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The Amanpour Hour

Interview with South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola; Interview with Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore; ISIS Resurgence in Mozambique after USAID Withdraws; Interview with Actress Tilda Swinton; Archive: Nuremberg Prosecutor on Bringing Nazis to Justice; World Cup Underdogs Strike Through to Finals. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired November 22, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[11:00:33]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

First COP30, now the G20. Trump snubs another crucial summit. This time accusing South African hosts of genocide against white farmers. Really? I asked their foreign minister.

And the ICE man cometh. The dragnet terrorizing immigrant communities as the army patrols American cities. Now, retired three-star General Russel Honore raises the alarm.

LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE, ARMY (RET.): We don't do that kind of stuff in America. It's not normal.

AMANPOUR: Then, brutal violence in Mozambique as ISIS surges in the absence of USAID. We have a special report.

Also ahead -- actor, artist, muse, Oscar winner Tilda Swinton on the collaborations that have defined her career and the wonder of being weird.

TILDA SWINTON, ACTRESS: Everybody feels like a freak. There will be people listening here now who will say, I never did. Not true.

AMANPOUR: Then --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The pile of Germany's war leaders has moved towards a climax.

AMANPOUR: 80 years since the Nuremberg Trials brought justice to senior NAZIs. From my archives, what the trials' chief prosecutor, Ben Ferencz told me about working one of the most important criminal cases of all time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York this week.

Another global summit, another U.S. boycott. Yes, neither President Trump nor any of his senior cabinet officials will join leaders of the world's richest and most powerful nations in South Africa this weekend for the G20.

Remember that Oval Office meltdown during President Cyril Ramaphosa's visit earlier this year? Well, Trump has nixed the G20, saying South Africa shouldn't even be in it after what he calls a genocide against white farmers there.

That claim is false, widely refuted by Pretoria and the actual facts.

So I asked South Africa's foreign minister Ronald Lamola, for his reaction and about the hundreds of Palestinians who have been flown from Gaza to South Africa under mysterious circumstances.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Foreign Minister, welcome to the program.

RONALD LAMOLA, SOUTH AFRICAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Thank you very much, Christiane, and to all the viewers.

AMANPOUR: First, your reaction to what you might have heard President Trump saying in the Oval Office that all these policies, your discrimination against members of the South African community, he means the whites, make it, you know, somewhere where he's not going to go.

LAMOLA: Yes, thank you. And it is indeed a great week for us. We are upbeat as South Africa.

I did hear President Trump with regards to what he said in the White House, which is not based on any truthful information with regards to South Africa.

South Africa has got a history of apartheid, a history of inequality, which was race-based. And there is a need to have policies that are aimed to address these issues of the past, the past imbalances on the basis of race.

And these policies are informed by our constitution, and there is enough safeguards. There is no arbitrary processes. There is courts, there is parliament, there is debates, including organizations of Afrikaners do have challenges in our country, but they believe that there is enough safeguards in the country within its constitution to address all the issues that the country might be suffering.

And including the crime challenge that we are facing. It affects everyone -- black, white, Indians, all races are affected by crime. So, there is no targeted persecution of any race.

So, from our perspective, the G20 will go on.

AMANPOUR: Foreign Minister, I'm just going to quote your own police statistics. They do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than others in South Africa. As you mentioned, black South Africans continue to lag behind white South Africans by virtually every economic measure.

So, I just want to get, you know, your take on the fact that the Trump administration has dramatically reduced the Biden administration's figures on refugees that it accepts.

[11:04:53]

AMANPOUR: I believe it was 125,000 annually under Biden. Now, it is 7,500 white South Africans are getting priority.

What does that say to you about President Trump's priorities for the United States and actually for Africa?

LAMOLA: With regards to the program of refugees, when you look at it, it's race-based.

Firstly, you must be a white South African. And secondly, you must be an Afrikaner. So, it's a race-based refugee program. It's not in line with the Geneva Convention that someone to qualify to be a refugee should be persecuted, should be running from a war, and all those. This is just a race-based policy position.

So, it is in this regard that we do not see anything wrong with the G20 continuing in South Africa, focusing on the agenda of the G20, which the president of the Republic of South Africa has set the agenda, has set the theme to drive issues of solidarity, equality, and sustainability.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about this other big kind of mysterious issue that, you know, nobody can quite get to the bottom of. And I understand your government is also trying to figure out what's happening.

