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Ben Ferencz, the final prosecutor to the Nuremberg Trials, who died in Florida earlier this month, gave countless interviews over the course of his illustrious career.
But nothing was longer or more technically difficult than the three-day testimony he gave to the USC Shore Foundation at the height of the Covid pandemic in July 2020.
Due to social distancing requirements, the shoot had to be done remotely, and a box of advanced equipment was sent to Ferenc’s modest Florida home.
Ryan Fenton-Strauss, interim director of media and archives for the USC Shoah Foundation, said: “We built this remote his rig to continue our testimony collection. Ben was our first interviewee.
Although he was small in stature, he was a giant as a human being. And he, who has devoted his life to this humanitarian mission, was speaking to us from his modest home in Florida. “
As a result, the USC Shore Foundation’s latest Dimension of Testimony (DiT) educational interview was released today. This is an interactive save where students and educators can ask questions and prompt real-time responses from pre-recorded interviews. Previously available only in museums, Dimensions in Testimony Education is built specifically for educational use and is available free of charge in the classroom via computer or mobile device.
In a DiT session, the prominent lawyer and peace advocate spoke about his long career of entering liberated concentration camps, prosecuting Nazi war criminals, and fighting for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. talked.
From the late 1940s he describes attending meetings in Bonn with representatives of the West German Ministry of Finance and Social Affairs. was maintained.
At the time, German municipalities typically recycled burial plots every 20 years to free up space. Ferenc wanted Jewish graves to be exempt from this practice and permanently undisturbed, according to Jewish tradition. However, this proposal was opposed by Ferenc’s German counterpart (“possibly an old Nazi”), who told the young American lawyer: Ferenc, we cannot expect the Jews to do more than we do to our own people. “
“It blew me away,” Ferenc recalled in testimony.
“I had in my pocket something I picked up when I visited Auschwitz. It was some bones. [I had found in the] Ashes behind the crematorium…and when I return [my] I received an envelope from the hotel in Frankfurt, so I put it in the envelope, ”said Ferenc.
“[So at the meeting about the cemeteries] I took the bone out of my pocket and slammed it on the table. they? If you hadn’t killed them, they would have come to you. You killed them, you tell them who’s going to pay.
German authorities complied with Ferenc’s request.
Ferencz’s DiT is free for teachers and students worldwide. Accompanied by an educational activity called Conversation with Ben FerencIntegrates interactive biographies to help students explore the meaning of the “rule of law” and its application in responding to genocidal crimes.
His DiT will also feature prominently in the soon-to-be-released new unit of Echoes & Reflections, a Holocaust education program developed in partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation, ADL, and Yad Vashem.
The Testimony Dimension was developed in 2014 with technology by the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and concept by Conscience Display, in collaboration with the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. The integration into IWitness was made possible by the generous support of the Snider Foundation.
To date, over 60 Holocaust survivors and witnesses have been interviewed for Dimensions in Testimony. Debuting in 2015 with a permanent installation featuring his Pinchas Gutter at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, his DiT installations are now featured in 11 of his museums around the world.
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