Who were scenting us out did not have the foggiest idea what we were supposed to do. We knew we were supposed to do something connected to war crimes trials, but as an attorney i knew the rules required. Of course, i knew that what constitutes admissible evidence in a court of law, and we were trying, of course, to collect that kind of evidence to make the convictions hold up. How did you make up these claims . Mr. Ferencz we had to improvise as we went along to we didnt have a regular courtroom where you could call in a witness and examine him with a secretary present and someone else crossexamining or securing his rights. Testimony from friendly witnesses. We had taken affidavits from them. If it was from a hostile witness, we would interrogate him privately in order to see if we could ascertain the truth. When we reach the point where without we had ascertained the truth, we asked him to write it out in his own hand. And usually broaden an officer to witness that. Depositiona separate on a more favorable circumstances. And that was the evidence we then used. What was the difference between you and track in terms of technique or writing reports . Mr. Ferencz jack was a much more stable fellow, i would say. He was more cautious in his approaches. But he was more exuberant in his descriptions. When he would come upon the typical scene, he was a these statistic beast gods were murdering the people in cold blood and it was outrageous and a violation of every act of human decency. And i would have to say, look, jack, we are just preparing a legal document. Accusedr to them as the , you dont refer to them as the dirty basket. [laughter] and you dont describe anything in graphic terms, which would prejudice the you just described the facts. The facts will speak for themselves. We had a lot of fun on that. We were good friends. But we had a different approach. Also and some of our interrogation methods. You were doing this for the first few months or you [indiscernible] mr. Ferencz it wasnt every day. We didnt get back to the to report every day. We would come back and he would compare and i would compare. What do you do yesterday . Oh, boy, i got this guy or i did that with that. Then the written reports themselves we would have to prepare more carefully. Wasnt also very somber between the two of you . Was it also very somber between the two of you . Mr. Ferencz it was an somber in the sense that we never left. It was not a laughing matter. We didnt take this lightly, either of us. But somehow it was just getting the job done. And there were light moments as well. How did you prioritize the work . Mr. Ferencz totally haphazard. If he was busy on something, i would take the next case that came in and went out on that one. Usually these were allied type cases or atrocities of killing of hostages in different towns. Uncovered,e had been and he would go out and take one case i would go out and take the other one. And we would both come back. If we happen to be in the office at the same time, we would compare notes. You said earlier that you thought the military tribunal [indiscernible] yes, becausewell, they were in the nature of military commissions. Based upon the Army Standards of courtmartial, the general guide , because they didnt have any general standards. They were not trying to create principles. They were dealing with war crimes. Were crimes were prohibited in the manual of military conduct. And a new that a were crammed with devastation beyond military necessity. It was rape, pillage, plunder. These were things that for many thes had been quantified as rules of warfare, but they didnt do with questions like aggressive war being crime. This came later with the tribunal and were generated by the fact that people, like general jackson, as well as other judges and lawyers who are represented on that, these were people who were familiar with it and brought concepts, whereas in the army, it was just like another g. I. Trial when you bring in the accused, he is represented by another officer or another individual, and the judges happen to be Army Officers who are available to hear the case. Would you describe the incident that happened to [indiscernible] mr. Ferencz well, there were men see there were many incidents. I suppose you are referring to a particularly dramatic one, which i have mentioned in other contexts. Coming into camp was always chaotic. The bodies were strewn all around the place. The inmates had captured the germans and were busy beating them or killing them. And people were dying all around. And what i would do as a matter of procedure, i would immediately try to seize the records. And every cap had a writing office camp had a writing office. I would immediately go there and try to find out who was in charge there and sees whatever would be relevant for war crimes prosecutions. And when i came to it, there was an inmate to their who was a there was an inmate there who was a scriber, a favored position, and he said, oh, i have been waiting for you. I recall going out with him to the electrified fence and his taking up a box of records, which he had kept. And those records were records men, the the ss identification cards, who had entered that camp and had left the camp. It had their photograph on it, it had their identifying numbers and addresses, date of birth, thinks of that kind. And he was supposed to destroy it. He didnt do that. Which meant that every time he saved one of those records and there were hundreds of them he put his life in jeopardy. And he was ready to do that hoping and knowing that when the there would be a day of retribution. And he saved those records for that day. To me, it was a reflection of human hope and confidence and faith. Courage, whichd was very dramatic and moving for me. And there was another incident, which happened a few weeks ago. I never knew who that man was i admired his courage and his faith. But i never knew who he was. But when i wrote about that in my book, i said he was a man who i didnt know. Then a few weeks ago, i received a letter from a professor at the university of paris, professor pike, who had written a book and in that book, he had described i think the book was called the servants [indiscernible] he had described how communists had gone to spain and had fought on the side of liberating forces. And when they were defeated by franco, they had fled into france. When the germans occupied france , the germans seized them and sent them to the camps to be killed or worked to death. One of those persons was in the service of stalin, according to the book. It was the man who headed me those records. And professor pike identified him and identified him by name. And identified another man in the camp who sent regards who is now in france who had been also collecting and hiding the death books registering exceptional deaths which took place in the camp, with even names of all the person to have been killed by unusual means. And those files were also turned over to somebody on behalf of the commanding third general of the commanding general. And that is how i signed most of my receipts, but i asked if i could get a copy of that record, which the man had kept with him all those years. Here we have a coincidence coming out of the blue, the identification of the men who saved those records and one of his close buddies. Lets go to after the war crimes. Presumably, you are going to come back home. What happened . Mr. Ferencz as the nuremberg trials wind down, i was engaged into activities in two activities. One was turning our records over to the germans in the hopes and expectations that they would continue with the war crimes trials. Who were engaged in killing jews for two years every day, and we only tried 22 of them. Rest . At about the we had records. We knew who they were, where they had been, and in all of the other 12 subsequent trials had many residual fallout. So we set up at nuremberg what we called a special products projects division. The object was to turn those files over to the germans, and we negotiated with the various german prosecuting agencies to see if they would take those files and act on them. In addition to that, we were trying to publish the records of the nuremberg trials. I was engaged in that as an editor at the very beginning, and i think my wife was also working on that. We also had a complete german text, which was never published, unfortunately. The army decided it would be too expensive and had no useful purpose, so they next it at the last moment nixed it at the last moment. I was wrapping this up and looking forward to going back to a normal life. From a, i had a visit man who was the general counsel. This was the Jewish Organization that was most active, the only one at the time, in assisting the dps in the caps on in the camps and assisting the jews. And their headquarters was in paris. Said what iunsel come to paris and they would like to talk to me. I came to paris and he said, look, we have a problem and we would like you to help us with that problem. And the problem is this the Jewish Organization had succeeded in persuading the use of government to enact a law providing for the restitution of property which had been stolen or confiscated or taken by the rest from the jews or others because the law covered not only jews. And one provision of that law was that the unclaimed property which had been taken from those who were no longer there to file a claim should also be restored. Normally, if a person dies heirless, the property passes to the state. But there is a principled law that says you may not be the beneficiary of money unlawful act. Any unlawful act. The state responsible can hardly be the recipient of the he irless property. The only government was the military government when they surrendered. The United States was responsible for the military governments law in the u. S. Occupied zone of germany. And the military Government Law number 59 said that a Successor Organization shall be appointed to recover the heirless jewish property. And the Jewish Organization, which succeeded in getting that into law, didnt know where to begin. Said, we would like you to be the guy who sets this up. You know your way around germany. You know what happened to the jews. I was then highranking with the u. S. Army, and this was all military occupation at the time. We dont think anything will come of it. But we have a moral obligation to try. And, of course, we dont have any money to put into this. We need our money for relief of the survivors. We have enough to pay your salary for six months, which was 6,000 or 7,000 altogether. I said, well, i will talk to my wife, we are getting ready to go home. We had been in germany for about two years, much longer than we had been expecting. I disgusted with my good wife, gertrude. And she said, look, it is true, you know this business better than anybody else. They said it might take two years. She said i know you would only take one year. So, all right, we will stretch it a little bit longer. So i agreed to stay. And i designated myself the director general of the jewish restitution Successor Organization, knowing that nothing would impress the germans more than being a director and the general, so that is how it began. What was the basis of the organization . Mr. Ferencz i was hired for that job in august 1948. And we had an immediate major crisis. The law required that all claims be submitted by the end of that year, the end of december 1948, ahead of our three month, four staff locates the property, submits the claims on longform because this was the first step in a long judicial process. The first thing i did was recognize that was impossible. So as soon as i agreed to undertake the job, i resigned from nuremberg, and i went to see the commanding general, who was general clay, the general for all u. S. Forces in germany. I had known general clay from before, as i had been head of the branch in berlin when we were collecting evidence for the trials. And iwent up to see him said i have this problem and i need an extension of the law. I said i cant locate all the confiscated jewish property, hundreds of thousands of properties of all kinds all over germany, in three months with no staff, no money. And he said, no, i dont want to extend the law because the sooner we get this problem over with the better off we are going to be. This will be a thorn in germany side. And i dont