The Last Prosecutor From the Nuremberg Trials Says We're Committing Crimes Against Humanity

Ben Ferencz, the last Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor, is 99. Kids in cages, “family separations,” desperate people in camps. He describes them as crimes against humanity.

At the end of WWII when Nazi atrocities were revealed, existing crimes didn’t seem to be enough. Murder, assault, theft~one individual commits against another. But when an entire nation turns on vulnerable groups  and eradicates them all?  Using the machinery of the state?  “Crime against humanity” are so terrible that they don’t just violate another person’s rights, possessions, belongings. They are a deeper kind of theft and violence. They steal away our humanity, the deepest thing that we can be said to have. All of ours — victim, perpetrator, bystander, unwilling participant.They dehumanize the victim — some people are knocked down to be less than human, to be animals or vermin.