Hannover

http://theantimedia.org/nuremberg-prose ... ssage-war/
The Last Living Nuremberg Prosecutor: War Is Not the Answer

Only one lawyer who prosecuted the Nuremberg trials is still alive today, and he has an important message for the world: war is not the answer.

60 Minutes recently interviewed Ben Ferencz, a son of Romanian Jewish immigrats who found refuge in the United States. His father worked as a janitor, and Ben was the first person in his family to go to college. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he was driven to enlist in the military.

Due to his short stature, the Air Force rejected him, as did the Marines. He eventually finished his education at Harvard and went on to join the Army, landing at Normandy and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

Because of his legal training, Ferencz was transferred to a new unit in General Patton’s Third Army, where he was tasked with gathering evidence from concentration camps as the U.S. Army liberated them. That information was going to be used to prosecute war crimes.

He says he is still haunted by what he saw and the stories he heard, remembering the story of a son whose father had hidden bread for him under his arm every night so other prisoners couldn’t steal it.

Though he returned home to the United States, he has soon summoned again. General Telford Taylor, who was in charge of the Nuremberg trials, requested Ferencz’ legal expertise, sending him multiple binders of top secret documents from the Nazi regime.

“He gave me a bunch of binders, four binders. And these were daily reports from the Eastern Front — which unit entered which town, how many people they killed. It was classified, so many Jews, so many gypsies, so many others,” he told 60 Minutes.

“Ferencz had stumbled upon reports sent back to headquarters by secret SS units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job had been to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941,” killing communists, gypsies, and Jews, the outlet reported. These murders were independent of concentration camp exterminations and occurred in the victims’ own towns.

“They were 3,000 SS officers trained for the purpose, and directed to kill without pity or remorse, every single Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on,” Ferencz recounted.

Ultimately, his findings led him to push for an additional trial, despite the previous ones already being conducted at Nuremberg.

“When I reached over a million people murdered that way, over a million people, that’s more people than you’ve ever seen in your life, I took a sample. I got on the next plane, flew from Berlin down to Nuremberg, and I said to Taylor, ‘General, we’ve gotta put on a new trial.’“

Because the prosecutors were already stretched thin and other trials were already underway, Taylor put him in charge of handling the Einsatzgruppen. At age 27, Ferencz prosecuted 22 former commanders, all of whom plead not guilty to their crimes.

But, as Ferencz proved with written evidence, they had documented their atrocities in cold, plain language. 60 Minutes noted the Nazi reports:

“Exhibit 111: ‘In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews.’ Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: ‘The city’s Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days.’ Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678.”

Otto Ohlendorf, who led Einsatzgruppen D, actually claimed the murders were carried out in self-defense. “He was not ashamed of that. He was proud of that. He was carrying out his government’s instructions,” Ferencz told 60 Minutes.

Though Ferencz was exposed to some of the worst behavior in human history, he fell short of calling the soldiers “savages,” as the 60 Minutes interviewer referred to them. Rather, he blamed the power of patriotism and soldiers ‘just doing their jobs.’

“He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind,” he said, speaking of soldiers who commit atrocities.

“Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.” [emphasis added]

Ferencz successfully prosecuted the 22 commanders he put on trial, and four were hanged. He has spent his life trying to deter war crimes and delivered the closing arguments in the first case at the International Criminal Court at the Hague in the Netherlands, which was established in 1988. He has also donated his personal life savings to a Genocide Prevention Initiative at the Holocaust Museum.

When the interviewer pressed him about his optimism in the face of continued genocide in places like Sudan — asking whether he is simply naive — he maintained his positivity and rejected the claims of those who insist war is necessary:

"Well, 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. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don’t say they’re naive, I say they’re stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That’s insane.”

Though the interviewer also accused of him being an idealist, he insisted the opposite — that he’s a realist. He also said:

“People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.”

He pointed out that decades ago, freedom for women, gays, and transsexuals was unthinkable, they have now come to pass, insisting it’s also possible to end mass murder and war.

“[I]t’s a reality today. So the world is changing. And you shouldn’t — you know — be despairing because it’s never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before.”