Some 150 Palestinians arrived in South Africa. They, you, appeared caught off guard saying that they had no departure stamps or accommodations listed.

What is this all about?

LAMOLA: Yes, indeed. We are still investigating the matter at this stage, what appears to be a program of depopulation of Gaza, of people from Gaza who are being flown across many countries across the globe. And South Africa being one of those that is targeted for this program.

And it was against the background that the people had nowhere to go and they didn't know even themselves what was their final destination, where they were, and then from South Africa where they are supposed to go to and so forth.

that the South African government on a humanitarian basis decided that we need to allow them because we have got a visa-free regime with Palestine of 90 days. But there was no agreement with the Palestinian Authority to keep or to bring Palestinians in South Africa in the manner that the flight came.

AMANPOUR: Israel has said that a third country approved this transportation but didn't say which country. Was it South Africa? I mean, did you approve this? I think you said that you didn't know about it.

LAMOLA: No, we didn't approve any. We don't have any agreement with Israel to depopulate or to remove people from Gaza to South Africa because that will go against a resolution that we support of a two- state solution, a resolution of the United Nations that Palestinians and the Israelis must live side by side in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian Authority and also in Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

So we -- there is no way we can agree to such an arrangement because it will go against that resolution of the United Nations and we will also not accept any further flights of this nature.

AMANPOUR: Foreign Minister, the spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, we tried to get some personal reaction from them but they have already put out reaction before.

The prime minister has made it clear that if Palestinians want to leave, they should be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip and if they want to come back to the Gaza Strip,

they should also be allowed to come back. Foreign Minister Lamola, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

LAMOLA: Thank you. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And there's still not much known, if anything at all, about the company who organized these flights.

Coming up next, retired three-star U.S. General Russel Honore raises the alarm on Trump and says there are some orders the military must not obey.

And later on in the program, the transformations of Tilda Swinton. The Oscar winning actress joins me on her new book, "Ongoing", tracing her career and artistic collaborations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SWINTON: Really what I'm saying is stick with your friends. Find your friends, stick with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:09:16]

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Now concern continues to mushroom over the administration's draconian dragnet that's sweeping American cities. This week, Pope Leo voiced his concerns about the treatment of immigrants with a blunt reminder of American values.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV, ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH: We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.

If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there's a system of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And the first American pope is not the only one. As ICE escalates and the army patrols America's cities, my next guest is also sounding the alarm.

Lieutenant General Russel L. Honore served his country for more than 37 years, eventually rising to commanding general of the U.S. First Army.

[11:14:48]

AMANPOUR: He's a familiar face to many ever since Hurricane Katrina, when he was sent to command the military relief operation in New Orleans.

He's faced many challenges throughout his service. But he told me why he's never before been as concerned for U.S. democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, General Honore.

So look, you have commanded troops. You have been based in Korea, obviously in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina cleanup. You got your Bronze Star in Operation Desert Storm, the first war I covered.

But you've now written an op-ed, an essay, where you are saying that you have never before been so concerned about the survival or the future of American democracy. The kinds of things you fought for all your life and career.

Why? Why now?

HONORE: Well, if not now, then when? I spent 37 years, three months and three days in the service of our nation, supporting the Constitution and obeying the orders as directed by the National Command Authority. And to see some of the disruptions that's happening in our democracy and looking at all the goodwill our nation has done over the last century, creating global goodwill around the world to be squandered in almost 11 months now.

That goodwill that was based on the service and sacrifice and blood and treasure of the American people, to see that squandered with this concept of America First and the cruelty of what we do. It's not what we do, it's how we're doing it, Christiane, that is most concerning to me as a veteran.

AMANPOUR: What specifically are you referring to?

HONORE: Well, we can look at our immigration policy. Everybody wants strong borders. Everybody want people to be here legally or go through the process.

But then we go to an indiscriminate deportation where we disregard the rules and the laws as laid out in the Constitution and we start picking people up based on how they look or how they speak, or we're checking people coming into the country, checking their phones to see if they've said something that's disagreeable with the State Department concerning our political positions in America.

We don't do that kind of stuff in America. It's not normal.

AMANPOUR: So, I just want to ask you, because actually a few months ago, when this was really at a height, ICE, you know, gathering people off streets, taking them, often wearing hoods and masks. People didn't know who they were being arrested by.

