Ben Ferencz, the final dwelling prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who prosecuted Nazis for genocidal battle crimes and was among the many first exterior witnesses to doc the atrocities of Nazi labor and focus camps, has died.
He had simply turned 103 in March.
Ferencz died on Friday night in Boynton Seaside, Florida, in response to St. John’s College legislation professor John Barrett, who runs a weblog in regards to the Nuremberg trials. The loss of life was additionally confirmed by the US Holocaust Museum in Washington.
“At this time the world misplaced a pacesetter within the quest for justice for victims of genocide and associated crimes,” the museum tweeted.
Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz immigrated as a really younger boy along with his dad and mom to New York to flee rampant anti-Semitism.
After graduating from Harvard Legislation College, Ferencz joined the US Military in time to participate within the Normandy invasion throughout World Warfare II.
Utilizing his authorized background, he turned an investigator of Nazi battle crimes in opposition to US troopers as a part of a brand new Warfare Crimes Part of the Decide Advocate’s Workplace.
When US intelligence studies described troopers encountering massive teams of ravenous folks in Nazi camps watched over by SS guards, Ferencz adopted up with visits, first on the Ohrdruf labor camp in Germany after which on the infamous Buchenwald focus camp.
At these camps and later others, he discovered our bodies “piled up like cordwood” and “helpless skeletons with diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and different illnesses, retching of their louse ridden bunks or on the bottom with solely their pathetic eyes pleading for assist,” Ferencz wrote in an account of his life.
“The Buchenwald focus camp was a charnel home of indescribable horrors,” Ferencz wrote.
“There isn’t any doubt that I used to be undeniably traumatized by my experiences as a battle crimes investigator of Nazi extermination facilities. I nonetheless attempt to not discuss or take into consideration the small print.”
At one level in direction of the tip of the battle, Ferencz was despatched to Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat within the Bavarian Alps to seek for incriminating paperwork however got here again empty-handed.
After the battle, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the US Military and returned to New York to start training legislation.
However that was short-lived.
Due to his experiences as a battle crimes investigator, he was recruited to assist prosecute Nazi battle criminals on the Nuremberg trials, which had begun beneath the management of US Supreme Court docket Justice Robert Jackson.
Earlier than leaving for Germany, he married his childhood sweetheart, Gertrude.
On the age of 27, with no earlier trial expertise, Ferencz turned chief prosecutor for a 1947 case through which 22 former commanders have been charged with murdering over 1 million Jews, Gypsies and different enemies of the Third Reich in Jap Europe.
Moderately than relying on witnesses, Ferencz largely relied on official German paperwork to make his case.
All of the defendants have been convicted, and greater than a dozen have been sentenced to loss of life by hanging though Ferencz hadn’t requested for the loss of life penalty.
“At first of April 1948, when the lengthy authorized judgment was learn, I felt vindicated,” he wrote. “Our pleas to guard humanity by the rule of legislation had been upheld.”
With the battle crimes trials winding down, Ferencz went to work for a consortium of Jewish charitable teams to assist Holocaust survivors regain properties, properties, companies, artwork works, Torah scrolls, and different Jewish non secular objects that had been confiscated from them by the Nazis .
He additionally later assisted in negotiations that will result in compensation for the Nazi victims.
In later many years, Ferencz championed the creation of a global courtroom which might prosecute any authorities’s leaders for battle crimes. These desires have been realized in 2002 with the institution of the Worldwide Felony Court docket in The Hague, though its effectiveness has been restricted by the failure of nations like the USA to take part.
Ferencz is survived by a son and three daughters. His spouse died in 2019.
