Ben Ferencz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ben Ferencz
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Ferencz, c. 1947–1948
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| Born |
Benjamin Berell Ferencz
March 11, 1920 Csolt, Hungary (now Romania)
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| Died | April 7, 2023 (aged 103) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | |
| Known for | Prosecutor at the Einsatzgruppen trial |
| Spouse(s) |
Gertrude Fried
(m. 1946; died 2019) |
| Children | 4 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service/ |
United States Army |
| Years of service | 1943–1945 |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Benjamin Berell Ferencz (March 11, 1920 – April 7, 2023) was an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen trial, one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg trials held by US authorities at Nuremberg, Germany.
Later he became an advocate of international rule of law and for the establishment of an International Criminal Court. From 1985 to 1996, he was an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University.
Contents
Biography
Early life and education
Ferencz was born March 11, 1920 in Ciolt, Șomcuta Mare, north of the historical Transylvania region, into a Jewish family. A few months later the Treaty of Trianon allocated greater Transylvania, including the area of Șomcuta Mare, to Romania.
When Ferencz was ten months old, his family emigrated to the United States to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews by the Kingdom of Romania after Romania took control of Transylvania, Banat, Crisana, and Maramures.
The family settled in New York City, where they lived on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Ferencz studied crime prevention at the City College of New York, and his criminal law exam result won him a scholarship to Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he studied under Roscoe Pound and also did research for Sheldon Glueck who, at that time, was writing a book on war crimes. Ferencz graduated from Harvard in 1943.
After his studies, he joined the US Army. His time as a soldier in the army began with a job as a typist in Camp Davis in North Carolina; at that time, he did not know how to use a typewriter nor how to fire a weapon. His job duties also consisted of cleaning toilets and scrubbing pots and floors. In 1944, he served in the 115th AAA Gun Battalion, an anti-aircraft artillery unit.
In 1945, he was transferred to the headquarters of General George S. Patton's Third Army, where he was assigned to a team tasked with setting up a war crimes branch and collecting evidence for such crimes. In that role, he was sent to the concentration camps that had been liberated by the US Army.
Nuremberg trial prosecutor
On Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant. He returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor (and now made a full Colonel as part of his agreement to go) in the Subsequent Nuremberg trials in the legal team of Telford Taylor. Taylor appointed him chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case—Ferencz's first case. All of the 22 men on trial were convicted; 13 of them received death sentences, of which four were eventually carried out. Apart from East Germany, they were the last executions performed on German soil, and in the Federal Republic.
Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg trials, together with his wife Gertrude, whom he had married in New York on March 31, 1946. Together with Kurt May and others, he participated in the setup of reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of persecutions by the Nazis, and also had a part in the negotiations that led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany signed on September 10, 1952, and the first German Restitution Law in 1953. In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the US, where Ferencz entered private law practice as a partner of Telford Taylor. While pursuing claims of Jewish forced laborers against the Flick concern (the subject of the Flick trial), Ferencz observed the "interesting phenomenon of history and psychology that very frequently the criminal comes to see himself as the victim".
Later years
In 2009, Ferencz was awarded the Erasmus Prize, together with Antonio Cassese; the award is given to individuals or institutions that have made notable contributions to European culture, society, or social science.
On March 16, 2012, in a letter to the editor of The New York Times, Ferencz hailed the International Criminal Court's conviction of Thomas Lubanga as "a milestone in the evolution of international criminal law".
In April 2017, the municipality of The Hague announced the naming of the footpath next to the Peace Palace the Benjamin Ferenczpad ("Benjamin Ferencz Path"), calling him "one of the figureheads of international justice". The city's Deputy Mayor Saskia Bruines (International Affairs) traveled to Washington D.C. to symbolically present the street sign to Ferencz.
In 2018, Ferencz was the subject of a documentary on his life, Prosecuting Evil, by director Barry Avrich, which was made available on Netflix. In the same year, Ferencz was interviewed for the 2018 Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9.
On June 20, 2019, artist and sculptor Yaacov Heller honored Ferencz—presenting him with a bust he created—commemorating his extraordinary life dedicated to genocide prevention.
On January 16, 2020, The New York Times printed Ferencz's letter denouncing the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, unnamed in the letter, as an "immoral action [and] a clear violation of national and international law". He became a centenarian two months later. Six months later on September 7, the documentary Two Heads Are Better Than One: Making of the Ben Ferencz Bust, starring Ferencz and sculptor Yaacov Heller, had a world premiere, produced by Eric Kline Productions and directed by Eric Kline.
On June 22, 2021, he became the first recipient of the Pahl Peace Prize in Liechtenstein.
In March 2022, an audio clip of Ferencz was played during the eleventh emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly and he later gave an interview to BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He also said that Vladimir Putin should be 'behind bars' for his war crimes, and further said that he was "heartbroken" over atrocities in Ukraine.
On April 7, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis awarded Ferencz the Governor's Medal of Freedom at a ceremony held at Florida Atlantic University.
In September 2022, Ferencz appeared in the Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust.
In December 2022, Ferencz was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
In January 2023, Ferencz appeared in the David Wilkinson documentary, Getting Away with Murder(s).
In March 2023, in what would become one of his last public appearances, Ferencz presented a video clip of welcome to participants at The Nuremberg Principles: The Contemporary Challenges Conference sponsored by The Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America.
Personal life
In 1946, Ferencz married his teenage sweetheart, Gertrude Fried, in New York. They were married for 73 years "without a quarrel" until her death in 2019. They had four children.
Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida, on April 7, 2023, at the age of 103. He was the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
Lectures
- "The Evolution of International Criminal Law – A Personal Account" in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
Awards
- 1980: National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation
- 2021: Honorary Doctorate awarded by the faculty of law of the University of Cologne
- 2021: Awardee of the Pahl Peace Prize in Liechtenstein
- 2022: Governor's Medal of Freedom of the State of Florida
See also
In Spanish: Ben Ferencz para niños