And there was a thought that ICE might become or might be being groomed to be the president's private militia or the administration's or the current power structure in Washington's private militia.

Do you think that's fantastical, or do you think you're seeing those signs?

HONORE: Well, just look at the actions on the street. The judges are constantly going after ICE, as was in the recent days in Chicago when what we see, not what we hear on television, where ICE agents run up to a priest and shoot him in the head with a smoke grenade-type weapon. We don't do that in America.

We understand that what the president's objective was initially to pick up the hardened criminals that are here illegally.

But when you shoot a priest in the head and it's documented, or when you grab a grandmother on the street and throw her on the ground and handcuff her, that's not the America that we know and grew up in.

And many of these people running through cabbage fields and lettuce fields in California, running down the very people that's picking our crops, that's very un-American.

We understand you want to enforce the law. Again, it's not what they're doing, it's how they're doing it in a very cruel and unusual way. And they will tell you that's their objective, is to be cruel, to force people out of the country.

Many of those same people will put the roofs on after another hurricane or pick up the debris. The very people we need to be able to build our economy and sustain our economy, they're being very cruel to people.

AMANPOUR: Now, Tom Nichols recently wrote in "The Atlantic", quote, "Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people. And soon, top U.S. military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief.

The greatest crisis of American civil military relations in modern history is now underway."

First of all, do you agree? And what is a red line and what do you do about it when you see it?

[11:19:50]

HONORE: Well, all of our officers have been trained and educated in our professional development system, that you follow legal orders. To deploy some way, you go do -- you deploy.

But if given an order, as was the case or the discussion in the White House during the Black Lives Matter, where the leadership of this nation said, well, why don't we just shoot them in the leg?

And we got the response we needed from our leadership at the time, Secretary Esper and General Milley, no, we don't do that. And subsequently, they both lost their jobs.

But there are some orders that you might get -- it's worth losing your job because you have sworn yourself to the Constitution and to serve the American people, not to obey what is an illegal order, shoot Americans in the leg because they are protesting.

We don't do that in America. They do that in Russia, North Korea and China. We don't do that in America. And our leadership stood up.

And I hope those officers in command today will follow their orders, but if given an illegal order, that they stand up and say no. Protect their troops, maintain control of their formation, but don't do things like shoot people in the leg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: This week, President Trump pushed back against words like these. He called for the arrest of several Democrats and accused them of sedition after they said the military should not follow unlawful orders.

After the break, beheadings, abductions and displacements -- we bring you a report from Mozambique, where ISIS is surging after the withdrawal of USAID.

[11:21:25]

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

It's been almost five months since the Trump administration officially scrapped USAID. And the void is severe for countries like Mozambique. Not only is it depriving locals of economic opportunities and basic necessities like food. But the absence of this American aid and presence has led to a sudden ISIS resurgence.

The situation is grave, with beheadings, abductions and almost 100,000 people on the move as CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reports from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It looks like a place where nothing should go wrong. But ISIS are seeing a resurgence across Africa, home to two-thirds of their global violence this year, rising fast here in northern Mozambique.

We land in the flashpoint of Mocimboa da Praia seven weeks after ISIS started their worst offensive since they occupied the town in 2021. The government's grip is so shaky they've let Rwandan forces in to be the real muscle on streets where ISIS seemed to rule the night.

WALSH: So, USAID's contribution to Mozambique amounted to about 3 percent of its GDP. And that U.S. aid money helped the economy here, development, schools, really enabled the government to try and promote its hold on the place.

And so now, that money suddenly vanished -- well, they're reeling here. And ISIS are back.

The little video we have of ISIS' recent onslaught is terrifying. Outgunning Mozambican forces, slaughtering captives.

But in October, they tried something new, less savage and confident. They walked unopposed, armed in stolen uniforms, straight into this mosque in Mocimboa's coastal fishing community to deliver a manifesto.

The crowd didn't flee, but instead filmed. When ISIS arrived, asked for the keys and walked in wearing their boots, the imam had presumed they were soldiers.

What did you think on that night when these guys came in?

SUMALI ISSA, IMAM: They ordered the old man, asking for the microphone to broadcast their voices.

When they displayed their banner like this, I was surprised that they are Al-Shabab (ISIS).