All but two of the Germans [on trial at Nuremberg], in the 139 cases that we investigated, had their testicles kicked in beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators:" 23.1.49, The Sunday Pictorial (quoted in For Those Who Cannot Speak (ref. 27), p.21.The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months..The investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head, punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses.
- American judge, van Roden
If it can't happen as alleged, then it didn't.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Tommo » 6 years 3 weeks ago (Sat May 13, 2017 5:50 am)

After being directed to some stuff about these alleged atrocities the other day here, which is really the last frontier of the exterminationist in "sane" circles, it appears to be (unsurprisingly) a lie as well.

When I first heard about the 200 reports etc I thought well hey, maybe there is something...

There's a pretty good write up on the so-called anti-semitic site "Metapedia" - Einsatzgruppen entry with sub-heading "Einsatzgruppen reports".

Seems some are confirmed fakes, the quality is "janitorial level", if the documents are not faked they are atleast edited etc and we know the rest..

Unbelievable! But unfortunately not surprising!

Where are the bloody bodies.

The fact they don't marry up to facts in any case we can/have verified and in light of the rest being a lie, I don't think there can be any reasonable doubt in the mind of anybody who can be brought to bear on the facts and evidence, that isn't toally retarded.

The whole thing is a lie. The Holocaust was the extermination of GERMANY, how absolutely disgusting to have created an entire religion of paper and testimonial LIES.

How sick!

I only started learning 9 months ago. Prior to that, I would have thought this was crazy!

"Motivated by hatred and racism" Pfft! This behaviour certainly would generate bloody hatred alright.

I call it more "anti-scum-bagism" lol
What are you angry about? By proving the gas chambers a lie, I just knocked off half the holocaust and SAVED 3 million Jew's for you!

I just saved more Jew's than Oskar Schindler allegedly ever did! :lol:

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby hermod » 6 years 3 weeks ago (Sat May 13, 2017 11:46 am)

Tommo wrote:The whole thing is a lie. The Holocaust was the extermination of GERMANY, how absolutely disgusting to have created an entire religion of paper and testimonial LIES.

How sick!


So true. The best parallel on the 'Holocaust reparations' paid by Germany to Israel and Zionist organizations after WW2 is the case of a serial rapist requesting money from his victims for his condom fees.
"[Austen Chamberlain] has done western civilization a great service by refuting at least one of the slanders against the Germans
because a civilization which leaves war lies unchallenged in an atmosphere of hatred and does not produce courage in its leaders to refute them
is doomed.
"

Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, on the public admission by Britain's Foreign Secretary that the WWI corpse-factory story was false, December 4, 1925

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hektor » 6 years 3 weeks ago (Sun May 14, 2017 7:46 am)

The forgeries, deceptions and subsequent self-enrichment and political point scoring are sick. But we take the matter on with sober facts and a rational look at the evidence. On the Einsatzgruppen subject we can e.g. examine the Stahlecker map:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1164&p=66109&hilit=Stahlecker#p66109

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby EtienneSC » 2 months 1 day ago (Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:51 am)

Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz died, aged 103, on 7 April 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65223756
The last surviving prosecutor from the post-World War Two Nuremberg trials has died aged 103.

Ben Ferencz was just 27 when he secured the convictions of 22 Nazi officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He later advocated for the establishment of an international court to prosecute war crimes, a goal realised in 2002.

Ferencz died peacefully in his sleep on Friday evening at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida.

Confirming his death, the US Holocaust Museum said the world had lost "a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide".

Ferencz was born in Transylvania - part of Romania - in 1920, but his family emigrated to the US when he was young to escape antisemitism, later settling in New York.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1943, he enlisted in the US Army and took part in the Allied landings at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He rose to the rank of Sergeant and ultimately joined a team tasked with investigating and gathering evidence of Nazi war crimes.

The team was based with the army in Germany and would enter concentration camps as they were liberated, taking notes on conditions in each and interviewing survivors.

In a later account of his life, Ferencz spoke of finding bodies "piled up like cordwood" and "helpless skeletons with diarrhoea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and other ailments, retching in their louse ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help".

He did revisionism a favour by freely admitting on camera to mistreatment of accused prisoners in order to obtain forced confessions. His main involvement was in the Einsatzgruppen trial. This was most recently discussed on Carlo Mattogno's book on the Einsatzgruppen (2018).

