Ben Ferencz, the last prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, died at 103

Benjamin Berell Ferencz, better known as Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials who tried the Nazis for crimes against humanity and genocidehe died in Florida (USA) at the age of 103, the American Holocaust Museum confirmed.

“Today, the world has lost a leader in the pursuit of justice for the victims of genocide and related crimes. We mourn the death of Ben Ferencz, Nuremberg’s last war crimes prosecutor,” the museum wrote on its social media.

The memorial museum, created to “inspire citizens and leaders around the world to confront hatred, prevent genocide and promote human dignity,” noted that Ferencz, aged 27 and with no prior trial experience, had won verdicts against 22 Nazis.

Ferencz died last Friday in Boynton Beach, a coastal city in Florida (southeast) located in Palm Beach County.

According to Professor John Q. Barrett of the University of St. John in New York, who was his student, on his blog, Ferencz had just turned 103 last March, but “liked to say he was already 104 years old.”

Born on March 11, 1920 in Transylvania, Romania, Ferencz came to the United States hand in hand with his parents when he was 10 months old.

“He grew up in ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ in New York. He knew poverty, rampant crime and suffering. He quickly became a public school student, a college graduate, a Harvard Law graduate, and a U.S. Army infantryman in World War II,” Barrett recalled on his blog.

the author Jackson’s listarchive of publications on US Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), Barrett says he is very grateful to his “teacher” and “dear generous friend” Ben Ferencz.

After Ferencz graduated from Harvard in 1943, he joined an anti-aircraft artillery battalion preparing for the invasion of France.

As a soldier, he fought in the main campaigns in Europe. When Nazi crimes were uncovered, he was transferred to the newly formed Army War Crimes Division to collect evidence of Nazi brutality and arrest criminals, according to the website. benferencz.org.

in his book Planet Hood: The Key to Your Future (1988), written to promote a comprehensive and judicially ordered system of international law, Ferencz describes the scenes he witnessed while liberating “these centers of death and destruction”:

“Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Dachau are vividly etched in my memory. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly sight that I will never forget: crematoria glowing with the fire of burnt flesh, mounds of emaciated corpses piled up like firewood… I glimpsed hell,” he recounted.

Beginning in the spring of 1946, Ferencz served as a prosecutor in Nuremberg, in the American occupation zone of former Nazi Germany.

Between 1947 and 1948, Barrett details, Ben was the lead prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case, the prosecution of members of Nazi Germany’s roving execution squads. “It was his first case as a lawyer. He accused the leaders of Nazi extermination operations in Eastern Europe of crimes against humanity (…), war crimes and belonging to Nazi criminal organizations,” his student recalls.

More than twenty accused of einsatzgruppen they were convicted of murdering almost a million people. “Case einsatzgruppen It was and is the biggest murder trial in human history,” Barrett points out.

“Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. “I also learned that if we don’t commit to developing effective world laws, the same cruel mentality that enabled the Holocaust could one day destroy the entire human race,” Ferencz said of his interest in establishing an international court to try any wartime government. crimes.

“From the first time I met Ben, in 1999, I knew he would be the longest serving prosecutor at Nuremberg. I knew from the math: Ben was very young (26, or close enough) at Nuremberg,” Barrett wrote.

Ferencz is survived by a son and three daughters. His wife Gertrude Fried passed away in 2019.