WALSH: It is extraordinary. After all these years of ISIS' spread across the Middle East to stand in -- startling to stand in a place where they had freedom of movement just a couple of days ago.

93,000 people around this area fled in just six weeks after ISIS' attacks began on September the 7th. Rafael takes us directly to the home of his brother-in-law, now abandoned. They were not rich and also took US aid.

RAFAEL NDINENGO, SON KILLED BY ISIS: He was tied up, they took a stick and beat him. They cut off his head and put it on his bottom.

This place you see here is where we laid my son's spilled blood. You are going to make me cry because of my son. My son -- I lost him. My feelings for my son -- you're going to make me cry. I didn't want to come here. He was calling me "papa", "papa".

WALSH: Eight men killed by ISIS, seven of them beheaded, some in front of their families and you just -- we're looking around -- I mean, there's nobody here.

[11:29:48]

WALSH: It's startling. This used to be a vibrant area, Christian area.

The money USAID spent here urgently tried to curb the spread of ISIS, they gave $50,000 here to help motorcycle taxi drivers vulnerable to recruitment by ISIS, improve their working conditions with paperwork, vests and helmets.

Their anger about that help suddenly disappearing and then us asking questions, clear.

Emotions incredibly high here. I mean, it's all about peoples livelihoods, really. And a lot of anger.

The man who ran the project describes how it is the only way to stop ISIS.

KHAMISSA FABIAO, PROJECT COORDINATOR: If they have an opportunity to earn money, I don't think they will go into the jungle because nobody wants to die.

When we started this project, I personally recruited many young people to keep them integrated into society. President Trump should have a heart.

WALSH: Fishermen, the main workforce here, but also a source of ISIS recruits. We visit a USAID project aimed too at giving them a better livelihood, now shut.

Ten thousand new arrivals in this camp alone were met with a steep drop in food aid.

SAVIANA NDIWICA, VILLAGER: They come and immediately start shooting. There is war. Beheaded. You flee with nothing. They come and cut your throat. When you see someone else being killed, you flee alone to a safe place.

Since we arrived here, we sleep on the floor.

WALSH: But Mozambique could be rich. Around the town of Palma, shielded by these fortifications, it's clear that while the Trump administration is stripping away aid here, it's also investing fast and hard. A $4.7 billion loan in March in vast liquid natural gas facilities, a contradiction where wealth is held up by a wave of ISIS savagery, which surged after the USAID meant to calm it vanished.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. had continued to provide assistance this year in Mozambique, a majority of which was life- saving food and nutrition assistance. They added that worldwide aid was constantly under review to ensure it meets the needs of the receiving country and the priorities of the United States.

The State Department did not respond to our questions about the resurgence of ISIS following the withdrawal of USAID. Their statement added, "The United States continues to be the most generous nation in the world. This administration is significantly enhancing the efficiency and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs around the world. We call on other nations to increase in burden-sharing globally."

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN -- Mocimboa da Praia, Mozambique.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Now next up, movie star Tilda Swinton joins the program. What she likes in her directors, how she survived her darkest moments, and why she's always embraced her fluidity.

[11:33:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

For four decades, Tilda Swinton has graced our screens. From playing Virginia Woolf's gender-changing character "Orlando" to the regal and frightening White Witch in "The Chronicles of Narnia".

Her magnetic energy continues to delight and surprise audiences. And now she's taken those tales of transformation and she's written a book, "Ongoing". It traces her career across cinema, fashion and art, and highlights the collaborations that are integral to it as she explained, when we spoke here in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Tilda Swinton, what a pleasure. Welcome to the program.

SWINTON: Thank you so much, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Why is this book now, and why have you chosen to make almost like a -- it's like a pictorial version of your life?

SWINTON: It is -- well, it's the genesis of the book is that it's the companion to a show --

AMANPOUR: Yes?

SWINTON: -- at a very great film museum in Amsterdam called Eye.

I figured out that what is emblematic of my working practice for 40 years, I've now been working 40 years, is fellowship, is companionship.

I started working collectively with Derek Jarman in the 80s. And he left the building in 1994, died of AIDS, way too early.

I obviously can't make films anymore, and then the miracle happened. I found other families, I found other people who work in this way. And so, I decided to make the show about my collaborations.

AMANPOUR: But it does start with a letter to your old friend and collaborator, Derek Jarman. So, I wanted you to read just a little bit of it.

