09.04.2023
Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencze, who was involved in the Nuremberg trials in the late 1940s, has died at the age of 103. He was the last prosecutor to die at the Nuremberg trials.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese Network) The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted: “The world has lost a leader who fought for justice for the victims of genocide and related crimes.” In 1920,Benjamin Ferencz(Benjamin Ferencz) was born in a Jewish family in Transylvania (now Greater Somkuta, Romania) under the Kingdom of Hungary. His parents immigrated to the United States when he was an infant to avoid Romania’s persecution of Hungarian Jews. He grew up in New York and later studied law at Harvard University on a scholarship.
Nuremberg trials
Ferencz enlisted in the U.S. Army after college. He participated in the Normandy landings and the French campaign that followed. In 1945, he was transferred to General Patton’s Third Army headquarters to join a team tasked with collecting evidence of war crimes and investigating liberated concentration camps. At the age of 27, he became the chief prosecutor of the US Army and participated in the Einsatzgruppen trial (Einsatzgruppen trial).This was held in Nuremberg, Germany after World War II12 subsequent Nuremberg trialsIn the 9th scene, led by the US authorities, the accused was a key member of the SS Special Forces of the Nazi Germany. The Einsatzgruppen is a special organization under the SS, specializing in illegal missions such as extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. The 24 defendants indicted in the Einsatzgruppen trial proceedings were all Einsatzgruppen officers accused by the prosecution of mass killings of civilians. In this trial, 22 people were convicted, and four of them were hanged after being sentenced to death. Most of the other defendants sentenced to death were commuted to life imprisonment or fixed-term imprisonment.
Ferencz (second from right) at the Nuremberg Trial Court.
Ferencz had collected evidence of Nazi atrocities in concentration camps in Germany. He had written that the concentration camps of Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Dachau were morgues of horror beyond words. “There is no doubt that I was indelibly traumatized by the experience of investigating Nazi crimes in concentration camps. I have tried not to talk about it or think about those details.”
After the Nuremberg trials, Ferencz and his wife lived in Germany for several years. He was also involved in the development of a compensation scheme for victims of Nazi persecution and Germany’s first restitution law, and was involved in the negotiation of a reparation agreement between Israel and West Germany. He made a major contribution to the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
(DPA, AFP, Reuters)
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