want to extend the restitution law. I said, ok, i will tell you what we are going to do. We will make a deal. I will try to get it done and i will only come back to you if it is impossible. But i will try. But in order to get it done, i need money. First of all. I need staff. He said, didnt the organization know that when they wanted to get this written into the law that it would cost money . I said, you cant ask the Jewish Organization, which are now spending every penny they can race to save the lives of these dp is and to rescue them gps dps and rescue them. The United States army was running on occupation funds. We use the money to pay for whatever we need. He said you know i cannot get occupation funds. The russians are going to have to agree. They will never agree to using money for private property claims. I dont think the french will agree, i dont even think the british will agree, and i cant do it on my aunt. I said, well, i have another proposition. Let me the borrow the money from the american let me borrow the money from the american restitution. He said, ok, if you say it is legal, i can do it. Go down and talk to my finance man and tell him it is ok. I want to get this problem over with. So i went down and i talked to him. This guy in charge of finance. I said i have just come from the general and we are setting up a restitution project and i did enough funds to get this thing growing. Kssaid i need one million mar. That was a hell of a lot of money. And i signed here. I signed promising to repay. And with that money, i immediately went out and hired staff, german investigators. Reauthorized cause from the army, using my and sent investigators into every registry in germany with instructions to copy down the names of any jewish name transferred property since 1933. Very often, the germans have been very helpful to us and it stamped a and had stamped a j on the Jewish Properties. The instructions were, you bring it in and we are going to rush to get these claims out on a big complicated four. And then we set up i set up in nuremberg, a club occupied by latvians that were mostly drivers. I knew the latvians were very busy killing jews before they retreated with the germans and were captured by the americans. I needed it for restitution. I moved to them out. I move my furniture from the courthouse in nuremberg to this last fan club and we set up their a big hall, set up there a big hall, a dance hall. And 24 hours a day, we filed claims. Field, came in, from the the investigators came in and brought the claims in. We had secretaries sitting there typing. I took an eight hour shift, so kagan was my deputy. Handled weiss, he the third shift. And about the day the filing of the filing deadline, we loaded all the claims into u. S. Ambulances and there was a claim center where we had to file the claims. We drove it up to the claim center and filed, i think, 173,000 claims for 173,000 pieces of property. And i called up general clay and i said we dont need an extension, we found everything. Filed everything. So that is only the beginning of the process. The system which was set up was that a person who felt that he had been forced to sell his property or had confiscated was authorized to file a claim. That and then went to a restitution agency, special judicial type agency. It would not really courts. To deal only with these claims. And they would hear the counterclaims because the people who bought it would say, hey, wait a minute, i paid fair value forward because my friend was the neighbor next door. I wanted to help him escape so i gave him money and the property wasnt even with that. He escaped and he sent me three letters from brooklyn. And he didnt file a claim because he felt fairly treated. Who are you to come here and claim this property . Or they would claim they bought the property and it was bombed out. There was a mortgage on the property. I paid off the mortgage. Who is going to give me back the mortgage money . Or there were two or three claims. Some other person said they had bought it in between and it had passed through several hands. It was a complicated Legal Process which began. And if anybody was not satisfied with the decision of the restitution agency, they could go to the Restitution Court that was part of the regular judicial system. Toy could file an appeal another branch of the judicial system, the german courts. And there was a final Judicial Court of appeals. Sat on the court of restitution of appeals, and they would hear the legal arguments and the factual arguments and all of these cases before rendering a final binding decision. So this long Legal Process began. For that, we needed lawyers. When we got the property back, we needed people who would manage it, we needed people who were prepared, we needed businesses which had to be managed and run. And for all of this, we had to train people. It had never happened before in history. And we couldnt trust the germans. We had to be very careful. I had access to all the nazi party files. We hired nobody who didnt pass the security check, which means we had a very limited selection. So it began, and there was a very interesting Legal Process to try to create precedence. The legal questions came up very early on. Two or three to show you how history might have been quite different with a few wrong decisions. Wasfirst key issue we had at what rate of exchange do you have to repay . The principle of law is simple. If a person enters into a contract under diress, when the that diress is removed, he has the option of undoing the contract, but he has to give back what he got. These are the principles of law, which i learned at harvard, and they are not something invented by military government. Was that whenned the property was transferred in 1937 or 1938, lets assume the 100,000wner received marks for it. By 1949, that no longer existed. It was a Deutsche Mark in the Deutsche Mark was converted at a ratio of 10 1. Said, wait a minute, i gave you 100,000 reichsmarks. If the jewish owner had been required to give back 100,000 reichsmarks, they would say the property is not worth it. 100,000 Deutsche Marks, which was an awful lot of money. It would have been completely differ