SWINTON: I will. Yes.

"The only reason I found the nerve to make this show is because of all my buried treasure underfoot, thanks to you. The perpetual life- sustaining happiness I found in embarking for four decades so far, on exhilarating voyages in the making of work with a pretty heavenly host of comrades, born out of friendship and shared curiosity."

AMANPOUR: So, you've had many of these wonderful relationships. You've been spoiled, very lucky --

SWINTON: Right.

AMANPOUR: -- to have worked with some of the greats, and you yourself are great. You've collaborated, obviously, with Pedro Almodovar lately --

[11:39:50]

SWINTON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: -- others. And I spoke to him about the film, "The Room Next Door".

SWINTON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: I'm asking you this because we've talked about the death of Derek Jarman and how you, you know, still are dealing with it in a collaborative way.

But this was all about death --

SWINTON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: -- about your character, a war correspondent -- I mean, I was thrilled -- choosing the time and place of her own death and inviting her friend, played by Julianne Moore, to help through this process.

But I want to just play a little bit of what Almodovar said to me when I asked about your character. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEDRO ALMODOVAR, FILMMAKER: Tilda was perfect for that. She's physically very peculiar, and also she has this kind of sense of humor. And it -- at least, it gives me this -- I mean, this the impression of being someone very brave, very courageous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWINTON: I love that film. It's such a precious film for me, not only because it's his film, but also because it kind of grew out of conversations that we had had over the years through our friendship about our relationship to grief and to being the witness to beloveds who have slipped off.

And I -- when he first asked me to make the film, I had to ask him, who do you want me to play? Because I've been for so many times in my life and since I was quite young in what I call the Julianne Moore position.

I've been the witness, and I've been the helpmeet, and I've been the supporter, and I've been the cheerleader.

AMANPOUR: Why do you think that is?

SWINTON: Well, in the first instance, when I was 33 in 1994, I went to 43 funerals. That's what people of my generation in -- you know, in a certain milieu went through.

AMANPOUR: This was after Derek died.

SWINTON: It was -- well, Derek was one of them.

AMANPOUR: One of them. And this was the height of the AIDS crisis?

SWINTON: This was the height of AIDS -- of that particular AIDS crisis.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

SWINTON: And -- so, it was quite young. I remember my grandmother, who was born in 1900 and lived through two World Wars. She was the one in my family who understood. She said, this is your generation's war. And I was aware that 33 is relatively young to go to 43 funerals.

AMANPOUR: Yes. I mean, I can't even imagine.

SWINTON: Yes. Well, it was an early experience. And so, it's with me, and I carry all my beloveds around with me all the time. And then, of course, it's very often the case with people of my age, my parents and other friends, I've been very privileged to be in the position of being with them.

AMANPOUR: One of the big films that really launched you into the stratosphere, I think, was "Orlando", right?

SWINTON: Yes. Yes.

AMANPOUR: Done by the female director --

SWINTON: Yes. Sally Potter.

AMANPOUR: Sally Potter, exactly.

And that's when you really, I think, solidified your shape-shifting, genre-bending physical presence onto the world.

Tell me about that, because it's easy to say, oh, androgyny, or this and that. But every time I look at you, I look at somebody different.

You know, your hairstyle, your face --

SWINTON: That's good. I like that.

AMANPOUR: -- the angle, your arms. Your whole body is angular. Your neck is long, you know. And I just wonder how your body informs your acting.

SWINTON: I love that. I love the thought of -- I mean, let's call me uncommitted. I think it's a waste, this idea of fixing one's identity. I don't believe it serves us.

I mean, we all know fluidity and flexibility as children, and particularly in our adolescence, we all do.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

SWINTON: Even those people who pretend they were never felt like a freak. Everybody feels like a freak. There will be people listening here now who will say, I never did. Not true. Not true. Go deep.

Remember, and then use that memory to connect with those other people out there who are carrying their fluidity and their flexibility with them. And engage with them. There's nothing to be frightened about in being that fluid.

AMANPOUR: What would you like people to take away from this book?

SWINTON: I would really love people to go, oh, is that all it takes? It's simple. Let's do it.

Let's -- because really what I'm saying is stick with your friends. Find your friends, stick with them. We want our artists to be relaxed. We want them to be authentic. We want people to be telling their own truths. We don't want anyone dressing up as anybody else. That's of no use to us.

