‘How Do You Balance a Million People Murdered Against 22 Defendants?’

Eighty years ago this week, Nazis burned synagogues, desecrated cemeteries, and destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses and homes across Germany, Austria, and occupied Czechoslovakia. The event came to be known as Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass—and foreshadowed the genocide of 6 million Jews in World War II.

On the podcast, we talk to Benjamin Ferencz, the last living prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials where Nazi leaders were brought to justice. A U.S. Army veteran with a law degree from Harvard University, Ferencz was just 27 at the start of the trials. He had never prosecuted a case in his life. Now 99, he is the subject of a new film, Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz, directed by Barry Avrich.