Last Nuremberg prosecutor alive aims to ‘save the world’
Every day, Ben Ferencz strives to perpetuate fight against hate, war.
DELRAY BEACH — Ben Ferencz once worked under the glare of the world spotlight seeking the semblance of justice for crimes that claimed millions of lives.
Today, seven decades later, his arena is a home office in a retirement village in suburban Delray Beach, but he says his battle is not won and he works daily to make sure someone will make the arguments against hate and war even when he’s gone.
His fight begins with one sheet of paper in a gray folder.
It’s a list of nonprofits to which he is donating what fortune he has squirreled away in his 97 years. And with it he intends to save the world.
“I’m not doing this for me,” he said. “I’m doing this for you, the next generation.”
Most Kings Point residents move to the gated complex to spend their golden years by the pool or on the greens, but Ferencz’s self-assigned duties won’t allow it.
He’s the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, the international hearings that began in 1945 to hold Nazi leaders responsible for the Holocaust and other crimes of World War II.
He was 27 when he pursued the convictions of 22 men as the Army’s chief prosecutor in a trial of SS death squad members.
Ferencz, a father of four and a decorated attorney and mili- tary veteran, later wrote book after book calling for what would eventually become the International Criminal Court.
His pace hasn’t slowed even as he closes in on a century of life.
Tuesday, Ferenc z hopes to spread more seeds of world peace with a talk at B’nai Torah in Boca Raton.
The event is sponsored by the United States Holocaust Museum, another beneficiary of Ferencz’s generosity.