To understand the origins of today's International Criminal Court, it's worth going back in time to September

1947 to listen to a man by the name of Benjamin Ferens.

Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution.

Ferens was the chief prosecutor,

and that was his opening statement in the Ainsatz-Gruppen case during the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

We asked this court to affirm by international penal action,

man's rights, who live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or

creed. The case we present is a plea of humanity to law.

That case was the prosecution of 22 defendants charged with the murder of more than a million European Jews.

It was Ferens' first case. He was 27 years old at the time. Ferinz reflected

on that momentous prosecution in an interview with Vice News released after his death last year.

Arrested my case two days because I had the most overwhelming evidence.

I didn't need witnesses.

Here were guys, according to their own reports from the Eastern Front over a

million people killed were you it all nervous or were you confident no I wasn't

nervous I didn't kill anybody they were nervous I had these guys called

forensa's case was one of 13 trials, part of an international military tribunal agreed upon by the Allied powers, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.

The goal to hold the Nazi regime and those acting on its behalf accountable for crimes against

humanity.

Here's Verens again speaking to Vice News. These trials were an

enormous step forward because they were saying that what had been a national

right go to war against your neighbor, aggression, was in future to be an international crime.

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