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hektor » 2 months 1 day ago (Sun Apr 09, 2023 6:41 am)

EtienneSC wrote:Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz died, aged 103, on 7 April 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65223756
The last surviving prosecutor from the post-World War Two Nuremberg trials has died aged 103.

Ben Ferencz was just 27 when he secured the convictions of 22 Nazi officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
....

In a later account of his life, Ferencz spoke of finding bodies "piled up like cordwood" and "helpless skeletons with diarrhoea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and other ailments, retching in their louse ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help".

He did revisionism a favour by freely admitting on camera to mistreatment of accused prisoners in order to obtain forced confessions. His main involvement was in the Einsatzgruppen trial. This was most recently discussed on Carlo Mattogno's book on the Einsatzgruppen (2018).

On camera?
Is there video footage on this?

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Whodunnit? » 2 months 1 day ago (Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:00 am)

1. He says he is still haunted by what he saw and the stories he heard, remembering the story of a son whose father had hidden bread for him under his arm every night so other prisoners couldn’t steal it.


Ugh. I would rather starve than eat bread that somebody has kept in his armpit the whole day. This really made me sick. Are jews aware that their imagination is, let's say, "very unique"?

The "Axis" had a severe "partisan"-problem in the rear. If you add everything up, then the "Axis" armies probably killed about 1 million partisans. The official Russian number is "about 400,000" dead out of 1,1 million partisans, for Yugoslavia it's 300,000, Poland is about 100,000 (I think), 30,000 in Greece, 40,000 in Italy, 8,000 in France, and some tenthousands in other countries. These partisans disrupted the logistics, killed hundred thousands of soldiers and "collaborators", usually in cowardly or sadistic fashion, and spread propaganda - so it was a necessity to suppress that.

Spain has an interesting history when it comes to partisan warfare. You can read about the "peninsula war" during the french occupation of spain under Napoleon. The retalliation of the french for "guerilla" attacks was so brutal that eventually rules were created to prevent such an escalation.
Goya made his "The Distasters Of War" about the stories from this war.

Image

120 years later The nationalists pretty much won the spanish civil war, because as they advanced, they preemtively killed or arrested everybody who could stirred up problems. They learned the necessity of it from the bolshevik takeover, where the White Russians were pretty much defeated because of partisans attacks and warlord-ism in the rear. Partisan warfare is a communist specialty. In the "Sino-Japanese" war, the chinese commies attacked the Japanese with partisan attacks, while the nationalists confronted them like a real military. This kind of "uprising of the people" is part of their ideology. If you controll the media, it's great fodder for propaganda and psychological warfare.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby sfivdf21 » 2 months 18 hours ago (Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:21 pm)

EtienneSC wrote:Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz died, aged 103, on 7 April 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65223756
The last surviving prosecutor from the post-World War Two Nuremberg trials has died aged 103.

Ben Ferencz was just 27 when he secured the convictions of 22 Nazi officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He later advocated for the establishment of an international court to prosecute war crimes, a goal realised in 2002.

Ferencz died peacefully in his sleep on Friday evening at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida.

Confirming his death, the US Holocaust Museum said the world had lost "a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide".

Ferencz was born in Transylvania - part of Romania - in 1920, but his family emigrated to the US when he was young to escape antisemitism, later settling in New York.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1943, he enlisted in the US Army and took part in the Allied landings at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He rose to the rank of Sergeant and ultimately joined a team tasked with investigating and gathering evidence of Nazi war crimes.

The team was based with the army in Germany and would enter concentration camps as they were liberated, taking notes on conditions in each and interviewing survivors.

In a later account of his life, Ferencz spoke of finding bodies "piled up like cordwood" and "helpless skeletons with diarrhoea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and other ailments, retching in their louse ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help".

He did revisionism a favour by freely admitting on camera to mistreatment of accused prisoners in order to obtain forced confessions. His main involvement was in the Einsatzgruppen trial. This was most recently discussed on Carlo Mattogno's book on the Einsatzgruppen (2018).


