The Holocaust Recalled ... Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz

Benjamin B. Ferencz. / Getty Images file

"Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes."

"We mourn the death of Ben Ferencz -- the last Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor. At age 27, with no prior trial experience, he secured guilty verdicts against 22 Nazis."

U.S. Holocaust Museum

 

"It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenceless men, women, and children."

"This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance. Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution."

"We ask this court to affirm by international penal action man's right to live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or creed."

"The case we present is a plea of humanity to law."

Benjamin Ferencz, last surviving prosecutor, Nuremberg trials, 1947

One of Nazi Germany's most infamous war criminals, Hermann Goring, was among those that underwent trial at Nuremberg, in 1947, in Germany. The man chosen to represent the U.S. was Harvard educated, a lawyer of only 27 years of age, when he served as a prosecutor in a series of trials for crimes against humanity. The last surviving prosecutor and a longtime champion of international criminal law, Benjamin Ferencz died at age 103, at an assisted living facility in Florida, on Friday.

 

For decades following the trials, Mr. Ferencz advocated for the creation of an International Criminal Court. An international tribunal was established with headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. Mr. Ferencz's philanthropy aided greatly in the memorialization of the Holocaust with the establishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington. 

 

He was motivated by the passion of his compassion, by hearing time and again at the trials in Nuremberg, the phrase 'Nicht Schuldig" from Nazi death squad perpetrators refusing to feel themselves guilty of atrocities. They were loyal Germans, merely following official orders.

 

Einsatzgruppen   Death by Bullets

 

Benjamin Ferencz carried a monumental burden when he became chief prosecutor for the United States in the trial of 22 German officers who led mobile paramilitary killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, part of the notorious death-head Nazi SS. It was the assigned task of the squads to carry out mass killings targeting Jews, Roma and homosexuals among others, mostly civilian populations, throughout German-occupied Europe. These death squads alone were responsible for over a million deaths.

Nazi Germany did not rely on death camps and their gas chambers alone in the annihilation of six million Jews. The campaign to cleanse the world of sub-humans included political dissenters, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally and physically challenged people and other groups considered trash by the Nazis. All the defendants prosecuted by Benjamin Ferencz were convicted. Among them thirteen received death sentences.

 

Nuremberg Trials   The National WWII Museum, U.S.