And I hope that's what you might find in that book. It has a soft cover. It's like a flip book.

AMANPOUR: Yes, it is. SWINTON: It's full of pictures, but it's full of conversations between friends. And I think work comes out of that friendship.

AMANPOUR: Tilda Swinton, thank you for being with us.

SWINTON: Thank you very much, Christiane, my honor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Four decades of quietly taking us all by storm.

[11:44:45]

AMANPOUR: Coming up, we mark the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. And from my archive, the American lawyer who brought the most senior NAZIs to justice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN FERENCZ, NUREMBERG TRIALS PROSECUTOR: My assignment was to get the evidence of the crimes. There was no difficulty. The evidence was lying dead in every camp I went into.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:49:45]

AMANPOUR: Eighty years ago this week, the Nuremberg Trials began. They were the first international war crimes tribunals in history. And they brought NAZIs to justice after World War II and revealed the true extent of their atrocities.

At just 27 years old, the American lawyer Benjamin Ferencz was one of the leading prosecutors. He had also fought during the war, and he helped liberate several concentration camps where he personally witnessed the horrors and collected evidence for the trials. He became the first prosecutor to use the term "genocide" in a court of law.

From my archive, we bring you a snippet of my conversation with Ferencz when he was 102 years old and the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: It's really extraordinary to be able to talk to you because of your vast experience that is so relevant now, as always.

I just wonder because I have heard that you can do it, recite from memory your opening statement from your prosecuting case back in September of 1947 at Nuremberg.

FERENCZ: Well, that's quite a challenge, but I -- if I recall it. May it please your honors, it is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate murder of over a million innocent and defenseless people.

Vengeance is not our goal. Nor do we seek merely a just retribution. The case we present is a plea of humanity to law.

AMANPOUR: That is extraordinary to hear that now.

And I ask you because you have had a remarkable, remarkable career even before you were a prosecutor. You were in World War II. You landed in Normandy. It was around the Battle of the Bulge.

But afterwards, you were assigned to go to the death camps -- to Buchenwald, to Dachau -- to try to collect the evidence. What must that have been like? What did you see when you went there?

FERENCZ: It was horror in capitals. It was incredible.

My assignment was to get the evidence of the crimes. That was no difficulty. The evidence was lying dead in every camp I went into. Their eyes, some of them were still pleading for help. Some were digging in the garbage hoping to find a piece of bread. That was the scene that I saw.

And it was similar in every camp to which I went. I proceeded then, of course, to the (INAUDIBLE) office, to seize whatever documentation was still there.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for them, the special extermination squads were called Einsatzgruppen, action groups, recorded each town they were in, who was the commanding officer, and how many Jews and others that they slaughtered. And I captured those documents.

With that, it was very easy for me to proceed to trial. I had not been originally assigned as a trial lawyer. I had come out of the Harvard Law School with honors specializing with -- I was a researcher for a professor of international criminal law. And I was eager to use the material I had.

And they -- so they assigned me the job as chief prosecutor. I presented my case in two days, and rested my case and convicted all of the 24 selected high-ranking Nazi officials; 13 of them were sentenced to death.

AMANPOUR: Wow.

FERENCZ: It was a historic trial, and the convictions and the prosecution were -- made history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: A remarkable man, Benjamin Ferencz died a year after we spoke. But in his final year, he did receive the Congressional Gold Medal, its highest civilian honor. And this kind of justice remains vital to assign individual responsibility for these crimes instead of collective punishment.

When we come back, the most beautiful game in the world is making the impossible feel real for some small nations. Find out which ones, next. [11:54:14]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, we'd like to end the program with some hard- earned hope on the soccer pitch.

This week, the FIFA Men's World Cup made some dreams come true. This stage of the qualifications wrapping up with some huge wins against the odds.

Haiti, in a state of near total societal collapse right now, has got through. Despite their coach never actually being able to go there. It's only the second time ever for Haiti, the last one being in 1974.

And Scotland broke through for the first time this millennium. And the Caribbean island of Curacao, with a population of just 150,000 scored a new record as it becomes the smallest nation ever to compete in the World Cup.

[11:59:46]

AMANPOUR: The lucky teams will all be headed stateside next year, when the U.S., Canada and Mexico co-host the World Cup, which will culminate in the final being held not too far from here in the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

And that's all we have time for. Don't forget you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week.