The last of the accusers at the Nuremberg trial, Benjamin Ferencz, died on April 7 at a nursing home in Boynton Beach, Florida, at the age of 103. informed The New York Times.
Benjamin Berell Ferencz was born in the Transylvanian village of Somkuta Mare on March 11, 1920. Shortly after his birth, Ferencz’s parents, fearing Jewish pogroms, moved to the United States.
A Harvard-trained lawyer, he participated in the events of World War II as a member of the United States Army. Immediately after the end of the war, Sergeant Ferencz was an investigator of Nazi war crimes at the Dachau, Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps.
Then, at only 27, he took part in the Nuremberg trials. He was appointed public prosecutor in the case of the Einsatzgruppen, special units of the SS and SD created for the mass extermination of Jews, supporters and malcontents of the Nazi regime in the territories occupied by the Germans. According to Benjamin Ferencz’s indictments, 22 people were convicted.
After the Nuremberg Trials ended, Ferencz remained in West Germany, helping Jews who suffered from Nazi persecution to receive compensation from the German government. Then the lawyer returned to the United States, where he was actively involved in international law. This space is devoted to 9 books and dozens of articles of his authorship. Benjamin Ferencz has often spoken at international conferences, willingly given interviews, which is explained, among other things, by his linguistic abilities. Ferencz was fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, Hungarian and Yiddish.
Benjamin Ferencz advocated for the creation of an international tribunal for war criminals and as a result he became one of the founders of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“I understood that if we don’t devote ourselves to developing an effective mechanism for global law, then the Holocaust could one day repeat itself, destroying the entire human race,” Ferencz said.
Ferencz later admitted that the ICC in The Hague had failed to live up to his expectations. In particular, he was unhappy that the United States had not entered the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. “The United States actually paved the way for the establishment of a rule of law system at the Nuremberg trials and inspired the world. But now everything seems to have changed,” Benjamin Ferencz lamented in an interview.
