The CBS news program, 60 Minutes, featured a segment on 99-year old Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials following WWII (“What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know“).
Here’s a historical tidbit. Ferencz, and a second Nuremberg prosecutor, Mary Kaufman, appeared in federal court in Honolulu in the 1972 trial of the so-called “Hickam Three.”
The Hickam 3–UH religion professor and author Jim Douglass, peace activist and teacher Jim Albertini, and Chuck Giuli–were charged with destroying government property by pouring human blood onto secret Vietnam war files in an office at Hickam Air Force Base in a March 2, 1972 protest. The blood pouring incident became a center of anti-Vietnam War protests in Honolulu during 1972.
All charges against Giuli were dropped after government witnesses failed to tie him to the destruction of documents.
Ferencz and Kaufman argued in court that the defendants’ actions were legal because they were trying to prevent war crimes from being committed by the U.S. government.
The former Nuremberg prosecutors court appearance was reported by both Honolulu daily newspapers. Honolulu Advertiser reporter Tim Toner wrote:
Ferencz argued the defendants “believed crimes were about to be committed by an agency of their government and took such steps as were reasonably possible to prevent the commission of the crimes.”
The defense cited the Hague Convention of 1907 prohibiting “the use of weapons (such as antipersonnel bombs0 that cause unnecessary suffering.”
Federal Judge Samuel P. King ruled that the “war crimes” defense could to be used because the relationship between the Hickam files and any potential war crimes was too remote. However, King did allow defendants to testify about their own feelings about the war in order to describe their “state of mind” during the blood-pouring protest.
I found two articles describing the former prosecutors’ appearance in the courtroom in Honolulu old Federal Building.
Both men were convicted of conspiracy and destruction of government property, and sentenced to a year probation and a $500 fine. Both refused to pay the fine. Albertini was later sentenced to 90 days in Halawa prison for his refusal. Douglass moved to Canada, but was arrested in 1975, brought back to Honolulu, and sentenced to 2-1/2 years probation.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ian, I saw a documentary about this man at the Hawaii Jewish Film Festival a few months ago. It is terrific.
Most interesting, but what did Ferencz ever do to try to deter Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians? Israeli snipers shoot children and medical personnel deliberately!
I remember former Nuremberg prosecutors Ben Ferencz and Mary Kaufman with much gratitude and aloha for volunteering to come to Hawaii and help defend our resistance to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Their voice and presence is a blessing I will never forget. Jim Albertini. Mahalo Ian for bringing their Hawaii presence to light.
Jim Douglass went on decades later (2008) to write the enormously influential book : JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE: Why He Died and Why it Matters. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, deservedly so!
The CBS piece was moving. I was struck by the fact that the lead defendant in the Einsatzgruppen trial, Otto Ohlendorf, told Ferencz and the court that they had had to kill the Jews in self defense. This is more or less the reason given for every genocide. They were different from us, so they might have supported our enemies, so we had to kill them and their children. The belief that Jews were a danger to non-Jewish Germans seems crazy, fanciful, and evil to us now. Good thing we don’t demonize followers of some other world religion or refugees or members of Hawaii’s latest migrant communities today.