I'm not a person who is usually rejoices for the death of anyone, but this time I am going to make an exception because this son of a b*tch was a criminal and a thirsty for blood corrupt prosecutor (like all the Allied prosecutors who participated in the infamy of the Nuremberg Show Trials) who murdered and unfairly convicted many innocent Germans who fought for their country and only did their duty during WWII, and as you have well claimed, during the infamous 1947-1948 Einsatzgruppen Trials which he presided, he tortured the accused Einsatzgruppen officers (all of them innocent) to obtain the deceitful "evidence" and "confessions" that the Allied Kangaroo Court used to convict the Einsatzgruppen officers who were prosecuted in this Show Trial. To this I will add that in the colaboration that Ferencz made in the "Holocaust" propagand documentary "The Accountant of Auschwitz" in 2018 he claimed that the only thing that he regrets about his involvement in the infamous Nuremberg Trials is that he couldn't snag more German NSDAP and SS officers. Well, I will say on this regard that my only regret about the death of this bastard is that while many innocent people were unfairly murdered after Soviet-style Show Trials that snakes like Ferencz presided over, by the other hand he died peacefully at 103 without having paid for his crimes (Benjamin Ferencz really should have been in court, and not as a prosecutor but as a defendant).

Benjamin Ferencz, rot forever in hell, you Jewish bastard.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby EtienneSC » 2 months 18 hours ago (Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:49 pm)

Hektor wrote:On camera?
Is there video footage on this?

I have a clear memory of him on video describing threatening a prisoner that he would be killed if he did not give a statement, but that the confession in that case would not be admissible evidence, so he had the statement rewritten so that it became admissible. I can't find the interview where he says this and it doesn't seem to be part of the story he told in various interviews in the last two decades of his life.

In the later interviews, he typically describes American Military Commission summary trials of camp guards and people accused of killing American airmen and then his story of being brought the Einsatzgruppen reports in Berlin, most recipients of which denied knowing about them and the subsequent Einsatzgruppen trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others.

His later work on international law principles shows him in a better light, but the foundations laid at Nuremberg were rotten.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hektor » 2 months 3 hours ago (Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:32 am)

EtienneSC wrote:
Hektor wrote:On camera?
Is there video footage on this?

I have a clear memory of him on video describing threatening a prisoner that he would be killed if he did not give a statement, but that the confession in that case would not be admissible evidence, so he had the statement rewritten so that it became admissible. I can't find the interview where he says this and it doesn't seem to be part of the story he told in various interviews in the last two decades of his life.

In the later interviews, he typically describes American Military Commission summary trials of camp guards and people accused of killing American airmen and then his story of being brought the Einsatzgruppen reports in Berlin, most recipients of which denied knowing about them and the subsequent Einsatzgruppen trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others.

His later work on international law principles shows him in a better light, but the foundations laid at Nuremberg were rotten.


I noticed two videos vie docu-character. Here is the more prominent one:


To me it sounds they lined up people somewhere. But he words it more in line with: "We will kill you, if what you say is not true".
Well, what would the interrogators consider truth in statements? How did the interrogated find that out.

That said, American investigators were probably gathering a lot of 'factual' information. Just that this would be 99.9% benign information of course.

As far as the Ohlendorf/Einsatzgruppen case is involved. He claims that he got his information from a bunch of documents that 'were given to him'. Now that's interesting. But you couldn't bother getting the Soviets to come up with physical evidence? OH yeah, you let Blobel say that he made all that physical evidence vanish without trace?

If one investigates the Holocaust one notices that it is quite a cultish scam. Indeed like many religions.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby EtienneSC » 1 month 4 weeks ago (Mon Apr 10, 2023 12:06 pm)

Hektor wrote:To me it sounds they lined up people somewhere. But he words it more in line with: "We will kill you, if what you say is not true".
Well, what would the interrogators consider truth in statements? How did the interrogated find that out.

That said, American investigators were probably gathering a lot of 'factual' information. Just that this would be 99.9% benign information of course.

As far as the Ohlendorf/Einsatzgruppen case is involved. He claims that he got his information from a bunch of documents that 'were given to him'. Now that's interesting. But you couldn't bother getting the Soviets to come up with physical evidence? OH yeah, you let Blobel say that he made all that physical evidence vanish without trace? .

