By Mikael Böök, Isnäs, Finland
In Afghanistan, what collapsed extends well beyond the government in Kabul. What has happened forces the whole western world to face even broader, fundamental questions.
President Sauli Niinistö on August 24, 2021
To my ears, President Niinistö’s words ring very true. Yes, now, more than ever, is the time for deep-going reflections, discussions, and reassessments about the war in Afghanistan and, generally, the “war on terrorism” that the government of USA with its coalition of willing states begun after September 11, 2001. My starting point in this posting, however, is the question: what, in all this, could be of special concern for librarians? The fate of the inhabitants of Afghanistan under the new regime of the Taliban is, of course, of immediate concern, but is here perhaps also a general lesson to be drawn, and especially by librarians?
What inspires me to ask these questions is the example of Benjamin Ferencz, a name which must be familiar to specialists in international law and international politics but which I only came across recently in an article about the current phase of the ‘war on terrorism.’ As of this writing, Benjamin Ferencz is spending his one hundred and second year of life (in Florida, as far as I know.)
His Hungarian-Jewish family emigrated early to the United States, where Ben begun studying law. After graduating (1943), he served as a soldier in one of the US Army’s air defense battalions in Europe.
In the final stages of World War II, Ferencz was placed in a team under General Patton tasked with investigating German war crimes and commissioned to collect testimonies from concentration camps. After the end of the war in 1945, the young lawyer and war veteran became one of the chief prosecutors in the world-historical Nuremberg trials against the Nazi leaders.
Among Benjamin Ferencz’s many recent contributions are …
