The last Nuremberg prosecutor passes away at 103

Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who prosecuted Nazis for genocidal war crimes and was among the first outside witnesses to document the atrocities of Nazi labour and concentration camps, has died.

He had just turned 103 in March.

Ferencz died on Friday evening in Boynton Beach, Florida, according to St. John’s University law professor John Barrett, who runs a blog about the Nuremberg trials. The death also was confirmed by the US Holocaust Museum in Washington.

“Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes,” the museum tweeted.

Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz immigrated as a very young boy with his parents to New York to escape rampant anti-Semitism.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Ferencz joined the US Army in time to take part in the Normandy invasion during World War II.

Using his legal background, he became an investigator of Nazi war crimes against US soldiers as part of a new War Crimes Section of the Judge Advocate’s Office.

When US intelligence reports described soldiers encountering large groups of starving people in Nazi camps watched over by SS guards, Ferencz followed up with visits, first at the Ohrdruf labour camp in Germany and then at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

At those camps and later others, he found bodies “piled up like cordwood” and “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,” Ferencz wrote in an account of his life.

“The Buchenwald concentration camp was a charnel house of indescribable horrors,” Ferencz wrote.

“There is no doubt that I was indelibly traumatised by my experiences as a war crimes investigator of Nazi extermination centres. I still try not to talk or think about the details.”

At one point toward the end of the war, Ferencz was sent to Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps to search for incriminating documents but came back empty-handed.

After the war, Ferencz was honourably discharged from the US Army and returned to New York to begin practising law.

But that was short-lived.

Because of his experiences as a war crimes investigator, he was recruited to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, which had begun under the leadership of US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.

Before leaving for Germany, he married his childhood sweetheart, Gertrude.

At the age of 27, with no previous trial experience, Ferencz became chief prosecutor for a 1947 case in which 22 former commanders were charged with murdering over 1 million Jews, Gypsies and other enemies of the Third Reich in Eastern Europe.

Rather than depending on witnesses, Ferencz mostly relied on official German documents to make his case.

All the defendants were convicted, and more than a dozen were sentenced to death by hanging even though Ferencz hadn’t asked for the death penalty.

“At the beginning of April 1948, when the long legal judgment was read, I felt vindicated,” he wrote. “Our pleas to protect humanity by the rule of law had been upheld.”

Ferencz said: “Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task,” he said. “And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race.”

With the war crimes trials winding down, Ferencz went to work for a consortium of Jewish charitable groups to help Holocaust survivors regain properties, homes, businesses, artworks, Torah scrolls, and other Jewish religious items that had been confiscated from them by the Nazis.

He also later assisted in negotiations that would lead to compensation to the Nazi victims.

In later decades, Ferencz championed the creation of an international court that could prosecute any government’s leaders for war crimes. Those dreams were realised in 2002 with the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, though its effectiveness has been limited by the failure of countries like the United States to participate.

The World Jewish Congress said Ferencz played a key role in negotiating the watershed 1952 reparations agreements under which West Germany agreed to pay $822 million to the State of Israel and to groups representing Holocaust survivors. A lifelong advocate for Holocaust remembrance and genocide prevention, he was the last remaining link with the post-war efforts to bring the leading Nazi war criminals to justice. In December 2022, the U.S. Congress awarded him its highest honour, the Congressional Gold Medal.

“Ben Ferencz was a giant,” said WJC General Counsel and Associate Executive Vice President Menachem Rosensaft. “He devoted himself to the very end of his long and distinguished career to making sure that the lessons of Nuremberg would become engrained in both international law and the consciousness of society as a whole. He was also a fierce and tireless champion of providing at least a modicum of justice to Holocaust survivors.”

George Foster, President of The Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants, told J-Wire: “His passing marks the end of an era which saw the murder of six million Jews and perhaps also the era of prosecution of the perpetrators. He was a persuasive advocate of justice for victims of genocide stemming from his experience as a Nuremberg prosecutor and witnessing the horrific consequences of the genocide of European Jewry. He describes himself as having been “indelibly traumatised” by his experience and this led him to advocate for an International Criminal Court.  The Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants and indeed, all survivors and people of conscience, mourn the death of Ben Ferencz, an honest, caring and thoughtful man. We wish his family “long life” and know that his legacy will be a guiding light for many generations. May his memory be for a blessing!

Sue Hampel, co-President of Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre, commented: “The Melbourne Holocaust Museum acknowledges the passing of Benjamin Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor at the age of 103. Ben was the chief prosecutor in the (United States v. Otto Ohlendorf, et al.) trial of 22 officers who led mobile paramilitary killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.

After the Nuremberg Trials, Ben advocated for the creation of an international criminal court, was a lawyer for Holocaust survivors, a law teacher, a writer, a lecturer around the world, a lobbyist for and a builder of international legal institutions. He was a remarkable man who left an incredible legacy in his quest for justice for all victims of genocide.

Ben Ferencz is survived by a son and three daughters. His wife died in 2019.

AAP/J-Wire