War Crime Prosecutors Issue Call for Action

"About a coupla glasses of Scotch" was the answer. With Nuremberg's Grand Hotel serving it at 20 cents a shot, it was the cheapest remedy, said King, 88.

In 1988, Moreno-Ocampo approached another Nuremberg prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz, to help him understand a nagging mystery about the historic trials: Why try precisely 22 top Nazi officials in the first round of trials? "There were only 22 chairs in the Palace of Justice courtroom," Ferencz answered pragmatically, referring to the largest undamaged courthouse in Germany at the time. Ferencz said in a telephone interview he could not attend the Chautauqua gathering because of a busy travel schedule.

Rumors on the sidelines of the meeting said Ferencz and King, though mutual admirers, were also rivals, one a graduate of Harvard, the other of Yale. There was also an age issue. King has been written up as the youngest prosecutor at Nuremberg, when in fact Ferencz, born on March 11, 1920, was just months younger. King had tackled the case of Albert Speer, who ran the German war production machinery and whom King describes as a window into Adolf Hitler's soul. Ferencz dealt with the Einsatzgruppen killing squads.

Harris, who turned 95 on the eve of the Chautauqua meeting, told of how he stared in the face of Rudolf Hoess and listened to his confession: "I commanded Auschwitz until December 1943 and estimate that at least two and a half million victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning."

Harris and others at the conference suggested that war as a method for settling international disputes should no longer be tolerated and that aggression needed to be defined as one of the crimes against humanity.

On the present scourge of terrorism coming from diffuse corners of the world, Crane said, "The global war on terror confuses people. But we can beat them; we have justice, laws and freedom.

"This is a 20- to 30-year ideological struggle in which we will prevail, if we abide by the law. We hold the ace of spades -- freedom. Everyone wants to be free to worship, free to express themselves and free from want. The end of the Cold War taught us that," he said.

King, by far the most outspoken of the participants, argued that the fears the world faces today are not new and that Nuremberg proved that the rule of law was not "such a fragile thing, and that it strengthens democracies even when applied to those who would deny it to others."

King accused the United States, which pushed the World War II Allies to create the tribunal for Nazi war criminals, of now "fighting a rear-guard action against the advancement of the Nuremberg principles." He referred to a memo by outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales labeling the Geneva Conventions "quaint," and he chastised the Bush administration for withholding support from the ICC.

Walking with difficulty and using a cane, he said he remains an idealist and unabashed about his passion: "I am the real deal," he said.