American Benjamin Ferencz has died at the age of 103. He was the last living prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials against leaders of the Nazi regime.
Born in Transylvania, Ferencz – himself Jewish – was 27 when he acted as chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947. In the decades that followed, he campaigned for recognition of international humanitarian law. Partly thanks to Ferencz, the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague.
Before becoming a prosecutor in Nuremberg, Ferencz fought as an American soldier during World War II in the liberation of Europe. Before that he studied at Harvard.
Today the world has lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and similar crimes. “We mourn the death of Ben Ferencz – Nuremberg’s last prosecutor. At the age of 27, with no previous trial experience, he secured the convictions of 22 Nazis.”
In 2009, Ferencz, who was then still Prince Willem-Alexander, was presented with the Erasmus Prize in The Hague for his contribution to the international prosecution and trial of war criminals. “Justice is always better than war,” Ferencz said at the time. “No international dispute justifies the use of force. The glorification of war must be replaced by the glorification of peace.”
Ferencz died Friday at a residential care home in Boynton Beach, Florida, according to his son.