Ferencz's investigations of the killings of US airmen sound reasonable. He collected statements and then verified them by looking for bodies - unlike in the Einsatzsgruppen trial. He also seems to recount the summary trials and executions of camp guards in 1945 honestly. He has another story about standing aside when prisoners put a live guard in the crematoria and asking himself "Am I an accessory to murder?" The other story I remember was about getting a confession from an individual, not a group of twenty. The sources of the Ereignismeldungen reports are indeed potentially significant. Presumably these interviews are still accessible somewhere, just not as easy to find as they were before such information was "curated".

As I said, his later work on international law seems well-intended.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hektor » 1 month 4 weeks ago (Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:00 pm)

EtienneSC wrote:
Hektor wrote:To me it sounds they lined up people somewhere. But he words it more in line with: "We will kill you, if what you say is not true".
Well, what would the interrogators consider truth in statements? How did the interrogated find that out.

That said, American investigators were probably gathering a lot of 'factual' information. Just that this would be 99.9% benign information of course.

As far as the Ohlendorf/Einsatzgruppen case is involved. He claims that he got his information from a bunch of documents that 'were given to him'. Now that's interesting. But you couldn't bother getting the Soviets to come up with physical evidence? OH yeah, you let Blobel say that he made all that physical evidence vanish without trace? .

Ferencz's investigations of the killings of US airmen sound reasonable. He collected statements and then verified them by looking for bodies - unlike in the Einsatzsgruppen trial. He also seems to recount the summary trials and executions of camp guards in 1945 honestly. He has another story about standing aside when prisoners put a live guard in the crematoria and asking himself "Am I an accessory to murder?" The other story I remember was about getting a confession from an individual, not a group of twenty. The sources of the Ereignismeldungen reports are indeed potentially significant. Presumably these interviews are still accessible somewhere, just not as easy to find as they were before such information was "curated".

As I said, his later work on international law seems well-intended.

I think the recount is mostly factual, errors due to altered memory aside.
But I think there is quite some potential for omitting details that may throw a bad light on his version of events.
The summary trials sound credible, except that there again important details may have been omitted. Essentially this was a humiliation exercise, especially when people are put on trial that didn't do anything incorrect or even, when there are convictions for stuff that never happened.
The oven-episode was sort of an admission that there was more going on, but one that was cleverly chosen, since most people will judge this considerately given the rest of things they were made to believe. It sits better than e.g. a story were some SS-men's family is abused or threatened to make him admit stuff that never happened. So rather throw a bone that can serve like an out-of-jail-card.

There was other stuff also going on. An older Dutchman told me once of abuses on German prisoners. And occasionally I heard things told by older people that didn't fit the image that has been produced. There is also that vibe that there are more people around that know things weren't as they are told, but are afraid to say something. That stuff doesn't find entry on paper like e.g. trial recordings. And with a trial stuff from the previous investigation won't be mentioned neither. In a good versus evil scenario the investigators feel entitled to do more that they'd usually would find allowable. And that scenario had been established early int 1945. Well, and ever after by putting stuff into print that fits the bill. That tide of outrage only got lower during the 1950s. When the focus did shift to rebuilding the European countries. Only to up in the 1960s again with the Eichmann and the Auschwitz trial being the highlights there.

Again the choice of Ferencz to be prosecutor is another oddity in the narrative. With such a high-profile trial picking a lawyer that young is rather unlikely. So there must have been some 'arrangement' being made in the background there. But that would be info from the respective state departments and I wonder, if that is anyhow accessible.

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby slob » 1 month 4 weeks ago (Mon Apr 10, 2023 4:05 pm)

Hektor wrote:
EtienneSC wrote:
Hektor wrote:On camera?
Is there video footage on this?

I have a clear memory of him on video describing threatening a prisoner that he would be killed if he did not give a statement, but that the confession in that case would not be admissible evidence, so he had the statement rewritten so that it became admissible. I can't find the interview where he says this and it doesn't seem to be part of the story he told in various interviews in the last two decades of his life.

In the later interviews, he typically describes American Military Commission summary trials of camp guards and people accused of killing American airmen and then his story of being brought the Einsatzgruppen reports in Berlin, most recipients of which denied knowing about them and the subsequent Einsatzgruppen trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others.

His later work on international law principles shows him in a better light, but the foundations laid at Nuremberg were rotten.


