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Memorializing Ben Ferencz – The Last Living Nuremberg Prosecutor of Nazis

by Joshua Brown
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Ben Ferencz, a very special person who is famous for being the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, has just passed away. During his life he was responsible for putting Nazis on trial for their terrible crimes of genocide and he even recorded the atrocities that happened inside Nazi labor and concentration camps. He was 103 years old when he died in March.

On Friday evening, Ferencz passed away in Boynton Beach, Florida. This news was confirmed by John Barrett from St. John’s University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum even tweeted about his passing with a message that he was a leader that worked towards justice for victims of genocide.

Ferencz was born in Translyvania in 1920 and because of the anti-jewish attitude, his family had to move to New York when he was a kid. He went to Harvard Law school and then joined U.S army at WWII era. As part of the Judge Advocate’s Office, Ferencz got assigned a special job to investigate war crimes that were done against US soldiers by Nazis.

When the US spies were telling about soldiers who found many people without food in Nazi camps, Ferencz went to investigate. He first visited Ohrdruf labor camp in Germany and later he went to Buchenwald concentration camp. In those places he saw sick people lying everywhere, almost like a pile of firewood; some of them looked like skeletons and had diarrhea, dysentery and other diseases. Many were begging for help with their eyes alone since they were infested with lice.

Ben Ferencz was a war crimes investigator who went to the Buchenwald concentration camp. He described it as being incredibly horrible and says he still can’t bear to talk or think about what he saw there.

Near the end of the war, Ben went searching for important documents at Adolf Hitler’s mountain home in Germany, but came back without any luck.

Ferencz had served in the US Army during the war and, afterwards, he returned to New York. Shortly after returning home, he was asked to help prosecute Nazi criminals at the Nuremberg trials in Germany. Before traveling, he married his long-time sweetheart Gertrude. Justice Robert Jackson led these trials.

When Ferencz was 27 and had never been in court before, he became responsible for prosecuting a case involving 22 former commanders who were accused of murdering over 1 million Jews, Romani people, and other enemies of the Nazi government in Eastern Europe. Instead of relying on testimony from witnesses, Ferencz mostly used official German records to present his argument. Ultimately all the defendants were found guilty and at least 12 of them were sentenced to death – something even Ferencz didn’t ask for.

“At the start of April 1948, when the lengthy court judgment was given out, I felt happy knowing that we had won. Our beliefs that laws should be used to make sure everybody is safe had been accepted.”

Ferencz worked for Jewish charities to help Holocaust survivors get back things like their homes, businesses, artworks and religious items that the Nazis had taken away from them. He also helped in talks that led to payments made to people who were affected by the Nazis.

Ferencz wanted there to be an international court which could punish people for crimes during war times. This dream became true in 2002 when the International Criminal Court was opened in The Hague, however its strength has been weakened since important countries like the United States did not join it. Ferencz passed away but he is survived by a son and three daughters. His wife sadly passed away in 2019.

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