Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials breathed his last at the age of 103. Here’s everything you need to know about him.
Benjamin Ferencz dies at 103
Roman-born American lawyer Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials died on Friday in Florida. The 103-year-old is best known for the Nazi trials for genocide and war crimes. Born on 11 March 1920 in Hungary’s Transylvania (now Romania), he emigrated to New York with his parents to escape the pervasive anti-Semitism prevalent in the region. He went on to study law at Harward.
During World War II, Ferencs served in the American Army and was assigned to the War Crimes Branch of the US Army in Germany. During his attachment, he was tasked with gathering evidence and prosecuting war criminals. In 1947, he also became the chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Case. The case is a series of trials where 22 Nazi officials were tied to their positions in the mass murder of over one million Jews and minorities in Eastern Europe.
More on the Nuremberg trials
In the Nuremberg trials, former Nazi officials were trialed by the International Military Tribunal in the German city of Nurnberg. They occurred between the years 1945 and 1946. Ferencz was also one of the first non-Nazi witnesses who described the horrors taking place in Nazi concentration and labor camps. He described the discovered bodies in Germany’s Ohrdruf labor camp and Buchenwald concentration camp to be “piled up like cordwood”. Additionally, they were “helpless skeletons with diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia and other ailments. Retching in their louse-ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help.”
The news of his death was confirmed by John Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University. Barrett runs a blog on the trials. Additionally, the news was confirmed by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes,” tweeted the museum.