I noticed two videos vie docu-character. Here is the more prominent one:


To me it sounds they lined up people somewhere. But he words it more in line with: "We will kill you, if what you say is not true".
Well, what would the interrogators consider truth in statements? How did the interrogated find that out.

That said, American investigators were probably gathering a lot of 'factual' information. Just that this would be 99.9% benign information of course.

As far as the Ohlendorf/Einsatzgruppen case is involved. He claims that he got his information from a bunch of documents that 'were given to him'. Now that's interesting. But you couldn't bother getting the Soviets to come up with physical evidence? OH yeah, you let Blobel say that he made all that physical evidence vanish without trace?

If one investigates the Holocaust one notices that it is quite a cultish scam. Indeed like many religions.



I remember watching a documentary about the holocaust or Nuremberg or some special on Ferencz where he did says he as good as threatened people to write what they said or else, but where though.

But found this, supposedly quoting what he said.....

The defense counsel at the Mauthausen trial and later trials at Dachau insisted that signed confessions of the accused, used by the prosecution to great effect, had been extracted from the defendants through physical abuse, coercion and deceit.[6] Benjamin Ferencz admits in an interview that he used threats and intimidation to obtain confessions:[7]

“You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone up against the wall. Then I’d say, “Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.” It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.”

Ferencz, who enjoys an international reputation as a world-peace advocate, further relates a story concerning his interrogation of an SS colonel. Ferencz explained that he took out his pistol in order to intimidate him:[8]

“What do you do when he thinks he’s still in charge? I’ve got to show him that I’m in charge. All I’ve got to do is squeeze the trigger and mark it as auf der Flucht erschossen (shot while trying to escape…) I said ‘you are in a filthy uniform sir, take it off!’ I stripped him naked and threw his clothes out the window. He stood there naked for half an hour, covering his balls with his hands, not looking nearly like the SS officer he was reported to be. Then I said ‘now listen, you and I are gonna have an understanding right now. I am a Jew—I would love to kill you and mark you down as auf der Flucht erschossen, but I’m gonna do what you would never do. You are gonna sit down and write out exactly what happened—when you entered the camp, who was there, how many died, why they died, everything else about it. Or, you don’t have to do that—you are under no obligation—you can write a note of five lines to your wife, and I will try to deliver it…’ (Ferencz gets the desired statement and continues:) I then went to someone outside and said ‘Major, I got this affidavit, but I’m not gonna use it—it is a coerced confession. I want you to go in, be nice to him, and have him re-write it.’ The second one seemed to be okay—I told him to keep the second one and destroy the first one. That was it.”

https://www.inconvenienthistory.com/13/3/8022

p.s
Not 100% sure, but think he mentioned such threats to get confessions here, I know it was upto date and watched it recently in the last 2 years or so?
Prosecuting Evil 2018
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7616974/

Ferencz, who today is 85 and lives in New York, cautions against making sweeping armchair moral judgments. "Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was," he says. "I once saw DPs beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?"


https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 45b491b0a/

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Re: Nuremberg's Ben Ferencz on the Einsatzgruppen

Postby Hektor » 1 month 4 weeks ago (Tue Apr 11, 2023 3:47 am)

slob wrote:.....

I remember watching a documentary about the holocaust or Nuremberg or some special on Ferencz where he did says he as good as threatened people to write what they said or else, but where though.

But found this, supposedly quoting what he said.....

The defense counsel at the Mauthausen trial and later trials at Dachau insisted that signed confessions of the accused, used by the prosecution to great effect, had been extracted from the defendants through physical abuse, coercion and deceit.[6] Benjamin Ferencz admits in an interview that he used threats and intimidation to obtain confessions:[7]
....


It's a culture that existed with Allied investigators for "War Crimes". I think that has been enhanced by the "We fight against evil" mentality. So they saw things through a different lense as well. And hence could get the 'testimony' they wanted. I think the ability to threaten the family may have been even more effective than torture and threats limited to the prisoner alone. And it gave a better appearance as well. Once you get such 'testimony' and no physical corrobation takes place, you can push that through on trial. Once you get verdicts that affirm your thesis, you can use this in other trials as well. The lawyers of the accused will tell them to cooperate. Deny Nothing, but minimise their own role in 'it'.

The follow trials and guilty verdicts then reinforce the picture that is constructed in the public.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 45b491b0a/


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