Big Ben: Honor the Nuremberg prosecutor now

Hooray for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, his Sunshine State colleague Marco Rubio and Joni Ernst of Iowa. And double hooray for their fellow Republican colleague Roger Wicker, representing Mississippi, who became the first member of his conference to cosponsor a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Ben Ferencz, sharp as ever at age 102, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor. The four Republicans now on the bill were exactly what is needed to get it passed and signed into law before Ben turns 103 in March.

The Senate bill was introduced in July by Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Maryland’s Ben Cardin as a companion to the measure that passed the House without dissent with nearly 300 cosponsors in May. Such overwhelming numbers are needed because the rules require at least two-thirds of the members of each chamber to be sponsors for a Congressional Gold Medal.

A Jew born in Romania, Ben was brought to New York as a baby when his family fled pogroms and persecution. He grew up in the city and was taught in the public schools and City College. When he returned to the states after years of service in Patton’s army in Europe and serving as a Nuremberg prosecutor, then fighting for restitution for Jewish victims of the Germans after the war, he and his wife raised their four kids in Westchester before moving to Florida a few years ago. Thus his local Florida congresswoman, Lois Frankel, spearheaded the successful House bill. And now all four New York and Florida senators have joined to push it through.

Seven senators are now on the record. Another 60 are needed to get to the magic two-thirds. Who on earth could be against this?

Ferencz’s prosecution of the Einsatzgruppen, the Germans’ mobile killing squads who shot to death more than a million Soviet Jews, made him part of world history, as did his successful campaign for creation of the International Criminal Court. Get him the medal he deserves.