The role of the American lawyer, born in 1920, goes far beyond the Nuremberg trials. He is considered the father of the International Criminal Court and introduced the term “genocide” into judicial practice.
The chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Benjamin Ferencz, died on Friday at a health facility in Florida, US media reported on Saturday (local time), quoting his son Don Ferencz. The last surviving prosecutor from the trials was 103 years old. “The world has lost a leader in the fight for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes,” the US Holocaust Museum wrote on Twitter.
Ferencz was born in 1920 in what was then Hungarian Transylvania to Orthodox Jewish parents, and emigrated to the United States with his parents as a child. He grew up in modest circumstances in New York and later attended the elite Harvard University on a scholarship. The lawyer was not even 30 years old when he tried Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg.
From November 20, 1945, National Socialist leaders, and therefore, for the first time in history, representatives of an unjust regime, had to answer at the Nuremberg tribunal. The victorious Allied powers tried 21 high-ranking war criminals, including Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, before an international tribunal. The trial ended after nearly a year with twelve death sentences.
Ferencz coined the term “genocide”
Ferencz was chief prosecutor in one of the twelve so-called follow-up trials that followed the trial of major war criminals from 1946 to 1949. He charged 24 SS leaders with crimes against humanity and war crimes, among other things. Prior to the trials, he served as a US soldier in the liberation of several concentration camps. Atonement for German war crimes became the main theme of his life.
However, the historical role of the lawyer goes beyond the importance of war crimes trials at the time. Because Ferencz not only inserted the term “genocide” into judicial practice, he is also considered one of the midwives of the International Criminal Court. In 2009, at the age of almost 90, he symbolically opened the prosecution’s first allegations in The Hague.
“Ben’s enduring quest for a more peaceful and just world spanned nearly eight decades and forever defined how we respond to humanity’s worst crimes,” said the director of the US Holocaust Museum. “He made history at Nuremberg and continued to do so throughout his extraordinary life.”
(APA/DPA)